Lance Corporal Ian Keith Malone: Lance Corporal Ian Keith Malone, the Ballyfermot British Army soldier killed in action last Sunday in Iraq, was one of about 100 currently serving Irish Guards, "the Micks", born and brought up in the Republic. He was 28.
This first Irish fatality in the Iraq war tragically dramatises a centuries-old but largely unacknowledged tradition of service by Irish people in the British armed services. Although recruitment from Ireland has fallen with the Northern troubles and increased prosperity in the Republic, about 350 soldiers - or 40 per cent of the lance corporal's regiment - are of southern Irish extraction.
Though he felt a strong Irish identity, Ian Malone regarded his service with the British army as a firm contract it would be disloyal to break.
He died of a shot to the head from a sniper in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. He was part of an advance group deep inside the city.
An expatriate Iraqi caller to RTÉ radio this week described Malone as "a hero". Friends spoke of "a very honourable and intelligent guy"; family, of his wit and enjoyment of life; his regiment (in a poignant handwritten tribute), of "a fine soldier and a brave one" who was liked and respected throughout the Irish Guards.
Before joining the British army in 1997 Ian Malone had not been outside Ireland and enlistment gave him the opportunity to visit 20 countries. After being promoted to lance corporal in 2000 he served in Kosovo. Most recently stationed at Münster near Dusseldorf, he also served in Poland, Canada and Oman.
In February he joined the coalition force for Iraq in an armoured infantry section, as part of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Battle Group within the Seventh Armoured Brigade, made famous in the second World War as the "Desert Rats".
Malone was a member of the First Battalion of the Irish Guards, founded under Queen Victoria in 1900 in recognition of Irish bravery, particularly in the Boer War. At the request of the Queen Mother, members of her regiment carried her coffin last year. Two of the pallbearers were from the Republic.
Malone was a talented chess player. As a child prodigy he is said to have been the only player in an exhibition event in Dublin by Boris Spassky to force the master to a draw. He was also "a valued member" of the regimental pipe band, according to the British Ministry of Defence. When he returned on leave, however, there were sometimes mixed feelings about the bagpipes in the house in Ballyfermot.
Steve Carson, director of a True Lives documentary on the tradition of Irish service in the British army, remembers an anecdote about Malone's chess ability.
He was challenged by Guards officers to a chess tournament in the officers' mess and beat them all convincingly. Afterwards the commanding officer congratulated him saying "that's very good Malone. But don't do it again. It's bad for discipline."
He belonged to a chess club in Ballyfermot and was encouraged by local enthusiasts, Bobby White and John Dorman.
His musical tastes included Johnny Cash, Metallica and Irish songs and he was also a talented pool player who often shared his winnings with friends. In martial arts, he was an under-16s shotokan champion. Other interests included boxing, skiing and avid reading.
Born on December 8th, 1974, Malone was educated at the De La Salle Christian Brothers school in Ballyfermot. He was the eldest in a family of five.
After leaving school his jobs included one in a warehouse. But he wanted to be a soldier. He thought of joining the French Foreign Legion but decided the British army would be "less uncomfortable".
He had applied to the Defence Forces but, at 22, was considered too old: the Army was only taking school-leavers. Before that, from 1993 to '96, he was a member of the then FCA, attached to the Rathmines barracks.
Because of this the Army will be represented at his funeral, though the Government and the President do not at present plan to do so. An Army officer visited the Malone home this week and President McAleese sent a letter of condolence. Two pipers - one from the Irish Guards and another from the Defence Forces - are likely to play the laments at his funeral in about 10 days.
Prof Tom Bartlett of UCD sees Malone as "emblematic of a tradition that has endured since the State was set up". For the President to send her aide-de-camp to the funeral would not be "an endorsement of the military adventure in Iraq" but would be appropriate in the context of a wider, mysterious but real Anglo-Irish tradition.
Irish service in British forces "shows up the paradoxes of sister islands" and is "a product of a relationship that cannot be denied", he said. Nor was it incompatible with a strong republican outlook, he added.
Malone's old Ballyfermot friends - Barry Mangan, Tony Finlay, Paul Harraghy and Mark Quinn - insisted the corporal was "very, very proud of his tradition and who he was".
They spoke too of the sense of camaraderie he enjoyed in the Irish Guards, which he characterised as "a brotherhood" embracing North and South, Protestant and Catholic. They summed him up as "a very rounded guy with an electric personality".
Mangan spoke too of an impish side. In the chess club Malone was once briefly suspended after he put a drawing pin on the seat of an older member whom he found a little pompous.
The Malone family has said in a statement: "Ian was a wonderful son, full of life and vitality, fun and wit. His family and girlfriend are devastated to learn of his death. He had so many friends and so much to live for.
"He loved the army and lived for the excitement and challenges that being a soldier brought. He was proud to be an Irishman and proud to serve in the Irish Guards. His family takes some comfort from knowing that he died doing the job he loved."
In the True Lives documentary for RTÉ and the Irish Film Board last November, he addressed the question of mixed loyalties and the sensitivity surrounding Irish service in the British Army.
He said the oath of allegiance involved swearing loyalty "'to Her Majesty the Queen, the officers and non-commissioned officers she sets over you'. So at the end of the day if you think that when it comes to the crunch you can just sort of walk away from that, I don't think that is an option at all.
"That would be disloyal - far worse than my disloyalty of going abroad and joining the British army. I've signed a contract and while I'm serving that contract I'll stick by it."
Other soldiers spoke in the programme about sometimes feeling uncomfortable and "keeping a low profile" when they returned to Ireland on leave.
But Malone's last words on the programme were unapologetic: "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."
He is survived by his mother May, his father, Joseph, three sisters, Michelle, Carol and Deborah, a younger brother, Edward, and by his German girlfriend, Sarah Wolter.
Ian Keith Malone: born December 8th, 1974; died April 6th, 2003.