Easter Parade 1966 from Bray Railway Station to St Peter’s Cemetery.
L to R Scottie O’Brien, “Drill Purposes” (Dermot) Murphy (Deceased), Liam
Murphy (Deceased),J M Kelly (Whereabouts unknown), John Hynes.
You would know it is A Coy as the party is gildy, military, and as good as
the Regulars.
Sample page
I called into Town Hall Bookshop on the Florence Road in Bray recently and picked up a copy of “Pictorial Memories of Bray – Volume 3”. I had seen on the internet that it contained a section of 23 pages on “The FCA in Bray” and so I decided to have a look. The editor is Henry Cairns and Henry himself was manning the shop when I called in. I made the mistake of first asking for “The Pictorial History of Bray – Volume 3” which is a different publication altogether, but Henry put me right! One collection is produced by Bray Cualann Historical Society, of which ex-21Bn member Jim Scannell is the PRO, and the other by The Old Bray Society. Henry Cairns is also an ex-member of 21Bn.
Recollections by Capt Kevin Browne, Bn Adjutant 21 Inf Bn
Like many before and after me my first formal introduction to the FCA was a visit by two recruiting personnel to my School. It was October 1968 and I had just completed my Intermediate Certificate and moved into 5th Year in St Michael’s CBS, Eblana Avenue, Dun Laoghaire. While I had seen people in Uniforms before at Corpus Christi processions etc I had never thought about the FCA or anything to do with the Army.
This B Coy shoot from March 9th 1975 was held at Kilpedder range and we fired the 303 and the Bren. Judging by the photos there was a good turn-out and being the FCA in the mid 70s there was quite a mixture of european surplus combats and mufti being worn.
Gallery of pictures follows
I recently dug out my “Musketry” manual and although it has a pretty old-fashioned name it contained vocabulary, searching ground and fire control orders. The copy I have is dated 1946 and is stamped “Forsa Cosanta Aituil 30 Jan 1952, Carlow” in the old Irish script, the Clo Gaelach.
Read on for a discussion of military vocabulary and some of the phrases that drove us mad as privates and I am sure we used as we rose through the ranks!
I was talking to Kevin Connolly and Gerry Paley recently about taking a “Veteran’s Table” at the dinner next January and Kevin mentioned that veterans of most units always continue to wear their berets.
That got me thinking and now that the 21st is long gone and the 62nd is soon to follow, maybe we are free to use our old badges as we see fit. Why not start wearing a vets beret with the old Dwyer flash on. It would have the advantage of being easy to buy a black beret, sew on a piece of red material and re-use your shoulder flash which is probably on that old uniform that doesn’t fit you anymore. If I recall correctly we had to buy those flashes so they are ours to own. The cap badges are probably still current and so may give rise to “issues”.
Any thoughts?
This photo, posted by Tony Foley on the C Coy Facebook page shows Liam Quinn, Henry Kearns, Willie Dillon and Martin C. Murphy. I am re-posting it here in honour of “Movember”.
When posted on FB it prompted much hilarity with Seamus Fitzgerald explaining “This was a stash of ronnies discovered in an abandoned part of the Brugha that the 21st were put into one night. The ronnies were left there by the British army in the early 20s – sadly there were no boots discovered.”
David Flood commented he heard that when they were being phased out of the PDF in favour of the clean-cut Action Man look, like with the greatcoats they just issued one to everyone to get rid of them!
The final part of the History of B Coy. I got this from Aidan Teevan when I met him at the Annual Mass 2012. He also gave me some corrections for previous posts, but I think I will incorporate them into a complete history and post it here as a PDF file (Portable Document Format, not the other PDF!) for download in due course.