“I served side by side with it in Burma when I was very young. I met it again in the Crimea, and I can well remember what pride I felt as an Irishman in its gallant conduct on the 18th June, 1855. It also served in India whilst I was there during the Mutiny, and it must be in the remembrance of many of those who are now on parade that we were comrades together during the war in Egypt in 1882. I remember well, in the first streak of dawn on the desert of Tel-el-Kebir, seeing the Royal Irish among the first to cross the entrenchments, and again, two years later, we met on the Nile, in which expedition they played a distinguished part. I felt proud that they should have been the winners of a prize which was offered to the battalion which made the journey up the river in the shortest time. I have a very much prized trophy of the expedition which was given me by one for whom I have the greatest respect—one of the very best men and best soldiers I ever knew—I refer to Father Brindle, your former chaplain, who accompanied you from Cairo up the river, and then across the Desert to Gubat. The trophy is the flag of the boat in which he made the voyage up the Nile; it is marked ‘H Company, Royal Irish.’ Yours is one of the oldest regiments in the army. When first raised it was named ‘The regiment of Ireland.’ That name was changed by William III. to the Royal Irish regiment, as a reward, a distinction for your gallant services at the taking of Namur. If I were to enter into detailed history of the regiment it would be to give a history of the British army, for the history of one may be said to be the history of the other. I chanced to read an old book the other day, describing the wars of the early part of the last century, in which it was stated that the discipline, system of drill, and fighting, training of the army then had been copied from the discipline and military system long established in the Royal Irish regiment. As you know from the names of the battles on your Colours you shared in all the glories of the Duke of Marlborough, and although hereafter I have no doubt you will add many names to these Colours—for we shall have wars as long as the world lasts—no greater victory than that of Blenheim or Ramillies can ever be shared in by any regiment. Now, what is the value of all this glory to a regiment, or to the army of which it is a part? It is this, it intensifies the pride of the regiment, and the pride of that Empire to which we all belong; it is an incentive to those who come after us to imitate, and, if possible, to excel the deeds of their forefathers. May God bless these Colours and prosper this fine old distinguished regiment.”
After three years at the Curragh the battalion was ordered to Limerick, where it arrived early in November, 1894. The Royal Irish had hardly settled down in their new quarters when they lost their Lieutenant-Colonel, J. D. Edge, who died in Dublin on the 15th of December, and less than a month later General Call followed him to the grave. Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. A. Spyer succeeded to the command of the battalion: General Call was replaced by Lieutenant-General and Honorary General R. W. M‘L. Fraser, on whose transfer to the Royal Warwickshire regiment less than a year later, Major-General and Honorary Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Havelock-Allan, V.C., a former officer of the XVIIIth, was appointed to fill the vacancy on November 22, 1895.
In the spring of 1896 news reached England of a dangerous native rising in Rhodesia, a huge territory lately added to the possessions of Britain, and bounded to the north by the Zambesi river, to the east by Portuguese East Africa, and to the south by the Transvaal. The distances in the theatre of war were so enormous, and the mobility of the enemy so great, that the War Office determined to reinforce the troops in South Africa with foot soldiers who could ride, and the battalions at home were called upon to furnish detachments of officers and men who had been trained to act as mounted infantry. Lieutenant S. G. French was selected to command the contingent from the Royal Irish, and with thirty non-commissioned officers and men, formed part of a composite unit known as the Irish Company, mounted infantry. They embarked on May 2, 1896; landed at Cape Town, and after remaining some time encamped at Wynberg, sailed to Beira, the harbour in Portuguese territory from which Rhodesia could be approached most easily by sea. Thanks to the courtesy of the Government at Lisbon, our troops were allowed to make use of the port, and to pass through the belt of coast land between the ocean and the frontier of Rhodesia. Once arrived at Salisbury, the principal British settlement in our new territory, the handful of Royal Irish were allotted to a column under Lieutenant-Colonel E. A. H. Alderson, and were employed in pacifying northern Mashonaland. This is not the place to describe the expedition: it is enough to say that the representatives of the regiment did well on every occasion when they were engaged.[279] In Colonel Alderson’s report of November 25, 1897, he stated that “the detachment under Lieutenant French did their work excellently in every way, especially when on active service in Mashonaland. After the action at Makia’s Kraal on August 30, 1896, I had much pleasure in reporting them to Sir Frederick Carrington, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., commanding the forces in Rhodesia, as follows: ‘I should like to mention the ready way in which the Royal Irish section of the Irish Company, Mounted Infantry, followed Lieutenant French across a considerable piece of open ground under a brisk fire.’” When Lieutenant French and his detachment returned to England they rejoined headquarters where the medal, issued to all who took part in the campaign, was presented to them in due course.
