Military rite for a military rebellion

MILITARY parades never really got onto the radar for kids like me in the 1970s, when parades were pretty thin on the ground.

At one St Patrick’s Day parade in Galway, a group of about six wearing berets and carrying rifles marched up Shop Street alongside the boy scouts and the floats.

I can’t remember if they were commemorating an IRA of a different era or the IRA that was then conducting a guerrilla campaign in the North (I can’t imagine the city fathers would have tolerated that). What I do remember is that they all shot volleys into the air in front of the reviewing stand in Eyre Square.