Irish Guards

[shippingsteel]

I have a question pertaining to the Irish Guards - did they have Territorial battalions in their regiment prior to or during the Great War period.?

And if so were there several or only the one battalion.? I have come across items marked with the abbreviations ( T.BN and I.G.)

I am assuming that refers to the Irish Guards and a certain Battalion - is anybody familiar with these markings.?

Could anyone give me a quick update on how these Territorial forces operated and how they were linked to the Regiments.?

Thanks kindly for your assistance.

Cheers, S>S

[Muerrisch]

The Foot Guards had no SR and no TF.

Their peacetime terms of engagement were different from the line. The Line was 7 years colours, 5 years reserve. This allowed a soldier to spend a long time in India or the colonies etc.

The Guards, not expected to serve overseas except in crisis, were 3 and 9, thus their reserve, although not as experienced as that of the Line, was 3 times their servng strength.

[PhilB]

I have come across items marked with the abbreviations ( T.BN and I.G.)

I assume that to be Training Battalion. Guards specialists will tell us whether the IG had their own Trg Bn or whether there was a Composite Guards Trg Bn.

[Steven Broomfield]

Each of the Guards regiments had a reserve batallion - 5th for the Grenadiers and Coldstream, 3rd for the Irish and Scots, 2nd for the Welsh - I imagine these could have been referred to as Training battalions.

[Muerrisch]

these, I take it, were war-time expedients because the existing system was not robust enough?

[Ron Clifton]

Hello all

The Guards regiments had "Training Battalions" in WW2 but not in WW1, when they had Reserve battalions as already mentioned. Pre-WW1, between the wars, and post-WW2 (up to the present) the Guards Depot acted as a composite training unit.

And, incidentally, Ireland had no Territorial units anyway.

Ron

[Steven Broomfield]

these, I take it, were war-time expedients because the existing system was not robust enough?

Yes: according to James' Infantry regiments 1914-18, they were formed (respectively by seniority of regiment, Coldstream being second): August 1914, August 1914, August 1914, "1914", August 1915. The Grenadiers and Coldstream battalions were intially the 4th Battalions of their regiments, rebumbered when a 4th Battalion was formed for service in the field; the 3rd Scots were not renumbered, the Scots not raising any war service battalions; the 3rd irish were the 2nd until a 2nd Battalion was formed for service (July '15), and the 2nd Welsh was raised after the 1st Battalion (itself raised in February 1915) had left for France.

[shippingsteel]

Thanks very much to all who have replied. So I take it that the T refers to a Training Battalion not a Territorial, and most likely circa WW2 not the GW.

That is the difficulty with these kind of markings - they can be quite hard to attach a date to without the specialist knowledge of the regiments involved.

Thanks again for your assistance, S>S