Ian Keith Malone
|
|
Lance Corporal Ian Keith Malone (8 December 1974 - 6 April 2003) from Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, who was killed in the Iraq War, was a member of the British Army's Irish Guards. He was the first Irish death in the conflict.
Twenty-eight year old Ian Malone came from a working class background in the Dublin suburb of Ballyfermot. (There is a long tradition of Irish people from Dublin working class backgrounds joining the British Army.) The eldest of a family of five, Malone was educated by the De La Salle Christian Brothers Catholic school. He served in the FCA, the Irish Army equivalent of the British Territorial Army. He applied to join the Irish army permanently, but aged 22 was deemed too old, as the Irish Army at that time was only recruiting seventeen and eighteen year olds. After considering joining the French Foreign Legion, he decided to join the Irish Guards, a regiment of the British Army created in 1900 by Queen Victoria in thanks for the number of Irish people who fought in the British Army in the Boer War and which still attracts many recruits, both Catholic and Protestant, from the Republic of Ireland.
In November 2002 Lance Corporal Malone was one of a number of Irish soldiers in the British Army who were interviewed on a Radio Telifís Éireann documentary series, True Lives. Regarding his membership of the British Army, he said
- At the end of the day I am just abroad doing a job. People go on about Irishmen dying for freedom and all that. That's a fair one. They did. But they died to give men like me the freedom to choose what to do.
Lance Corporal Malone was shot in the head by a sniper on 6 April in Iraq during the Irish Guards advance on the country's second largest city, Basra. The removal of Lance Corporal Malone's body to a Catholic church in Ballyfermot was attended by hundreds of people, including Charlie O'Connor, a local TD (MP) representing the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrat government, whose father had served in the Irish Guards. His funeral on 24 April 2003 drew mass crowds, including senior politicians from the opposition such as Gay Mitchell, TD. An honour guard of the Irish Guards in their full dress uniform was provided, though the coffin was not draped in the Union flag. Pipers from the British and Irish armies played traditional Irish laments at the funeral Mass. The Garda Síochána (the Irish police force) was formally represented, as was the Irish Defence Forces. While the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese could not attend, she sent a personal message of condolence to the family of Lance Corporal Malone.