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The following is an eye witness account.
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In 1985, the part time companies of the 11th Battalion The Ulster Defence Regiment were attending the normal annual camp, which was at the Lydd and Hythe range complex that particular year.
The London Gazette, published on 5 February 1856, included details of the Royal Warrant signed by Queen Victoria on 29 January 1856 and stated in the preamble:
THE Queen has been pleased, by an instrument
under Her Royal Sign Manual, of which the
following is a copy, to institute and create a new
Naval and Military Decoration, to be styled and
designated "The Victoria Cross," and to make
the rules and regulations therein set forth under
which the said Decoration shall be conferred.
The Waterloo Medal awarded to Ensign John Ditmas of the 1st Battalion 27th Regiment of Foot.
The obverse of the medal has a profile of the Prince Regent and on the reverse shows a seated figure of Victory below which is inscribed 'WATERLOO' and 'JUNE18TH 1815'. The medal hangs from the underside of a small frame made from wood taken from York Minster following a fire on 20 May 1840.
This medal was presented to the Inniskillings Museum by the great granddaughter of Ensign Ditmas.
The defence of Western Europe against the forces of the Warsaw Pact dominated NATO and British military policy from 1947 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
West Germany was divided into British, American, French and Russian Zones at the end of the Second World War and Berlin was similarly divided into four sectors. The 1st Battalion The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers served in Berlin on two occasions; first from 1957-58 and again from 1965-67, being stationed in Brooke Barracks on both occasions and in West Germany in 1959.
Again, General Freyburg's New Zealand Corps attacked from the north in the Cassino sector with the same objectives - the town of Cassino and the heights of Monte Cassino, including the monastery. The target this time for intensive aerial bombing was the town of Cassino. That was followed by an artillery shoot. Again, poor coordination resulted in the monastery being ommitted as one of the targets.
Operation Blücher-Yorck was General Erich Ludendorf's third major operation of the German Spring Offensive. The Germans launched seventeen Stormtrooper divisions for the first attack which began at 0100 hours on 27 May 1918 advancing through a 25-mile gap and reaching the River Aisne in under six hours. Eight Allied divisions, between Rheims and Soissons, were pushed back to the river Vesle. By that night they gained another 10 miles.
The 1st Battalion The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers was ordered from Wellington, South India to guard the oilfields at Yenangyaung, Burma against Japanese invasion in January 1942. The fighting was intense and the British and Indian troops had to withdraw to the Indian border under the most horrific conditions and suffering very many casualties. Lieutenant Colonel Cox and Lieutenant Colonel McConnell were killed within nine days of each other. Lieutenant Colonel JA Clifford assumed command of the battalion on the death of Lieutenant Colonel McConnell.
The Second Battle for the Great Redan was fought on 18 June 1855, the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. It was the largest engagement fought by the British Army since Wellington's famous victory over Napoleon Bonaparte in Belgium. Overshadowed in modern memory by the earlier battles at Inkerman and The Alma, and even more so by the calamitous Charge of the Light Brigade, the battles to seize The Great Redan were launched from the trenches around Sebastopol and had much in common with the trench warfare that would prove typical of the Western Front 60 years later.
In 1967, the Ministry of Defence announced that each of the ‘geographic’ infantry brigades, including the North Irish Brigade, were to lose one battalion. The North Irish Brigade at the time consisted of the 1st Battalion The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, the 1st Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles and the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Fusiliers. One battalion would have to go.
The Williamite War In Ireland, the War of the Two Kings.
