PRIVATE B.D. TERRY, 2ND BATTALION QUEEN’S REGIMENT. General Service Medal 1962-2007, 1 clasp, Northern Ireland

PRIVATE B.D. TERRY, 2ND BATTALION QUEEN’S REGIMENT. General Service Medal 1962-2007, 1 clasp, Northern Ireland (officially impressed: 24104304 PTE. B.D. TERRY 2 QUEENS). Mounted court style, as worn (reverse of suspender brooch impressed “CB 4251”), couple of minor nicks to obverse rim, otherwise Good Very Fine to Almost Extremely Fine and a scarce award to a member of one of the first battalions to be deployed in Belfast during the Troubles, and whose battalion also saw service in South Armagh as the spearhead battalion at the time of the notorious UVF Whitecross murders and the retaliatory IRA Kingsmill massacre.

Medal accompanied by download from Forces Reunited website, which confirms that Brian Terry saw service with the 2nd Battalion The Queens Regiment (Queen’s Own Buffs) 1969-1976. Medal also accompanied by extract from Michael Dewar’s “The British Army in Northern Ireland” which records the 2nd Battalion The Queens Regiment as having seen service in Northern Ireland during the period March 1969 to December 1976 in Belfast (Holywood resident battalion) 3/3/1969 to 25/8/1970, East Belfast, 5/8/1971 to 17/9/1971, Londonderry, 29/7/1972 to 29/11/1972, Londonderry, 26/11/1973 to 29/3/1974, South Armagh, 7/1/1976 to 14/1/1976 (Spearhead battalion at the time of the notorious Whitecross murders).

The 2nd Battalion Queens Regiment was one of the first battalions to be deployed to Northern Ireland during the Troubles, seeing service in Belfast from 3/3/1969 to 25/8/1970 as the Holywood resident battalion. When the Troubles broke out in Belfast the only troops immediately available were three companies from the 2nd Battalion The Queens Regiment and two companies of the Royal Regiment of Wales. The Whitecross murders of 1976 were one of the most notorious outrages to take place during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. During two co-ordinated attacks on 4/1/1976, six Catholic civilians were murdered by members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, who broke into their homes and shot them. The shootings were part of a string of attacks on Irish nationalists by the “Glenanne gang”; an alliance of loyalist militants, rogue British soldiers and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers. Billy McCaughey, an officer from the Special Patrol Group, subsequently admitted taking part in the murders and accused another officer of involvement. His colleague John Weir said those involved included a British soldier, two police officers and an alleged police agent, Robin ‘the Jackal’ Jackson. The next day, following the Whitecross murders, IRA gunmen murdered ten Protestant civilians in the Kingsmill massacre. This second atrocity was said to be in retaliation for the Whitecross murders. These two atrocities were the climax of a string of tit-for-tat killings in the South Armagh during the mid-1970s.