IRELAND & THE WAR: DOWNLOAD TEXT - EARLY REMEMBRANCE & REVIVAL
Remembrance on the Island of Ireland: In the new Irish Free Sate, commemoration was focused every year on the annual November Remembrance services held in Dublin and other cities and towns throughout the country. In the years after the war, certainly well up to the late thirties and early forties, thousands of people attended Remembrance day services and commemorations in Dublin. Similar services were held in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Drogheda and in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. In the early twenties, thousands of people would gather at College Green in Dublin where the Ginchy Cross was temporally erected each year and acted as an Irish Cenotaph. At 11a.m. a two minute silence was observed throughout the city. At the 1925 Remembrance Service, ‘The Irish Times’ claimed that 120,00 people gathered at College Green. At thesem ceremonies, counter demonstrations were organised by a small group of Sinn Fein supporters. At the same service in 1925, a smoke bomb was detonated in the crowd. In the same year, a film titled, ‘Ypres,’ was stolen from The Masterpiece Cinema in Dublin. On the Sunday before Remembrance Day, hundreds of veterans would gather at sites around the City such as Eden Quay. Led by a band, they would parade in the morning through the streets of Dublin from Eden Quay to Requiem Mass at the Pro-Cathedral and in the afternoon to a service in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. These religious services were attended by the Lord Mayor of Dublin and Foreign Ministers accredited to the Irish Free State. The yearly occurrence of disruption and violence in the centre of Dublin on remembrance weekend led to the ceremony being moved from the centre of Dublin to the Duke of Wellington’s Monument in the Phoenix Park. There, the Ginchy Cross was erected every year and thousands of veterans and family members of men who died, would march up the Quays along the river Liffey to the ceremony in the Phoenix Park. Widows wore their husbands’ medals. Children would be seen wearing their father’s medals. However, much to the disapproval and annoyance of the majority of veterans who attended, at the conclusion of this service in the Phoenix Park, the British national anthem was sung and the waving of the Union Jack was seen amongst pockets of the crowds. In other words, tragically, the act of remembrance became political. It was hard for some people, particularly republicans, to distinguish between ex-Servicemen commemorating their dead comrades and an Imperialist faction exploiting the dead by turning the occasion into a political statement. In September 1926, General Sir William Hickie, (President of the British Legion in the Irish Free State) complained at a ceremony in Dublin of those who were trying to turn the 11th of November into a 12th of July. From 1923 up to 1933, a representative from Saorstat Eireann attended the remembrance services at the Phoenix Park in Dublin and the Cenotaph in London. In November 1926, Mr Kevin O’Higgins, The Free State Minister for Home Affairs (later called Justice), laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in London. The following year on the 10th of July, O’Higgins was assassinated coming from Mass. In November 1938, a wreath of Orange Flowers and White Lillies was laid at the Cenotaph in London by Mr. J. Dulanty who represented the Irish Government led by Eamon De Valera. A note attached to the wreath stated, ‘From Ireland in memory of the Brave.’
Nationalist Veterans set up their own old comrades association called the Irish Nationalist Veterans Association. On Saturday the 19th of July 1919, a ‘Peace Day’ parade was held in Dublin. It was a massive military parade through the heart of the city of Dublin. The salute was taken by Lord French outside the old House of Parliament in College Green. Approximately 3,000 Nationalist Veterans in Dublin alone boycotted the event because, ‘between the Government and the Irishmen who fought through the war there is an unfulfilled promise and broken faith’. This association did not last very long and was wound up in the late 1920’s. A much larger gathering of Great War veterans formed themselves into The Comrades of the Great War which later became the Legion of Ex-Servicemen. They tried to distance themselves from the British Legion but eventually affiliated fully in the mid 1920’s. Poor housing, lack of employment amongst the veterans and in some cases discrimination in state employment led to the formation of old comrades associations. Veterans of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers formed the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Old Comrades Association in the late twenties.
By October 1919, thirty five thousand ex-service men were receiving the out of work donation in Ireland, an unemployment ratio of 46 per cent compared with only 10 per cent in Britain. In mid-January 1921, approximately 24,000 veterans were listed on the ‘live register’ in Ireland. In Cork more than 4,500 ex serviceman were unemployed, representing about half of all the recorded war time enlistment. Many were institutionalised and returned to the comradeship of the army. The Outside provided little comfort for men who had been to hell and back. The War of Independence in Ireland, 1919 - 1921, did not dissuade over twenty thousand Irish men from enlisting in Irish Depots for the re-organised regular British Army whose Irish proportion was as large in 1921 as in 1913. Many Dublin Fusiliers fought with Michael Collins and were instrumental in setting up The Irish Free State Army. A typical example of one such man was Denis Shortall. According to the Irish Military Archives, Private Denis Shortall, 10006, of the 1st battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, enlisted in the Irish Army on July the 7th in 1922. His trade/occupation upon entry was listed as ‘Railwayman’. He served at the Prison in Waterford and with the special reserve C Coy 14th Infantry Battalion. He retired from the Irish Army on the 2nd of December 1923 and went to live in England.
