FROM bloody battles in South Africa all the way to victory in the Falkland Islands, the conflicts of the 20th century may feel, to some, like a long time ago and very far away.

However, almost all can be linked through the exploits of one Barrhead family – the Connollys.

After reading recent articles about local men who served in the First World War, 76-year-old Hugh Connolly was inspired to contact the Barrhead News and share the story of his brothers, father and grandfather – three generations of Barrhead men who fought to keep their town and country safe.

The story begins with Hugh’s grandfather, Hugh Francis Connolly, who came to Barrhead from Northern Ireland, where as a youth he had been in the Enniskillen Militia.

Barrhead News: After the army, Colonel Connolly ran The Flying Horse, where he was known as “The Major”

In 1895, at the age of 18, he enlisted in the British Army and fought in the Second Boer War, where he was awarded medals at Southern Transvaal, Tugela Heights, the Relief of Ladsysmith and Laings Nek.

He returned home to Barrhead, where he continued to serve, and was transferred to the Army Reserves in 1908.

In 1915, following the start of the First World War, he re-enlisted but only lasted three months before being discharged.

Hugh explained: “Like a lot of people in Barrhead, he’d been working as a coalminer in the intervening years and it had affected his health.

“They chucked him out because he was unfit for service but he immediately joined the Merchant Navy, where he got torpedoed.

Barrhead News: Colonel Connolly (right) fought in Burma, Italy, North Africa and the Netherlands in WWII

“He was in there till the 1930s, finishing up as an engineer.”

By this time, his son, also named Hugh Connolly, had grown up.

Eager to see action, he volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War before joining the British Army in 1938, just a year before the start of the Second World War, which he would see through from the beginning till its end in 1945.

Starting in the Royal Engineers, he moved on to the Royal Fusiliers, then transferred to the 1st Sixth Airborne Division, parachute battalion, ready for the Battle of Arnhem.

He was posted to Burma, Italy, North Africa and, after the war, Palestine, where he was seriously wounded.

The conflict, known as the Palestine Emergency, involved paramilitary actions carried out by Jewish underground groups against the British forces.

Barrhead News: Hugh Connolly was made an Honorary Colonel towards the end of his military career

Hugh said: “I don’t know the full story, only what the old man told me. He saw himself as a policeman, trying to keep the peace, but the British were viewed as an invading force.

“One of these groups captured my dad and two other officers. One was garrotted, one was crucified and he was shot in the head.”

Miraculously, Hugh’s father survived to return to Scotland, where he spent a long time recovering in hospital.

Although he would remain in the army until 1967, the consequences of his injury would be with him the rest of his life.

Hugh said: “He survived being shot but they never got the bullet out and, over the years, it started to break up.

“I remember his headaches were absolutely atrocious. He would go for a lie down and you wouldn’t see him, sometimes, for two or three days.

“In 1953, the day the Korean War ended, we were sitting in the house in Balgray Crescent, the sun was shining and I thought I saw him wiping a piece of gold from his eye.

Barrhead News: Hugh Connolly with the Barrhead News from 1985 in which his war hero father’s death was a front page story

“It was a piece of the bullet. It had been in there so long it was completely clean, polished. In his final years, the shards began cutting through the nerves in his brain.

“That bullet killed my dad. It took 37 years, but it did.”

Colonel Hugh Connolly was well known in Barrhead, where he ran the Flying Horse pub, and recruited many men into the Territorial Army.

He died in 1985, by which time his sons William and Joseph Emmett Connolly had also followed in his footsteps.

Hugh said of his younger brothers: “William was a radio officer who served mostly in Germany, during the Cold War.

“He was in and out of the army over the years, treating it as a place to go to see something different. He did about 12 years but it was always on William’s terms.

Barrhead News:

“Emmett was different. He was a total professional, a perfect soldier. He did 25 years to the day, finishing up as a non-commissioned Sergeant Major.

“In his house he had plaques from every regiment he trained. There must have been 50 of them.

“He went to a few different hot spots but his final tour of duty, that I know of, was in the Falklands.

“He was on the ship next to the Galahad when it was blown up.”

Sadly, Emmett died in a car crash in 1999.

Hugh is the last of the Connolly men alive and the only one who didn’t join the army, choosing instead to work on the railways – a decision he doesn’t regret.

He said: “I had a wonderful life on the railway. It’s not every Barrhead boy who can say he finished up as train crew supervisor at King’s Cross in London.

“But my family gave a hell of a lot to the army and they were all proud of it. They told some incredible stories.

“From the Boer War to the Falklands, at every major conflict in between, a Connolly was there.

“That’s not bad for one family from Barrhead.”