On 14 January 1795, during the French Revolutionary Wars, the French army crossed the River Waal and attacked along the line of British posts. Unable to stop them, the Duke of York ordered the army, which included the Inniskillings, to withdraw to the villages of Amersfoot and Deventer, as a prelude to the retreat through Holland and Westphalia to Bremen.

Sunday 22 February 1795 was during the exceptionally cold winter of 1794-95. The River Waal and many dykes were so thick with ice that men and cannon could easily cross without breaking the ice. Sufferings which the troops endured on this march included insufficient boots, clothing, food and transport; the cold was so severe that when men dropped exhausted on the ground they froze to death and then the frozen ground was so hard that the dead could not be buried. Arriving eventually in friendly Hanoverian territory, the Inniskillings were ordered, on 9 April 1795, to embark at Bremen where a week later they sailed from the Weser bound for Portsmouth.

Exactly 150 years later, on 22 February 1945, the 2nd Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles, commanded by Lt Col ‘Tommy’ Harris, would also be crossing into Holland as the Allies advanced during the Second World War in the liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany. His Reconnaisance Group was moving from Tildonk in Begium to Hertogenbosch in Holland where the Battalion would prepare to advance into Germany.