Ireland celebrates its fallen military in National Day of Commemoration

joycean: I would say more than 35,000 Irish were killed in the Civil War here, yet there are no commemorations in Ireland for these men. Why not, if all the Irish want to do is remember Irishmen killed in war? And the point about leaving out the men that these Irishmen killed is valid. Don't their victims matter? I guess while no one bears any hatred for these Irish members of the British Army, lots of us are worried that there is some political agenda behind making them into big heroes. For example, right now there is a move in Ireland to pardon Irish soldiers who deserted in the 1940s, in other words who deserted while their country most needed them. I think all these guys deserve about as much commemoration as do the many Americans who died on the Loyalist side in our own Revolutionary War.

Ancavker,I found a moving essay by John Spain which discusses Ireland's neglect of its World War I dead.According to Spain, 35,000 Irishmen died in that war, the most Ireland lost in any war. As a neutral country, Ireland has not fought was in its own name, unlike America which has fought continuously since Workd War I. To us, worrying about WWI casualties is a little strange. But not to my Irish relatives.They still care. I still hear from them about this. This man has over 200 relatives in Ireland who have been paying taxes for the past 100 years. It is little enough for the Irish government to honor his memory and comfort those people along with the memory of others like him.

Joycean: Technically. It was conquered by England and absorbed into the U.K. An independent Ireland should be honoring the men and women who fought for that independence. Oh and a fat lot of good being part of the U.K. was during the famine.

In 1915, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom.

joycean: point taken. But my point is that when a state honor's it's war dead. It honors those that fought in it's wars, or its struggle for independence. Not those that fought someone else's wars.

That's a fair point, barneyjo. And don't forget that most of the big employes were pro-British. It was expected that if you worked for Guinness or the big department stores that you would sign up for the British Army. Or think of Francis Ledwidge--he apparently signed up because his employer, Lord Something or Other, expected him to. Of course there were also lots of good men who realized that they had no quarrel with Hungarians, Turks etc. and decided to stay home.

A different world, a different history in a different context from anything we know and understand today. Back then, Dublin and a good many other locations across Ireland were "Garrison Towns" with Regiments that drew their strength from the local community; the same as in Australia, New Zeland, Canada, wherever.The Irish that joined up during the Great War had neither the benefit of hindsight, or the strategic vision that we, 21st century sophisticates, claim to have. Back then, motives were shaped by more "visceral" influences shall we say!!!

"That small nations might be free" is a line from "The Foggy,Foggy Dew," and refers to the propaganda campaign that Britain mounted in Ireland to enlist World War I soldiers.I'm sure many young Irishmen also joined the military because it offered a chance to earn a much needed paycheck.But it seems a bit stingy to refuse to remember some soldiers and not others in a yearly ceremony.On the other hand, My grand-uncle and my grandmother had another brother who returned home to teach the young men in his village to fight the British, and while Redmond's argument may not have helped with Ireland's independence,that did.

Good point, ancavker. The British (and their acolytes among the Irish Catholic Bishops) used to whine about "plucky little Belgium". Scarcely more than a decade earlier the heroic Roger Casement, surely the greatest Irishman of them all, had exposed the foul and putrid pus that was Belgian imperialism in Africa. And we are asked to honor Irishmen who killed for these skunks?

Yeah like Belgium ever cared about a small nation like Ireland being free. Meanwhile while poor defenseless Belgium was being attacked, they were slaughtering thousands in their colony the Belgian Congo. I know some Irish men fought after Redmond encouraged them to in hopes that England would grant Ireland Home Rule and those who fought I am sure were sincere in their belief. But think about it. How would the conversation go?? Perhaps something like this. Arragh now England if we go and fight yet another one of your oul'd wars, do ye think it might a not be too much trouble to give us our freedom as well. Only of course if it is not too much trouble to ye. Sure we would love to have a go at running things ourselves. So if we go and kill all these ould' Germans and the Turks and Huns can we please be having our own freedom.Thank you very much.

Looking at the history of this commemeration,I believe its purpose is to be inclusive of all Ireland's war casualties, not just those who died in Ireland's War of Independence.I had a grand-uncle who died in 1915, fighting with the British Army. A second cousin of mine in Dublin, for whom he was also a grand-uncle, told me that one reason Irishmen, like him, enlisted during WWI was so that other "small nations" like Belgium could be free from the aggression of larger European nations. As an American wife of a retired USArmy officer, I don't need a rationale for his participation in a war, but, apparently my Irish relatives did.

George: Agreed. And in fact if soem had their way liek Fintan O'Toole, Kevin Meyers, and John Spain, we would only honor those Irish who died in the British army, and not those who fought for Irish independence. In fact Mr. O'Toole states that the Germans were in effect Huns, who would have had all of Europe under their jackboot. Ironically in many ways Germany at the time was far more progressive than Britain and France in many ways.

Did they mourn the tens of thousands of people that the Irish in the British Army killed in World War One? Why did Irishmen want to kill Hungarians, Turks, Austrians, Germans etc? What harm had people from these nations ever done to Ireland?