During the cold weather of 1896-97 the second battalion was inspected by the Lieutenant-General commanding in Bengal, who pronounced it to be “in first-rate order, in a very efficient condition, and quite fit for active service.” The Commander-in-Chief in India considered this “a very satisfactory report on the battalion, which appears to be very well commanded by Colonel Lawrence.” A few months after this inspection matters began to go badly on the frontier, where for some time past fanatical priests had been preaching “a Holy War” against the English. The first tangible symptom of unrest was a treacherous attack by the hillmen of the Tochi valley upon a British officer and his escort; then followed an outbreak in the Swat valley, where the tribes suddenly fell in thousands upon our post at Malakand. The garrison fought gallantly, and in spite of enormous odds held their ground for several days until the enemy were dispersed by a relieving column. The Mohmands were the next to rise, and finally the Afridis and Orakzais took up arms against us. To meet this formidable though fortunately ill-combined attack, troops were hurried to the frontier; among them were the Royal Irish, who on August 13, 1897, received the order to mobilise for active service. The news was welcomed by the battalion with wild enthusiasm, and proved so good a tonic to the large number of non-commissioned officers and men who, though apparently recovered from the malarial fever prevalent at Jubbulpore, still had the seeds of the disease lurking in their system, that eight hundred and twenty-seven of all ranks were passed by the doctors.[275] In two days everything was in readiness, and on August 15, the Royal Irish entrained for Rawal Pindi. The journey, at that time of year always an exhausting one, was made doubly trying by the result of a railway accident; the troop trains, timed to reach Pindi early in the morning, did not arrive there till nearly midnight, and by some departmental blunder the battalion was left all day without food or shelter from the sun. At Khasalghur, where the rail ended, the Royal Irish had very heavy work, loading and reloading stores in extreme heat. Then followed several forced marches, in the first of which they escorted a convoy four or five miles in length for twenty-six miles over a very rugged country, drained by two rivers passable only at deep fords. When they joined Major-General Yeatman-Biggs in the Miranzai valley, they found his column at Hangu, a village at the base of the foot hills of the great Samana ridge, where the camp, pitched on fields from which the crops had just been reaped, stood on ground saturated by the heavy rain of the monsoon. In a previous campaign on the frontier, an imperfectly entrenched British force had been attacked at night by a horde of hillmen, whose determined rush was not repelled without great difficulty and hard fighting. Mindful of this episode, Yeatman-Biggs had ringed his camp with works, which were occupied by the troops at night, when, to avoid offering a target to “snipers,” the tents were struck. As the weather was very wet and steamy, it was impossible for the men ever to get their clothes thoroughly dried, and during the fortnight that the headquarters of the battalion remained at Hangu there was much fever among those who were unlucky enough to be left in camp,[276] but the companies sent on detachment kept in good health and accomplished the remarkable marches mentioned in Colonel Lawrence’s order, quoted in [appendix 5].
On the evening of September 12, General Yeatman-Biggs issued orders for his column to march forthwith to the rescue of a party of the 36th Sikhs, who were hard pressed in Fort Gulistan, an advanced post on the Samana ridge. At that moment the battalion was so reduced by detachments and by sickness that only two hundred and ninety-five Royal Irishmen were present to take part in the arduous operations by which the Gulistan garrison was relieved on the 13th. After this success Yeatman-Biggs was ordered to remain on the Samana; the sick of the battalion were sent up from the hospitals below, and in the pure air of the mountains rapidly regained their health. In addition to the ordinary camp guards, duties, and fatigues the battalion was employed in road-making and in reconnaissances among the hills; and in high spirits and absolutely unaware that they had been reported upon unfavourably, all ranks anxiously awaited orders for a farther advance into the enemy’s country, when a telegram reached Colonel Lawrence from a civilian friend at Rawal Pindi, telling him of a rumour that the Royal Irish were to be ordered back from the front for garrison duty in India. Colonel Lawrence at once went to the General, who said it was true that the battalion was to go back, as the doctors reported it to be saturated with malaria. At the Colonel’s request a medical board was assembled, whose members were instructed to be very thorough and searching in their examination, and to pass no one who was not thoroughly fit for the hard work of active service. The doctors did not see the whole of the battalion, as a hundred and fifty officers and men were absent on detachment, but out of those whom they inspected, five hundred and twenty-three were passed as absolutely fit, and above the average physique of the army. With this favourable report in his hand, Colonel Lawrence made every effort to obtain the recision of the order but without success; and on September 30, appeared the following paragraph in Major-General Yeatman-Biggs’ Field Force orders: “under instructions from Army Headquarters, Simla, the 2nd battalion, Royal Irish regiment, is to proceed to Rawal Pindi for garrison duty, on relief by the 2nd Derbyshire regiment.”
