Royal Engineers in the context of "Slieve Donard"

Sir Vincent Henry Penalver Caillard (23 October 1856 – 18 March 1930) was a British intelligence officer, diplomat, financier, industrialist and company director, principally for Vickers.

After being commissioned in the Royal Engineers, in the early 1880s Caillard was engaged in intelligence duties in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean. In 1883, he was appointed to a senior position on the Ottoman Public Debt Council in Constantinople, where he lived with his family. After returning to England in 1898 Caillard entered private business, taking up positions as a director in a diversity of companies engaged in areas such as in banking, agricultural development and railways.

The Malayan campaign, referred to by Japanese sources as the Malay Operation (馬来作戦, Maree Sakusen), was a military campaign fought by Allied and Axis forces in Malaya from 8 December 1941 – 15 February 1942 during the Second World War. It was dominated by land battles between British Commonwealth army units and the Imperial Japanese Army, with minor skirmishes at the beginning of the campaign between British Commonwealth and Royal Thai Police. The Japanese had air and naval supremacy from the opening days of the campaign. For the British, Indian, Australian, and Malayan forces defending the colony, the campaign was a total disaster.

The operation is notable for the Japanese use of bicycle infantry, which supposedly allowed troops to carry more equipment and swiftly move through thick jungle terrain. Royal Engineers, equipped with demolition charges, destroyed over a hundred bridges during the retreat, yet this did little to delay the Japanese. By the time the Japanese had captured Singapore, they had suffered 14,768 casualties; allied losses totaled 130,246, including around 7,500 to 8,000 killed, 11,000+ wounded and 120,000+ missing or captured.

The Columbia Detachment of the Royal Engineers was a contingent of the Royal Engineers of the British Army that was responsible for the foundation of British Columbia as the Colony of British Columbia in 1858. It was commanded by Colonel Richard Clement Moody, and also included Captains Robert Mann Parsons, John Marshall Grant, Henry Reynolds Luard, and William Driscoll Gosset and Lieutenants Arthur Reid Lempriere and Henry Spencer Palmer.

Iron armour was a type of naval armour used on warships and, to a limited degree, fortifications. The use of iron gave rise to the term ironclad as a reference to a ship 'clad' in iron. The earliest material available in sufficient quantities for armouring ships was iron, wrought or cast. While cast iron has never been used for naval armour, it did find a use in land fortifications, presumable due to the lower cost of the material. One well known example of cast-iron armour for land use is the Gruson turret, first tested by the Prussian government in 1868. Armoured ships may have been built as early as 1203, in the far east. In the West, they first become common when France launched the first ocean-going ironclad La Gloire in 1859. The British Navy responded with HMS Warrior in 1860, triggering a naval arms race with bigger, more heavily armed and armoured ironclads.

Early experiments showed that wrought iron was superior to cast iron, and wrought iron was subsequently adopted for naval use. British efforts at perfecting iron armour were headed by a government Special Committee on Iron, formed in 1861 by War Secretary Lord Herbert for the continued research into naval armour. Among its members was Sir William Fairbairn, a noted civil and structural engineer who had also built over 80 iron vessels before retiring from shipbuilding. Other members included metallurgist John Percy, civil engineer William Pole and representatives of the Royal Engineers, Royal Artillery and Royal Navy. This committee worked four years, between 1861 and 1865, during which time it formulated the best performing armor with the metallurgy as then known, suggested ways for improving its production and quality and helped develop more effective shot against ironclad vessels.

Hobart's Funnies is the nickname given to a number of specialist armoured fighting vehicles derived from tanks operated during the Second World War by units of the 79th Armoured Division of the British Army or by specialists from the Royal Engineers.

They were designed in light of problems that more standard tanks experienced during the amphibious Dieppe Raid, so that the new models would be able to overcome the problems of the planned invasion of Normandy. These tanks played a major part on the Commonwealth beaches during the landings. They were forerunners of the modern combat engineering vehicle and took their nickname from the 79th Division's commander, Major-general Percy Hobart.

The United Kingdom Commando Force (UKCF), previously called 3 Commando Brigade, is the special operations commando formation of the Royal Marines. It is composed of Royal Marine Commandos and commando qualified personnel from the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force.

The brigade was formed 1 September 1943 at Dorchester with personnel from 102 RM Brigade, during the Second World War, with a mixture of Army Commando and Royal Marine Commando units, and was deployed to the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II to conduct operations against the invading forces of Imperial Japan, such as the Burma Campaign. After the Second World War, the Army Commandos were disbanded and the brigade became a Royal Marine formation. Recently, United Kingdom Commando Force has again become a mixed formation with the addition of commando qualified soldiers from the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers to provide support for the Royal Marine Commandos. Since the end of the Second World War, it has been involved in a number of engagements such as the Suez Crisis, Falklands War, Gulf War and the War in Afghanistan.