Links to eye-witness accounts of men who served with the London Irish Rifles in Tunisia and Italy can be found below:
Major Mervyn Davies MC in Italy.
Mervyn Davies was Officer Commanding of E Company 2nd Bn. London Irish Rifle during 1944 and 1945, and led them during the attack at Casa Sinagoga on 16 May 1944.
Major Desmond Woods MC and Bar in Italy, October 1943 to June 1944.
Captain Desmond Woods joined the 2nd Battalion London Irish Rifles in early October 1943 and immediately became OC of H Company and was then promoted to Major. He would serve with the battalion for eight months before he was wounded in June 1944 near Lake Trasimene.
Lt Colonel John Horsfall DSO MC in Italy, May/June 1944.
Major John Horsfall became second in command of the 2nd Battalion, London Irish Rifles (2 LIR) before assuming command of the battalion on 15th May 1944 following the death of Lieut-Colonel Goff.
Lt Colonel Jeffreys in Tunisia, January 1943.
Lieut-Col Jeffreys was Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion, London Irish Rifles (2 LIR) from July 1942 to March 1943 during the Irish Brigade’s preparations for the North African campaign and the first few months of bitter fighting in Tunisia.
Captain Strome Galloway in Tunisia, February 1943.
Captain Strome Galloway was part of a draft of Canadian officers who joined the First Army in North Africa in early 1943. As Second in Command of F Company in 2 LIR, he provides a most evocative account of the bitter fighting on 26th February 1943 at Stuka Ridge which we reproduce below.
Captain Nicholas Mosley MC in Italy, October 1944.
In his memoir, “A Time at War”, Nicholas Mosley recalled his period of service with the London Irish Rifles and in a letter sent later to his sister, Vivien, recalls the actions of his platoon at Casa Spinello.
CQMS Edmund O’Sullivan in Tunisia, April/May 1943.
Edmund O’Sullivan was called up in October 1939 to join the 2nd Battalion, London Irish Rifles and he would proudly serve with them for nearly 7 years.
North of Medjez-el-Bab, April 1943.
“Plans were laid for a final push towards Tunis, and the first step was allotted to the 78th Division. The Irish Brigade, with a battalion of the Hampshire Regiment temporarily displacing the London Irish who were being re-formed, was given the tough task of capturing Djebel El Mahdi, a difficult, pear-shaped lesser mountain about four miles long and rising in a gradual slope to one thousand four hundred feet…”
2nd Battalion in Sicily, August 1943.
The time had now arrived for what became known as Montgomery’s left hook in Sicily.
The Americans were pressing in the west and the time had come for a strong blow in the centre of the island.
Captain AW Grant in Tunisia.
“I was commissioned into the Royal Ulster Rifles in March 1940 and, after serving in Northern Ireland, was posted to the 2nd Bn London Irish Rifles in August 1941. I was soon made to feel at home in the Battalion there. They were a grand lot but, unfortunately, many have by now gone…”
Captain PJ Gibbons in action for the first time.
“It was impossible to hold the plain so we now held the line of hills about seven miles west of the main road running from Bou Arda and Goubellat to Medjez-el-Bab. As the enemy did not occupy the farms on our side of the road, or at least not often, it meant that patrols had to go about eight miles to find them…”