
On this day in 1915, 17,000 troops recruited in NI paraded through Belfast. In 1916 four NI men in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers died in battle and rest in Authuile Military Cemetery, on a ridge near the Somme in France. They were William Close from Lisburn, Thomas Mossey from Augher, George Neely from Clogher, and Joseph Dennis from Fivemiletown. Two Belfast men were lost in HM Submarine Olympus off Malta in 1942. One of them, Samuel Plant had been married 16 months previously and after a four-day honeymoon, he had to return to active service. In 1943 the Irish Brigade entered Tunis. Inniskilling Serjeant Frank McAleer, Distinguished Conduct Medal, died in a truck accident in Tunisia. John Beckett from Portrush, a tank transporter, died in India in 1944. A 16-year-old from Shantallow was the youngest to die with the London Irish Rifles in WW2. Danny Kinahan reflects on WW2 in which his father and his friends served.