The 69th Infantry Regiment of the New York Army National Guard is the oldest Irish-American military unit in the United States. Its history begins in 1851, when Irish immigrants in New York City organised a militia company that would not be commanded by Protestant officers who despised them. Its nickname, the Fighting Irish, predates Notre Dame’s use of the same name by several decades.
The regiment fought in the Civil War as part of the Irish Brigade, the most decorated Irish-American military unit in American history. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, the Irish Brigade was ordered to charge a Confederate position so strong that its commanding officers knew the attack was likely fatal. They went anyway. Out of twelve hundred men who crossed the field, fewer than three hundred returned unharmed.
The commanding general of the Confederate forces they charged was Robert E. Lee. Lee watched the attack and is reported to have said, of the Irish soldiers advancing through fire with sprigs of boxwood in their caps in lieu of the shamrocks they wore on Saint Patrick’s Day: never were men so brave.
The regiment served in the First World War, in the Second, in Korea. In 2001, in the days after the September 11 attacks, the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan was used as a staging point for rescue and recovery operations. The regiment that had been built by Irish immigrants who needed somewhere to belong had its armory become, for a few weeks, the place where their city tried to put itself back together.
