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Updated 03/25/2014

 


Colonel McNamara, M.P.

Colonel McNamara, M.P. is the First Post tune for the London Irish Rifles.  The tune is named for Colonel John Robert Jermain Macnamara (11 October 1905 – 22 December 1944), a British Conservative Party politician and British Army officer who was killed in Italy during the Second World War.

Macnamara was educated at Haileybury where he was a member of the Officer Training Corps.  He was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate at the May 1934 by-election in the Upton constituency in West Ham, and at the 1935 general election Macnamara was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Chelmsford. He was also joint secretary, with the Liberal MP Wilfrid Roberts, of the Basque Children's Committee.

On 11 January 1924 he joined the Territorial Army as a second lieutenant in the 3/London Regiment. He later commanded 1st London Irish Rifles, a Territorial Army battalion of The Royal Ulster Rifles and was subsequently promoted to the rank of Colonel. In December 1944 Macnamara was visiting Italy and was with 1st London Irish who were moving into the Senio Line to relieve a Gurkha battalion. Colonel Macnamara was watching men of the Battalion move up to the line in company with Major M. V. S. Boswell when a sudden German mortar bombardment fell on the area. Macnamara and Lieutenant J. Prosser MC were killed and Major Boswell was wounded. Jack Macnamara was laid to rest in Forli War Cemetery.