It will be observed that no reason was given for the removal of the battalion from the fighting line; and soon after the Royal Irish reached Rawal Pindi rumours, most injurious to their character as soldiers, became current in civilian circles and found their way first into the Indian and then into the British newspapers. Major-General Sir Henry Havelock-Allan, the Colonel of the regiment, was in England when these rumours were repeated by the London press; and stirred to the heart by the aspersions on the fair fame of the corps with which he had so long and honourable a connection, he hurried to India to investigate the truth of these stories. Shortly after the second battalion returned to Rawal Pindi Colonel Lawrence was appointed to the command of the XVIIIth regimental district; but before leaving India he went to Simla to ascertain if possible why the battalion had been so unjustly treated. He was unable to obtain an interview with the Commander-in-Chief, but from the Adjutant-General he learned that, several days before the medical board had been convened, General Yeatman-Biggs had reported that the Royal Irish were so saturated with malaria that they could not keep up with the rest of the column. As General Havelock-Allan and Colonel Lawrence crossed on the voyage without meeting in any port, the former landed at Bombay with an unbiassed mind; without stopping to see the battalion at Rawal Pindi he hastened to the frontier, and after the fullest inquiries in every direction was able to assert proudly that the Royal Irish had behaved like good soldiers in the Tirah campaign. By his tragic death in the Khyber Pass at the end of December, the regiment apparently lost its only influential friend in the East, and when, shortly afterwards, the authorities at Simla refused to grant the board of inquiry for which Lieutenant-Colonel Forster had applied in order to refute the libels on his battalion, the spirits of all ranks sank very low. The dignified attitude of the officers under misfortune won universal respect and admiration at Pindi; and it speaks well for the discipline of the battalion that in such distressing circumstances there was no sign of angry feeling among the men, and that all ranks, knowing that there was no grounds for the aspersions made against them in the press, possessed their souls in patience until their conduct should be investigated by an authority even higher than that of Simla.
While Havelock-Allan was on the frontier he had laid the grievances of the Royal Irish before General Sir William Lockhart, who was in command of all the troops engaged in the Tirah campaign; and after Lockhart had seen the battalion at Havelock-Allan’s funeral at Pindi, he exerted himself so vigorously on its behalf that, after being closely inspected by the chief army doctor in India, it was ordered back to the front, and on February 9, 1898, joined the third brigade, under Colonel (now Lieutenant-General Sir Ian) Hamilton, in the Bara valley. Thence it moved up to Barkai, where the expeditionary force received the Royal Irish with open arms. “The fuss that has been made over us is wonderful,” wrote an officer of the XVIIIth. “Every general within fifteen miles of Barkai rode over to congratulate the regiment in the names of their respective commands, and the officers were inundated with shoals of complimentary telegrams.” Unfortunately, as far as Hamilton’s brigade was concerned, all fighting was over when the battalion was allowed to return to the front, and thus it had no opportunity of again meeting the enemy; but still it had been sent back to the fighting line, and thus from the military point of view its honour was completely vindicated. One thing, however, was still needed to re-establish the second battalion in the eyes of civilians—a letter from Army headquarters at Simla clearing it from the charges made against it in the newspapers. Such a letter arrived on the 17th of February, but being marked “confidential” could not be sent to the public press for publication. When Colonel Lawrence received from the second battalion a copy of this confidential letter, he rightly considered that for the complete exoneration of the Royal Irish he should be permitted to make its contents known to the world; he accordingly asked leave of Colonel Gough, Secretary to Lord Wolseley, then Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, to publish it to the brigade of regular and militia battalions of the Royal Irish territorial regiment, about to assemble at Kilworth under his orders. In reply “as an exceptional case and in view of his proceeding to Kilworth where other battalions of the regiment are stationed” he received an extract from a letter from the Adjutant-General to the Commander-in-Chief, India, which runs as follows:—
“I am directed by the Secretary of State to inform you that a perusal of the papers connected with the withdrawal of the 2nd battalion, Royal Irish regiment from the field force on the North-West frontier has satisfied the Commander-in-Chief that a grave injustice was done to the 2nd battalion, Royal Irish regiment when it was recalled from field service.”
Colonel Lawrence immediately published this complete exoneration in an order to the troops at Kilworth (see [appendix 5]).
In order that the public should realise how completely the charges against the Royal Irish had been refuted, it was suggested that some signal honour should be conferred upon the regiment. Her Majesty Queen Victoria, always remembering the XVIIIth when they guarded her at Windsor, had been much concerned at the libels on her Irish soldiers; she at once appreciated the importance of proving to the world that the rumours about the second battalion were absolutely without foundation, and by her command Lord Wolseley was appointed to be the first Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Irish regiment. This mark of the Queen’s favour closed the Tirah incident, the most painful episode in the long history of the regiment.
As the second battalion was not one of the corps fortunate enough to be sent from India to South Africa for the Boer war, the record of its service during the remainder of the period embraced by this history is almost barren of interest. In February, 1900, the Royal Irish distinguished themselves at Mhow in putting out a dangerous fire, and were specially thanked by Major-General Nicholson, C.B., who commanded the district—
“The General Officer Commanding wishes to convey to the troops in garrison, his thanks for the excellent work done by them during the last few days in endeavouring to extinguish the recent fire in the Commissariat stack-yard. The promptitude with which Officers and men of the Royal Irish regiment turned out on the first alarm undoubtedly saved the remainder of the stacks at the time, and the zeal evinced and arduous work done by all the troops in garrison on that and subsequent days has been fully appreciated by the General Officer Commanding, and he will have much pleasure in bringing the same to the notice of the Lieutenant-General Commanding, Bombay Command.”