The battalion 's first deployment to Northern Ireland under the hostile conditions of the Troubles occurred in 1970 , although it did not suffer its first fatal casualties until a second tour in 1972 . Violence escalated substantially in 1972 , resulting in the deaths of 470 people . The year witnessed the greatest loss of life during the conflict &ndash; punctuated by two episodes known as Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday &ndash; and imposition of direct rule following the prorogation of the Stormont Parliament by the Westminster Government . Operating in West Belfast , 1 KINGS sustained 49 casualties ( seven fatalities and 42 wounded ) during the four-month tour . The King 's first fatality was Corporal Alan Buckley , who died after being mortally wounded during an engagement with the PIRA . One-week later , on 23 May , a PIRA sniper shot Kingsman Hanley , who had been guarding a party of Royal Engineers removing barricades in the Ballymurphy sector . On the 30th , an IRA bomb detonated within the battalion headquarters killed two , including Kingsman Doglay . An initial report by The Times identified six casualties , including four wounded soldiers and two civilian cooks , and suggested officials believed losses would have been higher had the bomb exploded while hundreds of soldiers watched a film in the canteen . The headquarters , located in RUC Springfield Road , had been the " most heavily guarded " police station in Belfast . The battalion returned to Belfast in February 1979 . In April 1979 Kingsman Shanley and Lance Corporal Rumble were killed in the same vehicle by a PIRA sniper
Bloody Friday
Bloody Friday (1972)
King's Regiment