The choice of date for the final review of the Royal Irish Regiment's home battalions was no accident.
It was on that day in 1978 that Capt Charles Henning died of wounds received four days previously. The 51-year-old was shot as he left a livestock market in Newry, Co Down.
It was also on October 6th a decade later when Private Martin Blaney was shot dead while off-duty at his home in Eglish, Co Tyrone.
Martin Blaney's elderly mother was unable to make it to Balmoral showgrounds in Belfast to see Queen Elizabeth yesterday, but Charles Henning's widow was among the 700 members of the regimental Families Group, in the company of other widows, bereaved parents and disabled former soldiers. The ceremonies were attended by 9,000 people for whom the events meant much more than a military parade or a chance to sneak a peak at the monarch.
There was warm and spontaneous applause as Queen Elizabeth arrived under a low and leaden sky. She awarded the Royal Irish the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross in recognition of 36 years' unbroken service - the longest in British military history - and of the hundred of lives lost.
The honour was received by Corp Claire Withers, daughter of a Crossgar butcher and Royal Irish soldier who was shot dead at the back of his shop in August 1994 - just days before the IRA ceasefire was announced.
Another rendition of God Save the Queen, and the home battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment and an association of former UDR members filed off into history with chests swelled.
Many in the crowd wept, some were openly distraught at the sense of loss. Outside the showgrounds a protest at collusion between crown forces and loyalist paramilitaries was mounted. They, too, mourned their dead and demanded justice.
Either way, another chapter on a troubled era was closed.