The Royal Irish were so popular in Limerick that, when it became known that the first battalion was to move to Dublin in the autumn, the townspeople petitioned the Government to allow it to remain for another year. When the request was granted the Corporation took the opportunity of presenting the commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Spyer, with a very complimentary address, containing many references to the uniformly good conduct of the regiment, and to the high esteem with which it was regarded by all creeds and classes of the population. The Royal Irish were still quartered in Limerick at the time of the Jubilee celebrating the completion of the sixtieth year of Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s reign. Certain disloyalists attempted to mar the rejoicings by hoisting a black flag upon one of the islands of the Shannon; the local authorities were most anxious to remove this emblem of treason, but the owners of the river boats, intimidated by the rabble, refused the large sum of money offered for the use of their craft, and there appeared no means of reaching the obnoxious flag, when Private —— Cullen, Royal Irish regiment, came to the rescue, and, to quote from the account of his gallant feat which appeared in the London ‘Globe’ of July 5, 1897,
“lowering himself by a rope from the barracks, which overhang the river, he plunged in, and struck out for the rock. Crowds congregated on the opposite bank, and some at least—for there are many in Limerick too loyal and too sensible to be the playthings of vindictive agitators—watched his progress through the fierce current in mental trepidation. He reached the rock, tore up the pole and flag, and not daring to return in the teeth of the stream, swam with his capture to the bank. It was only after a long and hard struggle that he was able to make land, where a strong body of police met and escorted him back to barracks. Had it not been for the police, serious if not fatal injuries would have been done him, as a great crowd of women were prepared to stone him as he approached.”
At the end of 1897, the Royal Irish regiment heard with deep regret of the death of their Colonel, Sir Henry Havelock-Allan, V.C., who, while in India to disprove the charges brought against the second battalion, was killed in the Khyber Pass on December 31, 1897. He was succeeded by Major-General C. F. Gregorie, C.B.,[280] who had commanded the second battalion at Tel-el-Kebir. In the summer of 1898, as has been already mentioned, Her Majesty Queen Victoria paid the regiment the very high honour of directing that Field-Marshal the Right Honourable Garnet, Viscount Wolseley, K.P., G.C.B., G.C.M.G., Colonel Royal Horse Guards, Commander-in-Chief, should be appointed Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Irish regiment.[281]
In August, 1898, the first battalion moved to Buttevant with many regrets, for officers and men alike had found Limerick an ideal station. The racing was good, the hunting excellent,[282] the inhabitants were hospitable and thoroughly appreciated the good qualities of the Royal Irish, whom they had grown to look upon as personal friends. In the autumn of 1898, the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society was presented to Lieutenant E. M. Panter-Downes by Colonel W. W. Lawrence, commanding the XVIIIth regimental district; the circumstances in which this decoration was won are set out in the following extract from Colonel Lawrence’s speech on parade, when he pinned the medal on to the recipient’s breast:—
“I have a very pleasing duty to perform this morning, and that is to present to Mr Panter-Downes, of the 1st battalion, the Royal Humane Society’s medal for risking his life to save that of a gentleman at Kilkee, Co. Clare, in August last. Captain Vigors and Mr Panter-Downes went to bathe that morning. There was a very heavy sea running, and the waves were breaking over the rocks. They noticed a man’s clothes on the cliff, but saw nothing of him at the time. Shortly after they saw him in the water, in a very exhausted condition, almost at the last gasp. Mr Panter-Downes at once jumped in and swam thirty or forty yards through the surf to the drowning man. He secured him, and with him swam back to the iron ladder used by bathers, where Captain Vigors met him, and between the two of them they got the man in safely. When they were on the ladder the waves were washing over them, and they were in danger of being carried away.”
