St Patrick: the first to join our regiment
The Irish Guards are famous for their bravery, says William Barlow, but they should also be celebrated for their devotion to their patron
7 March 2008

AOn March 17 the Irish Guards will celebrate St Patrick's Day, having been raised by Queen Victoria to commemorate the bravery in the Boer War of those disbanded Irish regiments whose traditions live on in the regiment. When Field Marshal Templer visited an Irish Guards position in Italy he found the Irish tricolour flying over one trench. Being Irish, he was not surprised and said nothing. Meanwhile, when the regiment goes to Buckingham Palace to guard its Colonel in Chief, the Queen, its band often plays "The Wearing of the Green", whose words include "The red on England's cruel flag is the blood of Irishmen".

They are a quintessentially Catholic regiment and the many Protestants in their ranks do not contest this. They have a Catholic chaplain and, in the old Guards Depot at Caterham, Surrey, they alone were given time off to attend Mass. Nobody minded, for in the Irish Guards religion is not a problem and men who, back in Ireland, might be at each others' throats will lay down their lives for each other in battle simply because they are all "Micks".

Their motto, after all, proudly displayed on their cap star and taken from St Paul, is Quis Separabit ("Who Shall Separate Us"), and religion certainly does not. Yet the star is that of the Order of St Patrick, an undoubted Catholic whose commitment to the regiment is confirmed by the shamrock at the star's centre, its three leaves being seen as symbolic of the Trinity.

When the Guards Depot Commandant asked one of my recruits who was the first man to join the regiment, the reply was: "St Patrick, sir." "Precisely," said the Commandant, a Grenadier. This delighted the Company Sergeant Major, who was known to get recruits to sing "Hail, Glorious St Patrick" while cleaning their kit at night. In no other regiment could that have happened. Yet it did in a training establishment so tough that the Duke of Devonshire, a Coldstreamer, said: "The Germans were an altogether easier proposition."

The Guards Depot was indeed a remarkable place, as Kipling, whose son was killed serving with the Irish Guards, well knew. Having seen what went on there, he wrote: "Body and spirit I surrendered whole to harsh instructors - and received a soul." Liam O'Flaherty, meanwhile, having served in the trenches, said that he loved humanity, adding that it was to his training as an Irish Guardsman that he owed the flowering of that love.

To those who have seen them in action this seems to make a difference. C E Montague, remarking on the humour in the trenches during the Great War, recalled the Germans calling out contemptuously to the British position opposite them and asking who were taking their place. When someone shouted back "the Oirish Guards", Montague recalled "the hush that fell at the sound of that great name". Later, in the Second World War, General Jim Gavin, US Airborne, thought them the best soldiers he ever saw, "better even than the Germans". Such a reputation does not come only from an ability to fight. To this day, the Irish Guards are blessed before battle by their Catholic chaplain and the difference this makes is they know how to die. When I told my co-speaker at Eton that I was a Mick, he immediately said: "Suicidal", but as a fellow Guardsman who obviously admired them. It can be put differently, however. "This regiment," said an American observer speaking of the Irish Guards, "gives of itself until there is nothing left to give." If that isn't Christian, I do not know what is.

One of the finest statements of what the Irish Guards could teach a man is found in the war diaries of Hugh Dormer. Decorated for his exploits on special operations, he returned to the regiment because he believed it to be "a far higher ideal to lead an ordinary life in an extraordinary manner in the humdrum surroundings of everyday life whilst retaining that vision of the common man as the shadow of God". The comradeship, patience and consideration which he saw in the Guardsmen amazed him and convinced him that "the sublime moments of sacrifice on the battlefield must bind men together into eternity". He brought this Christian vision to all he fought for, prepared to lay down his life for what he believed, which he did.

This vision of the common man enabled Dormer to see that we faced in Nazism something more diabolic than anything previously known. We fought, he believed, not against ignorant heathens but anarchists who strike at national culture and religion, knowing that "cathedrals are the nerve centres of the spirit they intend forever to destroy".

Anyone serving in the Irish Guards will know that same threat faces us today under another name in our very midst and will have to be fought.

How will this be done? A fellow Mick told me of an attack in which a Guardsman, thought by his comrades to be indestructible, fell, mortally wounded. Seeing the line falter, he rallied them. "How?" I asked.

"He sang."

"What did he sing?" His eyes filling with tears, this commando-trained guardsman said, very quietly: "He sang 'Onward Christian Soldiers'." Immediately, the line straightened and in they went.

Hail, glorious St Patrick! Quis Separabit.