Private Richard McIlwaine
Richard McIlwaine was born in County Armagh around 1890, one of eight children of carpenter William McIlwaine. By 1906 he was operating a hairdresser's shop at 25 Queen Street, Lurgan. He was still working at the Queen Street haidressers at the time of the 1911 Census, living there with his 74 year-old widowed father.
McIlwaine enlisted in the North Irish Horse on 1 February 1913 (No.788). He embarked for France on 20 August 1914 with C Squadron, seeing action in the retreat from Mons and Advance to the Aisne.
A number of letters written home by McIlwaine were published in the local newspaper, the Lurgan Mail. On 17 October 1914 it published the following:
DICK MCILWAINE AND A GERMAN HORSE THAT DOESN'T KNOW ENGLISH
In a letter to a friend in Lurgan under date of 7th inst., Trooper Richard McIlwaine, of the North Irish Horse (the well-known Queen-st. hairdresser), says:
Dear ----, ... I am still feeling quite well, and so are all the other fellows who came out with me. I suppose everything is much as usual in Lurgan. The weather out here is getting very cold, and when you get up in the morning you feel like ice. We get up a few times during the night and have a race up and down the lines to warm ourselves. This while we are sleeping out in the open. I suppose there are all sorts of stories going about in Lurgan about the war. I am riding a German horse we captured one day – shot the fellow off his back and took possession of his mount, because he didn't seem as if he would require it any more. He is not a bad horse, only he cannot understand a damned word I say to him, and when I tell him to go on he immediately starts backing, and vice versa. I hope you are all well at home. I got your cigarettes and card all right. Many thanks for same. You can tell Jimmy to let the old man know I am quite well, and for so far have not been shot. Some of us have been lucky in getting out of the scrapes we have been in, due, I think, more to our own ignorance than anything else, but the Germans are great cowards; they don't give you time to shoot them, for as soon as you go near them up go their hands. ... If you see any of Watson's people tell them he is well. They had no word from him the last letter he got, so those he sent must have been delayed. Be sure and be good to the Major until I get back; I would not be sorry how soon, nor neither would any of the men who came out here. Mind you, it's no pic-nic we are here for. Write soon.
On 30 January 1915 the paper told its readers that:
Trooper Richard McIlwaine, North Irish Horse, of Queen Street, Lurgan; ... arrived home from the front on Tuesday on leave.
Trooper McIlwaine is a member of the company of the North Irish Horse which was commanded by the late Captain S. B. Combe, regarding whose sad fate he voices the general regret felt by the men of the entire regiment, who, he says, considered that there was no more popular or plucky officer in the British Army, nor one for whom the men would have done more service. He stated that on the last day he was seen alive, Captain Combe, receiving a message from another Battalion to the efffect that a village named Charny [Condé], on the opposite side of the Meuse [Aisne], had been evacuated by the enemy, set forth accompanied by his orderly (Trooper Norman Darling, also a Lurganman) on a reconnoitring expedition at about 12.45 p.m. ...As the evening wore on, his men became anxious, and Trooper McIlwaine and Trooper Greer volunteered to go and search for him. They had approached within a short distance of Charny, when they were fired at from the upstairs room of one of the houses. Bullets then came fast and furious, and recognising the futility of their search they reluctantly rode back and rejoined their company.
McIlwaine was one of three North Irish Horsemen mentioned in Field-Marshal French's despatch of 14 January 1915 for "gallant and distinguished service in the field". The Lurgan Mail of 20 February reported:
To Private Richard – or as he is more commonly called "Dick" – McIlwaine, the well-known and popular Queen Street hairdresser, falls the honour of being the first Lurgan man whom Field-Marshal Sir John French has commended for gallantry and distinguished service in the field. Private McIlwaine, who returned home invalided a month ago, is a trooper in the North Irish Horse, and he is heartily to be congratulated on the signal honour which he has gained for himself and his native town. The incident in connection with which Private McIlwaine receives such enviable commendation was associated with the disappearance of Captain Combe, as related in these columns a few weeks ago. After Captain Combe had failed to return from his reconnoitring expedition across the Aisne, Private McIlwaine and Corporal Greer volunteered to go in search of him, a project which was attended with considerable risk, and which unfortunately proved fruitless. Corporal Greer for his courage on the occasion has been gazetted to a lieutenancy in the 2nd Dragoon Guards.
In January 1915 McIlwaine returned to Ireland, having fallen ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. On 7 July that year he was discharged, being 'no longer physically fit for war service' (paragraph 392(xvi), King's Regulations). He was granted a military pension for the tuberculosis and also bronchitis, his level of disability assessed at 80 per cent in October 1918.
He never recovered from the disease and died at his home, 25 Queen Street, on 5 April 1929.
This page last updated 25 April 2024.