Search Results for 'Connaught Rangers'

In India in 1920, the Connaught Rangers mutinied in sympathy with their fellow countrymen back home, who were fighting in the War of Independence.

Our photograph today was taken in Eyre Square in 1922, and shows the Connaught Rangers parading through the city on their last day in Galway. It is interesting to see them on horseback, on foot, and with bicycles. As you can see in the foreground, there is a long line of soldiers standing in front of the crowd, and there is what looks like a temporary reviewing stand on the far side of the street.

On June 12 1922 a very special ceremony took place at Windsor Castle, near London. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State the previous December, five Irish regiments, including the Connaught Rangers, the Royal Irish, the Leinsters, the Munsters, and the Dublin Fusiliers, which had served the British army with exceptional valour at times, were disbanded. It was a day of special significance for both the participants and onlookers. It was reported in the London Times.

It’s very hard to describe a true Irishman, without acknowledging that we all share a complicated inheritance. At no time was that complication more powerfully amplified than in the crisis of identity leading up to and during War World I. On the one side is the unionist image of Irish Protestants loyally, and exclusively, rallying to the Union Jack, and sealing that union with their blood; while on the other side, the Catholic and nationalist men and women, the people of the 1916 Rising, who represent the ‘true’ Ireland, in sharp contrast to the misguided Irishmen slaughtered in France on the altar of British imperialism.

For those interested in the history of the Connaught Rangers a walking tour of Galway city to seek out memorials and artefacts related to the once great regiment is planned by the Connaught Rangers Association. Galway City has many great memorials related to the once great regiment including the memorial window in Galway Cathedral, and the cannons at City Hall which have been in the city since 1857 to commemorate the involvement of the regiment in the Crimea War.The tour will start in Renmore and then move towards City Hall, Saint Nicholas Collegiate Church, and finish in Galway Cathedral.

The Irish have played a major role in the British army from the late 1700s up to Independence and even beyond, fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, the Afghan War, the Crimean War, the South African Wars, World War I, and World War II.

Bernard Phillips, who was born c1835, was a widower who worked with Thomas McDonogh and Co in Merchants Road. He had been married to Mary Bowen from Galway, and they had five children. She unfortunately died, and some time afterwards Bernard was loaned by McDonogh’s to Craig and Gardiner, 41 Dame Street, Dublin, where he worked as a mercantile clerk. While he was there he met and married Teresa Hayes from Dublin. They came back to Galway and Bernard continued working for McDonogh’s.