The North Irish Horse was a yeomanry unit of the British Territorial Army raised in the northern counties of Ireland in the aftermath of the Second Boer War. Raised and patronised by the nobility from its inception to the present day, it was one of the first non-regular units to be deployed to France and the Low Countries with the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 during World War I and fought with distinction both as mounted troops and later as a cyclist regiment, achieving eighteen battle honours. The regiment was reduced to a single man in the inter war years and re-raised for World War II, when it achieved its greatest distinctions in the North African and Italian campaigns. Reduced again after the Cold War, the regiment's name still exists in B (North Irish Horse) Squadron, the Scottish and North Irish Yeomanry and 40 (North Irish Horse) Signal Squadron, part of 32 Signal Regiment. History Background The raising of Militia units in Ireland commenced with the "Militia Act 1793", which in Ireland was used in conjunction with the compulsory disbandment of Lord Charlemont's Irish Volunteers, who had become a political entity and "out of the scope of official influence". The scope of the Militia was broadened by an act of the Dublin Parliament in 1796, which led to the raising of forty-nine troops of cavalry, later renamed yeomanry. A troop normally consisted of a captain, two lieutenants (commissioned by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) and forty men, along with a permanent sergeant and trumpeter. Troops were grouped together under the command of a regular army brigade major. The force was known collectively as the "Irish Yeomanry". Each man provided his own horse. The falling need for this force eventually led to its disbandment in 1834. With the advent of the Boer War, a parliamentary decision was taken to raise squadrons of Yeomanry Cavalry under the "Militia and Yeomanry Act 1901" for service in South Africa. Because of the pressing need to raise this force quickly, normal cavalry training with swords or lances (known as the arme blanche) was dispensed with and the new yeomanry was issued only with rifles in a break with cavalry tradition. This new force was called the Imperial Yeomanry. Six companies were quickly raised in Ireland, including the 46th (1st Belfast), 54th (2nd Belfast), 60th (North Irish), and the 45th (Dublin) (known as the Dublin Hunt