AndyLindsayBelfast

Military History - Douglas Ricardo Beattie MC - Royal Irish Regiment ☘️🇬🇧 Taken from another platform.🙏 Doug Beattie was born in 1965 on a military base in Hampshire, the son of a warrant officer in the Royal Ulster Rifles. The family followed his father’s postings until Doug was ten, when they settled in Portadown, County Armagh. There were six children. His mother died young, and his father, by then serving with the Ulster Defence Regiment, raised them. At sixteen, in 1982, Doug joined the Royal Irish Rangers. After training with the Junior Soldiers Battalion in Taunton he was posted to the 2nd Battalion in Wavell Barracks, Berlin, where his duties included guarding Spandau prison, then home to Rudolf Hess. The Rangers became the Royal Irish Regiment in 1992, and over the years that followed he served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq. In Northern Ireland he was commended by the General Officer for his actions at Derryard permanent vehicle checkpoint in Fermanagh, the site of an IRA attack in December 1989 that killed two soldiers. In Bosnia his contribution to peacekeeping earned him the NATO Meritorious Service Medal. By 2003 he was Regimental Sergeant Major of the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, serving in Iraq under Colonel Tim Collins. After the invasion he confronted a mob single handed and stopped them from lynching supporters of Saddam Hussein. It earned him the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery. He later served as an instructor at Sandhurst, and in 2005 he was commissioned from the ranks as a captain. In September 2006, aged forty, Captain Beattie was sent to Helmand Province as part of an Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team. The task was to help Afghan forces retake Garmsir, a strategically important town held by the Taliban. His role was meant to be that of a mentor to the Afghan National Police, and the operation was expected to last forty eight hours. From the opening moments of the battle it was clear that he could not advise from the back. He stayed in Garmsir for almost two weeks, fighting at close quarters, and at times he was one of only three men facing the enemy. In the end the operation failed. With support from senior commanders not forthcoming, he and the two other remaining British servicemen were forced to withdraw. For his bravery in those two weeks he was awarded the Military Cross. He went back to Afghanistan twice more, and left the regular army in 2009 after twenty seven years, though he carried on serving in the reserves. He wrote about Garmsir in his first book, An Ordinary Soldier, published in 2008 and a bestseller, and drew on his later tour for Task Force Helmand. After his military career he moved into public life in Northern Ireland. He began writing as a way of explaining to his wife and children what he had seen and done. He still describes himself as an ordinary soldier. #BritishHistory #afghanistanwar #WarHistory #BritishMilitary #education 🙏