20 October 1938 Captain Orde windgate is still lauded as a hero who led daring raiding operations behind the Japanese lines in Burma during the Second World War. As tourists gaze up at his memorial, which stands just a two minute walk from Big Ben, few will be aware of the ugly reputation he earned…
4 October 1759 In the early hours of 4 October 1759, 142 British troops, under the command of Major Robert Rogers, approached a large Native American settlement at Odanak on the Saint Francois river, some seventy miles south west of Quebec. Noticing that the Abenaki villagers were busily engaged in celebrations, the Redcoats waited until…
23 September 1945 On 23 September 1945, the British army in Vietnam backed a French coup in Saigon, the former capital of French Indo-China, with the aim of restoring colonial rule. General Douglas Gracey with a force of British troops had arrived two weeks earlier on 6 September, soon after Japanese forces surrendered at the…
20 September 1857 Today in 1857, after a week of fierce street fighting, British troops under General Sir Archdale Wilson finally obtained the surrender of the remaining pockets of Indian Mutineers still holding out in the city. Much of the city had already been sacked and many murdered in their homes [see 13 September 1857]….
13 September 1882 Today in 1882, a British army advancing on Cairo, under the command of General Sir Garnet Wolseley, butchered hundreds of Egyptians, who were either fleeing for their lives or lying wounded and helpless on the battlefield of Tel el-Kebir.  A reporter who watched the battle, informed his readers that British cavalry committed ‘fearful…
11 September 1649 Historian Micheál Ó Siochrú, in his book God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland, writes that ‘the storming of Drogheda (by British parliamentary forces) on 11 September shocked contemporary opinion and established Cromwell’s reputation for cruelty and savagery, which has persisted until the present day.’1 Although now forgotten by most people in…
7 September 1938 Shortly before the dawn on the morning of 7 September 1938, a company of the Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR), backed by several Rolls Royce armoured cars belonging to the 11th Hussars, surrounded the Palestinian village of al-Bassa, a large settlement of about two thousand Christian and Muslim Arabs located near the Lebanese…
2 September 1892 On 2 September 1892, the army of the Mahdi, a Sudanese religious leader, was massacred by a British force, under General Kitchener, at the so called battle of Omdurman. About sixteen thousand Dervishes were killed for the loss of just 48 of Kitchener’s men. British soldiers were then ordered to shoot the…
31 August 1813 On 31 August 1813, British troops, under the command of the legendary Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington, ransacked, looted and burned their way into the Basque town of San Sebastian, killing an unknown number of civilians, but later estimated by historians to have been at least a thousand. A census of the…
9 August 1971 On 9 August 1971, six civilians ranging in age from 19 to 50 years, including Hugh Mullan, a Catholic priest, and Joan Connolly, a 45 year old grandmother, were shot dead in West Belfast by soldiers of the Parachute Regiment during a mass round up of Catholic men on the Ballymurphy estate….