On Colonel W. W. Lawrence’s retirement from the service he was succeeded in command of the 18th regimental district by Colonel J. H. A. Spyer, who was promoted Colonel on the 16th of January, 1899. In the same Gazette Major H. W. N. Guinness was promoted to be Lieutenant-Colonel. The autumn of 1899 found the battalion still quartered in Ireland, with the eyes of all ranks turned upon South Africa, where the course of political events showed with ever-increasing clearness that the South African republics were determined to force a war upon Great Britain. The causes of the quarrel are too complex to be discussed in a regimental history; from the soldier’s point of view the all-important question was whether England was to continue the paramount power in South Africa or to be ousted by the Dutch republics, and the earnest hope of every man in the regiment was that the XVIIIth would be allowed to take part in the struggle in which this great question was to be decided. For a time this hope seemed destined not to be fulfilled, for though Captain S. E. St Leger was appointed to command a company of mounted infantry, of which a section was provided by the Royal Irish,[283] the first battalion was not among the troops selected for the “Expeditionary Force” despatched to the seat of war in October and November. The officers made every effort to induce the War Office to send the battalion to South Africa, but failed to obtain anything more definite than a promise that if more troops were required, every attention would be paid to the desire of the Royal Irish to be actively employed. When it was decided to strengthen the expeditionary force with another division, the 5th, the battalion hoped to find a place in one of its brigades, but it was not included in General Warren’s command, and until the beginning of December there seemed no prospect that it would take part in the Boer war. The Royal Irish were then at Aldershot, where they had arrived on November 24, to join the second battalions of the Bedfordshire, Worcestershire, and Wiltshire regiments in the 12th infantry brigade, commanded by Colonel, afterwards Major-General R. A. P. Clements. They had not yet thoroughly settled down in their new quarters when they were roused to the highest pitch of enthusiasm by the news that the 12th brigade was to mobilise forthwith, and to start in a few days for South Africa as part of Lieutenant-General Kelly-Kenny’s newly formed division, the 6th. Then began a rush so tremendous that those who went through it now look back on the time between the 2nd of December, when the orders were received, and the 16th, when the battalion sailed, as a nightmare; there was an enormous amount of work to be done; the days were very short; the barracks were badly lighted; everyone was at fever heat with excitement; and the strain upon the officers and non-commissioned officers was quite indescribable. All men over twenty years of age had to be medically examined to see if they were fit for active service; clothing and equipment for the field had to be drawn and fitted, and arrangements made for the well-being of the women and children of the battalion, whether “on” or “off” the strength; the reserve men had to be brought over from Clonmel, armed, clothed, and fitted out in every way.[284] Lectures on the value of inoculation against enteric were given to induce men to submit themselves voluntarily to the operation; soldiers whose marksmanship was below the average received additional instruction in musketry, and preparations were made for the disposal of those men who were too young or not physically fit for the campaign. In the midst of all this bustle, three officers and sixty-seven of the other ranks were sent off to the mounted infantry at Shorncliffe,[285] and the reservists—three sergeants, seven corporals, and two hundred and seventy privates—arrived, who, from their age, their long service, and the experience which many of them had gained on the north-west frontier of India, proved invaluable in the South African war.
The Royal Irish, who shared the s.s. Gascon with the Wiltshire regiment, embarked at Southampton with thirteen officers, one warrant officer, and 672 non-commissioned officers and men, or a total of 686 of all ranks, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. N. Guinness.[286] To understand why so small a number of officers started with headquarters for South Africa, the reader must remember that before the battalion left Ireland it had furnished a draft of men trained to mounted infantry work, who were accompanied by three officers; during the weary weeks when it seemed probable that the Royal Irish would remain at home as part of the garrison of the United Kingdom, several officers had obtained staff appointments in South Africa, or had been attached to regiments already at the seat of war, and, as has been already mentioned, three more joined the mounted infantry while the battalion was at Aldershot.