Gallery

The Forgotten Regiment: Enniskillen’s Third Regiment In 1688, people of Enniskillen and the surrounding countryside banded together to defend the town from attack by forces loyal to the Catholic King, James II. They declared their loyalty to the Protestant King...

The Rangers were formed out of three historic regiments which were based in Northern Ireland, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, Royal Ulster Rifles and Royal Irish Fusiliers. [gallery link="file" ids="35468,35469,35470""gallery size="thumbnail" link="file"...

The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers’ 4th and then 3rd Battalions had their origins in the Tyrone Militia. Introduction In 1715, the Irish Militia was established by an Act of the Irish Parliament.  This was because of the Stuart threat to the Hanoverian succession.  At...

The 2nd Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers was in 13th Brigade, 5th Division, from 30th November 1939 - 14th August 1944. The 2nd Inniskillings were reformed in 1937, after being disbanded in 1922.  In 1940, they were in Belgium and France as part of the British...

A charismatic and determined leader. Patrick Twohig was born and raised in Dublin, youngest son of John Patrick Twohig, and his wife Ellen, née O’Brien.  He had three brothers and one sister. He attended Trinity College, Dublin, enrolling in 1920, and obtained a...

A famous soldier, politician and colonial governor from County Fermanagh. Lowry Cole was the second son of the first Earl of Enniskillen, William Willoughby Cole, of Florence Court, County Fermanagh. He was a great great great great grandson of Captain Sir William...

2nd Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, Upper Silesia, August 1921- March 1922 (most of the photographs are from an album which belonged to Lt Crosslé) After the end of the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference allowed ethnic peoples who had been part of the...

Imperial Duties between the wars.  India and Iraq, 1920-1925 India remained the jewel in the Imperial Crown, though there was to be no Imperial Durbar on the accession of George VI as King Emperor in 1936. There were increasing demands from Indian nationalists for...

A dragoon was originally a foot soldier on horseback, they travelled to the battlefield on their horses, but usually fought on foot, using their muskets, e.g. the Inniskillings at the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim, 1690 and 1691. Regiments of cavalry were generally...

Freedom of a town or city. Freedom is an ancient privilege a town or city can grant to a regiment to march through the streets ‘with drums beating, Colours flying and bayonets fixed.’ In Roman and medieval times, troops were not allowed    inside the city walls or...

In the Spring 1930 edition of The Sprig of Shillelagh, covering the period of April, May, and June, the unveiling of the “Le Touret Memorial”, at the Military Cemetery in Richebourg, was reported. According to the article, there were 13,479 names on the memorial....

1688-1690.   Originally the Inniskillingers were volunteer soldiers and would have worn their everyday clothes. Grey cloth was supplied from England, and red coats were worn in battle.   The uniform worn by regular soldiers in the army was closely modelled on a man’s...

The term ‘Colours’ covers Cavalry Standards and Guidons as well as Infantry Colours. A regiment's Colours are a development of the banners of medieval nobility...

The Tirah Expedition - 1897 – 1898 In 1897 the whole of the North West Frontier region of British India rose in revolt. 2nd Battalion the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers was part of a column in the east, the Peshawar Column, which was sent to restore British control in...

Many decades of suspicion, mistrust and outbreaks of fighting in South Africa marked relations between the British and the Boers (Dutch Afrikaans word for farmer). In 1842 a detachment of the 27th Inniskillings was involved in an engagement near Durban.[gallery...

A far flung Empire before the First World War.  Egypt. Even before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Egypt, a part of the Turkish Empire, was the land bridge for communication with Britain's possessions in India and the Far East. The Inniskillings had been part...