Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1992, Sergeant Robert James Irvine, HQ Company, 9th Battalion, The Royal Irish Regiment, was killed in Northern Ireland. He and his family had been temporarily staying in an outbuilding on property owned by relatives in Rasharkin, County Antrim, while their own home was being renovated. Off-duty at the time, he was walking from his uncle’s house across the yard to his own accommodation when he was shot by two gunmen who opened fire from their hiding place in the bushes outside the house.

He was the first member of the Royal Irish Regiment to be killed following its formation in July of that year, a merger of the locally-recruited Ulster Defense Regiment and the Royal Irish Rangers – he had served with the Ulster Defence Regiment for fourteen years, having previously been a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Robert, from Broughshane, near Ballymena in County Antrim, was 43 years old and married with a son and a daughter.