A month later the battalion learned from Army Orders that to commemorate the gallantry of the Irish regiments in the recent battles in South Africa, the Queen had ordered that in future all ranks of these corps should wear on St Patrick’s Day a sprig of shamrock in their head-dresses—a recognition of national sentiment which caused great satisfaction to both battalions of the XVIIIth, and to every other Irish regiment in Her Majesty’s army.
In the ordinary course of Indian reliefs the second battalion was due to turn its face homewards in the autumn of 1900, but owing to the war in South Africa all such arrangements were cancelled, and the Royal Irish were ordered to remain at Mhow, where they were still quartered when in July, 1901, Lieutenant-Colonel J. Burton-Forster, relinquishing the command on appointment to the Staff, was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel H. S. Shuldham-Lye. The dislocation of reliefs was not the only effect produced on the second battalion by the South African war. As every recruit, as soon as he was fit for active service, was sent to join the first battalion, there was great danger that the second battalion would become dangerously weak if the time-expired men left India at the end of their engagement to serve with the Colours. As every battalion in India was in a similar plight the government offered liberal terms to men willing to re-engage, viz.—a bounty of £10 with a two months’ furlough at home, or an additional bounty of £16 in lieu of furlough to all ranks below the rank of sergeant, who had completed six years and three months’ colonial service, and who had not entered upon the twelfth year of such service. The men who accepted these terms were to engage to extend their service so as to complete twelve years with the Colours. Twenty-two of the Royal Irish accepted the £10 bounty with furlough; two hundred and ninety-seven preferred to have £26 paid into their hands, and did not take a holiday at home.
WINDOW COMMEMORATIVE OF SOUTH AFRICAN WAR, 1899-1902.
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
1885-1900.
THE FIRST BATTALION.
MOUNTED INFANTRY IN MASHONALAND: THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA: COLESBERG AND BETHLEHEM.
For nearly four years after the return of the first battalion to England in 1885 it was quartered alternately at Plymouth and Devonport. During this time only three events of importance occurred in its history. In February, 1886, General Sir Richard Dennis Kelly, K.C.B.,[277] from the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians), was appointed Colonel of the Royal Irish regiment, vice Lieutenant-General and Honorary General Sir Alexander MacDonell, K.C.B., transferred to the Rifle Brigade. New Colours were presented to the battalion on September 7, 1886, at Devonport, by the Lady Albertha Edgcumbe, daughter of the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, at a ceremony marked by a departure from precedent; hitherto the Colours of the Royal Irish had always been consecrated by a clergyman of the Church of England, but on this occasion the service was performed by a Roman Catholic priest in recognition of the fact that the large majority of the rank and file were members of the Church of Rome. In the Gazette of March 9, 1889, Sir Richard Kelly was transferred to the command of the Border regiment, and was succeeded by Lieutenant-General and Honorary General George Frederick Stephenson Call, C.B.[278] From Plymouth the battalion, six hundred and ninety-nine of all ranks, under Lieutenant-Colonel A. J. A. Jackson, was ordered in May, 1889, to Colchester, where it was inspected by its new Colonel, General Call, who after serving in the XVIIIth in China, Burma, and the Crimea, had commanded it in India. While at Colchester two serious misfortunes happened. In the autumn of 1889 the sergeants’ mess was burned down, and in it were lost several cups and trophies, and worse than all, the two engravings given by the late King Edward VII. to the non-commissioned officers during his visit to India while he was Prince of Wales. Nearly two years later, on July 31, 1891, the officers’ mess hut met with a similar fate. A little past midnight, after the mess had been closed, an officer discovered that the building was on fire. The alarm was at once given; not only the Royal Irish, but the whole of the garrison turned out, but their united efforts, coupled with those of the town fire-brigade, failed to master the flames, and the hut and nearly all it contained was destroyed. There were several gallant but fruitless attempts to save the Colours; and it was only at great personal risk that Private W. O’Neill succeeded in bringing away the silver model of a whale-boat, the trophy commemorating the battalion’s success in the race up the Nile. Among the few things rescued was the snuff-box, which, as already mentioned on [page 146], was the only piece of regimental plate saved from the wreck of the Buckinghamshire in 1851.
Late in the autumn of 1891 the battalion was ordered to Ireland, and arrived at the Curragh in November under Lieutenant-Colonel J. D. Edge, whose marching-in state showed a strength of 697 officers and men. Next year, on November 14, new Colours were presented by Lady Wolseley, to replace those lost in the fire at Colchester. At the end of the ceremony Lord Wolseley addressed the Royal Irish, and after reminding his audience that throughout his military career he had been intimately associated with the regiment, he continued as follows:—