Editorial: Crowds in Ballymena pay tribute to the town's proud tradition of as a base for Northern Ireland military

As we report on page three, the regiment's links are long-standing: St Patrick's barracks was the depot of the Royal Ulster Rifles, and of the North Irish Brigade, and of the Royal Irish Rangers and latterly of the Royal Irish Regiment.

Saturday's ceremony marked 60 years of links to the area.

And just as there had been the night before, at the magnificent Belfast International Tattoo 2023 at the SSE Arena in Belfast, there was fine pipes and drums music on Saturday in Ballymena.

The Royal Irish Regiment served in Iraq in 2003, in Operation Telic, and in Afghanistan, in three substantial Operation Herrick deployments. In the first of those three deployments, in 2006, soldiers from the RIR – many of them young men – became battle hardened in serious gun battles.

Older veterans told this newspaper, when we visited the regiment in Afghanistan, that few NI soldiers had been involved in such frontline fighting since the Korean war.

The first battalion has recently returned from UN Peacekeeping operations in Mali and both the first and second battalions are helping provide training support to the Ukraine military.

Since the creation of Northern Ireland now more than a century ago, we have had proud links with British Army, most notably when NI soldiers played a key part in the Second World War. Famously, a number of Winston Churchill's key generals were of Northern Irish background.

On Saturday the crowds were paying tribute to this tradition of Northern Ireland playing a key part in the military of the United Kingdom, a country with much respected armed services. And a country that has, as you would expect, been a key ally to Ukraine at this dangerous time.