LUAIN -- On February 1, 1702, the Irish Brigade of France added to its growing reputation as elements of the Brigade fought at …

Sgt. Henry Gallagher of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24^th (2^nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot, who was from Thurles, County Tipperary, paced up and down behind the red-clad soldiers looking over the mealie bag fortifications at Rorke’s Drift. He lifted…

‘Mad Mike’ Hoare believed you get more out of life by living dangerously. And yet about 35 family and friends gathered in Durban, South Africa, on 17 March, St Patrick’s Day, to honour Mike as he turned 100 years old. Among them were five of the Wild Geese who fought with him in the Congo in the…

I have an Irish story. I’m not Irish, but I was educated by nuns from an Irish order and we always celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with a festive program at school. My story, however, is about my best friend from college, Mary Rose Ryan. As we became friends, she told me she was…

DOMHNAIGH -- On February 3, 1537, Lord "Silken" Thomas Fitzgerald and his five uncles were executed at Tyburn, England. In June 1534, believing the English had killed his father in London (he actually died in the Tower later, of disease), Fitzgerald led a revolt against the English. He gained the…

It was 1948, and as the military half-track drove through the Beit Netofa Valley, at the village of Madna in Galilee, shots rang out. One Israeli soldier was killed and another was hit in the head. A sniper had zeroed in on the men and was picking them off one by one.

Then, one of the half-track’s occupants, a tall,…

National Pilgrim Paths Day is a new Easter Festival based on Ireland’s dense network of medieval pilgrim walking routes. This new heritage themed event is organised by the local communities adjacent to each of our principal penitential routes and is aimed at raising…

Many people are familiar with the exploits of the Victorian explorer David Livingstone in Africa, his missionary work, anti-slavery agitation and his meeting with the journalist, Henry Morton Stanley on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in November 1871 which gave rise to the now famous, and much parodied phrase, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

Few people are aware that when contact with Livingstone was again lost after he parted company with Stanley, concern about his safety and health…

Patricia Horne is an Irish medical doctor who worked in Nigeria during in the 1950s at one of several medical missionary hospitals managed by Irish Catholic religious orders.

Horne came from a medical family. Her grandfather, Andrew Horne, was a founder and first…

(Above: The Irish Brigade who fought alongside the Boers against the British army in the Anglo-Boer War. Col. John Blake is sitting in the front row 2nd to the left of the concertina player.

In far-off Africa to-day the English fly dismayed…

Part 3 of 3 of the Series 'We Will Probably Land Christmas Day’: At War in the Atlantic, 1942 

This…

Part 2 of 3 of the series ‘We Will Probably Land Christmas Day’: At War in the Atlantic, 1942 

Part 1 of 2, “Getting To Where We Are Going” includes my father's accounts of his first quiet week on the high…

No large operation in World War II surpassed the invasion of North Africa in complexity, daring, risk, or -- as the official U.S. Army Air Forces history concludes -- 'the degree of strategic surprise achieved.'



     -- Author Rick Atkinson,…

It was not uncommon for Queen Victoria’s soldiers to be Irishmen or to have Irish connections, but few of them had a career such as that of Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts,…

A $100 gift card from world-class retailer TheIrishStore.com or one of five gifts from our 'locker'…

Former South African President Nelson Mandela has drawn quite a bit of attention at The Wild Geese, and not only within the past 24 hours since this legendary leader's passing.

Here are some of the tributes members have posted:

*…

”They could take our land, starve our poor, destroy our homes and plunder our institutions; they could deny us education, but they could not destroy our music and song” No truer words were ever spoken. These are by Derek Warfield himself.

Derek Warfield is a singer, songwriter, mandolin player and a founding member of…

Most of South Africa is more than 8,000 miles (14,000 km) from Tipperary, a truly “long, long way,” but still, as in Ireland, another former British colony, the tramping of British army boots once was a familiar sound to that nation’s natives and immigrants.  …

When the term "slavery" as it pertains to the United States is mentioned, almost all minds immediately turn towards thinking of the enslavement of Africans by pre-Civil War American citizens. While the images that are conjured up by contemplating this era of human indignity…