In Dublin, a committee comprising of friends of Tom Kettle raised money to have a bust of him sculptured. It was completed in 1921 and the committee planned to place it in St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin. Its placement was held up by the disturbed political situation in Ireland and a lengthy strike at the quarry where the stone came from in Stradbally, Co. Laois. In March 1927, a date was set for the bust to be officially unveiled but the Commissioners of Public Works intervened and objected to the use of the words ‘Killed in France’ being used on the inscription. They also objected to the words in the last three lines of Kettle’s famous sonnet: ‘Died not for flag nor King, nor Emperor/But for a dream born in a herdsman’s shed/And for the secret scripture of the poor.’ However in the end, the Commissioners withdrew their objection to the later quotation, but, ‘Killed in France’ was replaced by ‘Killed at Ginchy 9th September 1916.’
In terms of the Irish men who followed John Redmond and joined the 16th (Irish) Division, the ideals that thousands of these men went to Flanders with, were, like the men who died, buried in the earth. What remained was disillusionment. The Nationalist M.P. Stephyn Gwynn wrote:
And when the time came to rejoice over the war’s ending, was there anything more tragic than the position of men who had gone out by the thousands for the sake of Ireland to confront the greatest military power ever known in history, who had fought the war and won the war, and who now looked at each other with doubtful eyes ?
There were doubtful eyes in the ranks of the Ulster men as well. In 1986, George MacBride lived in an old UVF branch hospital in Craigavon, a former YCV (Young Citizen Volunteer) and a Shankill Road man by birth. George fought at the Somme, Cambrai, Messines, Ypres and St. Quentin. He spent the last few months of the war as a POW working in a quarry in the Black Forest. When he returned to Belfast he found a city where thousands of men were unemployed - ‘a town filled with pawn shops, pubs, politicians and preachers’. He joined the Labour Party and met Elizabeth Carney, whom had been James Connolly’s secretary and had taken part in the Easter Rising. In 1926, they married.
Hugh Stewart of the South Antrim UVF and part of the 11th Royal Irish Rifles and part of the 36th (Ulster) Division went back to France in 1966. On the way home from France his friend said to him on the plane ‘I wouldn’t care if this plane went down now.’ ‘And do you know I felt the same!’ replied Hugh. ‘I didn’t mind now if I died. We’d seen the hallowed ground where there were so many of our friends still lying. They were nineteen and we had grown old. Age had taken its toll on us but they remained nineteen for ever.’
In Northern Ireland the commemoration of war became intensely politicised very soon after the war ended. The war and particularly the Battle of the Somme, were looked upon by some of the people of Northern Ireland as their blood sacrifice, their price for the cementing of the Union with Great Britain. Commemoration among Ulsters veterans reflected the land in which they lived, divided. On Tuesday the 29th of July 1919 at Celtic Park in Belfast, a fete was organised by the ladies of the Queen Mary Guild from the Falls and Smithfield Wards of Belfast to honour the Belfast-men who served in the 16th (Irish) Division. Approximately 4,000 people turned up for the event. After a day of entertainment and sports, a march past of 2,000 men who served in the Irish Division took place. The crowd was addressed by the Nationalist M.P., Mr. Joe Devlin, General William Hickie and Captain William A. Redmond. The flag of the Irish National Volunteers was displayed on the stand. ‘The Freemans’s Journal,’ recorded the sentiments expressed by General Hickie in his address to the crowd when he stated,
That here in the heart of Ulster he would like to send a message to the 36th (Ulster) Division. In France and Flanders that Division held out the hand of friendship and it was fitting that the 16th Division should have shared their hardships and trials, as they were very proud to do (Cheers). Now they were all trying to settle down once again to civil life and peace. The difficulties were many but they were not insurmountable. There were bound to be sacrifices and injustices.
About a week or so later, on Saturday the 9th of August, another Peace Day for the men and women of Ulster who served in the Great War’ was held outside Belfast City Hall. The reception was attended by Field Marshall French and Sir Henry Wilson. It was the opening event in a peace celebration program which lasted for five days. On the Official Order of March, almost all the battalions that marched passed the review stand were battalions of the 36th (Ulster) Division. There was however, a composite battalion of the Connaught Rangers, Leinsters, Munsters, Dublins and 18th Royal Irish listed on the order of march. At the unveiling of the Coleraine (Co. Derry) War memorial on the 11th of November 1922, Sir James Craig told the gathered crowd that ‘those who passed away have left behind a great message to all of them to stand firm and to give away none of Ulster’s soil.’
