Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1977, Lance Corporal David Hind, 1st Battalion, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, was killed in Northern Ireland.

He had been leading a four-man foot patrol on the Dundalk Road in Crossmaglen, Co. Armagh, when they were ambushed by gunmen who opened up with automatic fire. Lance Corporal Hind was fatally hit by the first burst of gunfire, and two other soldiers were injured but survived. It was a Sunday morning, and church-goers were forced to take cover as around 70 shots were exchanged between the soldiers and the four gunmen, who got away across the fields to a waiting vehicle. (Two months later the vehicle believed to have been used in the attack crossed the border into Ireland, and upon its return it was ambushed and an armed man was killed, the others managing to escape; the man killed was a known IRA member from Crossmaglen, but it was not clear if he was personally responsible for the attack on Lance Corporal Hind’s patrol.)

David, from Kilmarnock, is buried in the Kilmarnock Cemetery, Kilmaurs, Ayrshire – he was 23 years old and married.