The 1st Royal Irish Regiment went into action in Iraq with the UK 16 Air Assault Brigade, seizing oil wells in the Basra area before the Iraqis could blow them up.

As Commanding Officer of the 1st Royal Irish Regiment, Colonel Tim Collins has the "toughness honed as a member of the legendary SAS (Special Air Service). He has turned the Northern Ireland-based Royal Irish Regiment -- 40 percent of them Catholics from the Irish Republic -- into a 'special operations capable' infantry battalion that works closely alongside two battalions of the famed Red Beret Parachute Regiment."

Colonel Collins told his men: ''It is my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive but there may be people among us who do not see the end of the campaign.

We will put them in their sleeping bags and send them back. There will be no time for sorrow.''

To visit the Regimental Museum at St. Patrick's Barracks

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