The symbols associated with commemoration of the war such as the Poppy and memorials themselves became symbols of political division. Wearing a poppy became a political and cultural statement. It became a symbol of political hatred culminating in the murder of people at the Remembrance Day services in Enniskillen in 1987. The Poppy grows in the open fields of France and Flanders. It is not selective where and over whose dead body it grows. German and Turkish bullets never distinguished between Protestant or Catholic, Unionist or Nationalist. It is a shame that the suffering and sacrifice of thousands of Irish men women and children should be used as a political instrument to offend each other. The Irish men who died in Flanders and Gallipoli did not die for that. As the years passed and the veterans died away, regrettably the reality was that the Unionist and Nationalist casualties of the Great War became more divided in death than they had been in life. In the early twenties at the Remembrance Service at College Green in Dublin after the service, poppy snatching was common along the streets. Fights would break out between Sinn Fein supporters and veterans going to or coming from remembrance ceremonies. According to the Irish Times on the 10th of November 1923, ‘The Free State received a consignment of 150,000 (poppies) and it is safe to predict that all will be sold early in the day.' The next day the Irish Times printed, ’No fewer than 150,000 of the poppies were sent out from headquarters and so far as can be ascertained, all were sold. Last year the number was 5,000. In Dublin 75,000 were on sale on Saturday and the remainder went to Cork and other towns.’ In Belfast the same paper reported in November 1925, that 100,000 (poppies) had been sent from the British Legion Headquarters and was virtually sold out. However in recent times, some people both north and south have made brave efforts to stress the common sacrifice and suffering made by all the people who live on the island of Ireland. Each year, The Somme Association from Northern Ireland, visit Thiepval on the 1st day of July, there they lay a wreath to remember the Ulstermen who died at the Battle of the Somme. It has also been their custom to lay a wreath at the 16th (Irish) Division Cross at Guillemont.
The Irishmen who survived the slaughter of Gallipoli and the Somme came home to an Ireland that was utterly changed, a terrible beauty had been born in their absence. Attitudes to some of these men were, at the least, indifferent and, at most, downright hostile to a point where some were murdered. At least 200 ex-soldiers were murdered by the IRA between 1919 - 1922. Yet as the majority of the veterans had seen enough bloodshed and sorrow in one life time, they did not want to get caught up with more. Many returned to the promise a decent place to live and a return to their original job before the war.
In July 1922, the Dublin Fusiliers were disbanded along with other Irish Regiments whose recruiting area was the Republic of Ireland. Some of those who died were lucky to have a grave, many, like Bob Stanton and Andrew Kinsella were never recovered, their remains were to become part of the sand in Gallipoli or the mud of Flanders, to be written out of Irish history and forgotten. Irish soldiers are buried in cemeteries large and small spread throughout France, Belgium and where they fell in Gallipoli. In these cemeteries, which are impeccably maintained by the British Commonwealth War Graves Commission, there are visitor books for one to sign. Regrettably, in many of these books there are few names from Dublin, Cork or other places in the Republic of Ireland. Perhaps this reflects our indifference to these men, or, might it simply be that we are unaware of them?
Revival
When the bell struck 11am on the 11th of November 1998, it marked an anniversary of the ending one of the saddest periods in human history, it was the eightieth anniversary of the ending of the Great War. For many years after November 1918, the 11th of November was remembered by a smaller and smaller number of people who were mindful of the tragedy that had affected them and their comrades. The event that changed their lives became as the Irish historian Prof. F.X. Martin called it, ‘the great oblivion, an example of national amnesia’.
It was not until the early eighties that serious academic research was conducted by a small number of Irish historians. People such as Dr. Pat Callan who presented the story of Irish recruitment, Martin Staunton who told the story of the Munster Fusiliers, Dr David Fitzpatrick, Jane Leonard and a group of historians from Trinity College Dublin who researched the political and social history of Ireland during the war years. Dr. Terry Denman (an Englishman) who told us the forgotten history of the 16th (Irish) Division. Philip Orr told us about the men of Ulster in the 36th (Ulster) Division. Other pioneering historians such as Dr. Tom Dooley, Dr. Keith Jeffries, Dr. Timothy Bowman. Tom Johnstone, Richard Doherty, Myles Dungan, Nicholas Perry, Frank Forde, Dr. Pat McCarthy and John Sheen’s work on the Tyneside Irish, have all played their part in redressing the national amnesia that Prof. Martin told us about in 1967. To his credit, ‘The Irish Times’ journalist, Kevin Myers has been telling this forgotten story in his writings at every opportunity.
