Still go with the kingdom of Ireland, as ancient Ireland a kingdom thus helping to keep the Royal in the Irish regiments.
Any ideas as to a possible national anthem? Obviously God Save the Queen would be the Royal Anthem if links with the monarchy were retained but an O Canada or Advance Australia Fair type anthem for sporting events etc would also be adopted.
Does anyone know if pre-independence Ireland had a song like O Flower of Scotland that served as an unofficial national anthem or was it just "The Queen?"
Most patriotic songs are sectarian by nature so something special would have to be composed. Answer Irelands Call?
Oops! I thought that my files there were already set for open viewing, but maybe the fact that I just created a new 'folder' for this one confused matters: I'll go and get a new link sorted-out so that you can see it okay...
Try looking at https://www.box.com/s/8ec369fd725e01732edd.
Okay.deliberately left out Irish Guards as they could stay in the Imperial army for Irish volunteers.
According to my sources one battalion was used at home (but was also ready for BEF service if needed) whilst the other was somewhere out in the Empire, but it was by no means a division like you say: From the list for 1914, there were also plenty of regiments with their 1st battalions in the UK and 2nd battalions overseas instead, they got swapped-over sometimes, and in any case drafts of troops were sent from the battalions at home to those overseas when necessary. If you joined the regular army then you joined on the understanding that you'd serve anywhere your unit got sent, because there were no 'home service only' battalions in the OTL regular army in those days.Most infantry regiments has 2 battalions. Officially 1st for overseas and 2nd for home service.
Thats interesting. At what date was this? Incidentally, at least from the Haldane Reforms of 1908 onwards, even the battalions serving within the UK generally weren't stationed within their own recruiting areas: Most of those in Britain were gathered together into just a few large cantonments, ready for BEF training & deployment if needed, and of the 18 stationed in Ireland in 1914 only one -- rather than the eight that would theoretically have been possible -- belonged to an Irish regiment...British army records show many of the 1st battalion were non-Irish and 2nd battalion had a majority of catholic.
The whole point in merging regiments to form the 2-battalion ones standard from 1881 until after WW2 was to have one overseas and one (unless there was a World War, or other large-scale conflict, in progress of course...) so that if the one overseas needed reinforcements the one back home could send it men who already belonged to the same regiment because this was better for 'esprit de corps' and unit cohesion than just sending generalised 'infantry' recruits would have been. If the total number of Irish infantry battalions actually needs to be cut ATL then merging pairs of regiments together again (probably selecting those pairs' members partly on the basis of which regiments have adjacent recruiting areas) and only then halving their numbers of battalions would work better than just reducing them to having only one regular battalion each and is what I'd expect the authorities to do.In ATL 2 battalions may be a bit much. Thoughand possibly rotate the regular regiments in the 10th Irish for overseas availability and 16th V & 36th V for home service or TA service.
Good. Soldiers weren't always from the officially-correct districts, mind you. For one thing, bearing in mind the populations of Dublin and Belfast, expect to see men from those two cities serving in "wrong" regiments simply because there weren't enough vacancies in the "right" ones when they enlisted... although in those cases they may well have joined the regiments recruiting [officially] in the areas from which they or their families had come before moving to the cities...Ah danke
Very useful, my story features a lot of soldiers so it's good to know where they're going to be from
Extra batalions raised during the Napoleonic Wars -- such as the 3rd/27th whom you mentioned there -- were all disbanded again IOTL by the late 1820s, as were some of the more junior regiments that had originated during that conflict.I acknowledge many regiments had more than 2 battalions (27th Inniskillen had 3 battalions from 1805 to 1826).
Any ideas as to a possible national anthem? Obviously God Save the Queen would be the Royal Anthem if links with the monarchy were retained but an O Canada or Advance Australia Fair type anthem for sporting events etc would also be adopted.
Does anyone know if pre-independence Ireland had a song like O Flower of Scotland that served as an unofficial national anthem or was it just "The Queen?"