Cap badge of the Connaught Rangers, c1881.
NAM. 1962-10-81-1Introduction
This unit was formed during the army reorganisation of 1881, by merging the 88th and 94th Regiments of Foot into a new two-battalion unit. It took its title from the 88th which traditionally recruited in the Connaught area in western Ireland.
The 88th was in India at the time of the merger and remained there as the new regiment’s 1st Battalion until 1890. The 94th became the new unit’s 2nd Battalion and a year after the amalgamation returned from South Africa to Ireland. Between them the two battalions spent 12 years in Ireland between 1881 and 1914. 2nd Battalion sent a detachment to the Gordon Relief Expedition in 1884 as camel-mounted infantry and in the 1890s deployed to Egypt and the Sudan in its entirety to take part in the Dongola Expeditionary Force. It then moved on to 11 years in India from 1897 onwards.
1st Battalion deployed to South Africa in 1899, fighting throughout the Boer War (1899-1902) before moving back to India in 1903. It was from India that it deployed to the Western Front of the First World War. It arrived in October 1914, two months after 2nd Battalion’s arrival in that theatre. 2nd Battalion introduced the marching song ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ to the Western Front, but suffered such heavy casualties there in the opening months of the war that it had to merge with 1st Battalion on 5 December 1914. 1st Battalion was re-deployed to Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in January 1916 and also fought against the Easter Rising in Ireland later that year and in Iraq and Palestine from June 1918 onwards.
King George V awarding the Victoria Cross to Private Thomas Hughes, 6th Battalion, Connaught Rangers, 2 July 1917 – his medal is in the NAM Collection. NAM. 1961-12-729As well as its two regular battalions, the regiment raised four service and reserve battalions during the first two months of World War One. The two reserve battalions faced the Easter Rising in 1916. 6th (Service) Battalion, included the Victoria Cross winner Thomas Hughes, but suffered such heavy losses against the 1918 German Spring Offensive that its survivors had to be merged into another regiment. 5th (Service) Battalion fought in Gallipoli, Salonika and Palestine and survived the war. It was renumbered in 1919 to give the regiment a 2nd Battalion once again. The new 2nd Battalion remained in England for the rest of the regiment’s existence, except for a year on occupation duties in Silesia (now northern Poland) in 1921.
In 1919 the Irish War of Independence (1919-1922) broke out so the 1st Battalion did not re-deploy back to Ireland at the end of World War One. Instead it spent a short time in England before arriving back in India in November 1919. Months later, in June 1920, some of the regiment’s men mutinied at Jullundur in protest at the behaviour of the ‘Black and Tans’ in Ireland. 77 of the 88 men involved in the mutiny were sentenced to imprisonment, but only its ringleader, Private James Daly, was shot, making him the last-ever British soldier or sailor to be shot for mutiny.
In 1922 the Irish Free State gained independence and all five British regiments that recruited there, including the Connaught Rangers, were disbanded.
Key facts
Motto:
- 'Quis Separabit?' (meaning 'Who Shall Separate Us?' - inherited from 88th Regiment of Foot)
Nicknames:
- The Devil’s Own (inherited from the 88th Regiment of Foot)
- The Garvies (inherited from the 94th Regiment of Foot)
Titles to date:
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Regimental Merchandise
National Army Museum Collection
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