Of the 210,000 Irishmen and women who took part in the Great War, approx. 35,500 were killed. 4,777 were Dublin Fusiliers. In order to research and present the history of the Irish participation in the Great War, several associations were established in the Republic of Ireland. The first to be established in Limerick was the Royal Munster Fusiliers Association, the second established in Dublin was the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association. In Bandon, Co. Cork, a group of locals erected a memorial outside the County Council Headquarters to the men of Bandon who died in the Great War. In Dungarvan, Co. Waterford a similar group was set up to research the people of Dungarvan and surrounding towns. The Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association was established on the 23rd of March 1996 by a small group of dedicated individuals who tried to address the imbalance and indifference shown in Irish society towards the thousands of Irishmen and women who died and indeed survived the Great War of 1914 to 1918. The association presented to the public a series of lectures and an exhibition of personal belongings and stories of the Irishmen and women who took part in the Great War. The exhibition was presented in several centres around Ireland. The association created contacts with similar associations and groups in Northern Ireland. In September 1997 approx. 70 people, mainly from Dublin and whose relatives were Dublin Fusiliers, visited the Somme Heritage Centre in Newtownards, Co. Down. In 1998, as a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the ending of the Great War, the association presented another series of public lectures on Ireland and the Great War and an exhibition in Dublin titled ‘Let Ireland Remember.’ The exhibition was opened by President Mary MacAleese in September 1998.
The sinking of the RMS Leinster in October 1918 was, and still is, the worst maritime disaster in the Irish Sea. The ship was full of soldiers returning to the Front. Like all the Irish dead associated with this war, the loss of life on the Leinster became part of the national amnesia. However, on the 28th of January 1996, the then Minister for the Marine, Mr. Eamon Gilmore T.D., presided at a ceremony in which the anchor from the Leinster was ‘unveiled’ in memory of the five hundred and one souls who died. The anchor had been recovered from the wreck of the Leinster by a team of divers from the Marine Institute in Dublin and can be seen on the promenade in Dun Laoghaire.
In July 1919, the Irish National War Memorial Trust was established in Dublin with the aim of providing a permanent memorial to Ireland’s war dead. It wasn’t until 1938 that the work was finally completed and the Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge in Dublin was opened. In the thirties, forties and fifties, it was the centre of remembrance in Dublin. As the years moved on and the veterans died off, so too did the Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge. It became like the men it was built to remember, forgotten. However in the mid-1980s restoration work began by the Office of Public Works in Dublin and on the 10th of September 1988, fifty years after they were initially laid out, the Gardens were formally dedicated by representatives of the four main churches in Ireland and opened to the public. Today, it is a beautiful park full of scented rose gardens and green grass. It is maintained by Duchas, The Heritage Service. It is still a place of remembrance. During the long summer evenings, Dublin families walk through the gardens and admire the roses and peacefulness of the Park. It is, as Patrick Kavanagh wrote in his poem ‘Raglan Road’, a place ‘where old ghosts meet.’
In November 1998, exactly eighty years after the guns fell silent in Flanders, Irishmen from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland attended an opening ceremony of a Peace Park at Messines, Belgium. The Park was opened by President Mary MacAleese in the presence of H.R.H. Queen Elizabeth II and H.M. King Albert of the Belgians. The Park will be a centre for promotion of peace and reconciliation in Ireland and the world. The very site of the Peace Park itself is symbolic. It was the labour of love and brain child of two Irishmen, who by accident, were born into different Irish traditions, but as human beings believed that the building of this Peace Park would be their contribution to reconciliation. In December 1916, Willie Redmond wrote to his friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: “There are a great many Irishmen today who feel that out of this war we should try to build up a new Ireland. The trouble is, men are so timid about meeting each other half way. It would be a fine memorial to the men who have died so splendidly, if we could, over their graves build a bridge between north and south.” The foundations of this bridge were laid in Messines, in November 1988.
Over the last several years, the President of Ireland has attended the November Remembrance Service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. She also attends The National Day of Commemoration at The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin, held in July each year.
Perhaps the last word on the fate of these unfortunate men may be left to Stephyn Gwynn who wrote a lament for the Irishmen who died in the Great War.
It may be O Comrade that Ireland
Casting a backward glance on the road
she has travelled
Will turn and yearn in her heart for
the valour she once rejected….
Will cry to her own sick heart
My faithful, my children,
My lovers who never hurt me
You also are Ireland.
