Veteran’s Day ‘Lest we forget’ – The Irish who died in World War One

All these comments make for stimulating reading.I wasn't around during WW2. However,I lived through the London Blitz in WW2. My late father, an Irishman, served in the RAF,my grandfather worked with TNT in munitions.As a child I was straffed by a German fighter plane.All this was happening during the so-called 'Emergency' in Ireland-surely the most ludicrous euphemism ever coined. Can anyone out there convince me, that had the Nazis occupied the United Kingdom,having already enslaved most of Europe, the sovereignty of the Irish Republic would have been respected??

OK, Gorge Dooley – you just be thankful that there were enough brave Allied ‘Warmongers’ around to keep the torch of freedom and democracy alive in two World Wars, so that even creeps like you can disrespect their memory. If not you would be writing you rubbish in German…or even Turkish…

OK, O'Looney, we get it. You're a warmonger. But I'm not. So go glory in your stupid wars and senseless violence. If it turns you on that's your business. Intelligent people, such as the majority of Irishmen 1914-1918, will continue to believe that killing a Turk in order to gain Ireland's freedom is the action of a murderous psychopath. I guess that fits right in with you!

Missing something, George? You can say that again…Like the change of attitude to Veterans who fought in World Wars. Like the Island of Ireland Memorial Peace Park at Messines, Belgium, opened by the Irish president in 1998. Like the notion that ‘Real Irishmen’ took no part. Queens University, Belfast produced figures on Irish recruitment into the British Army in WW1. This shows 64,000 Catholics and 52,000 Protestants joined up between August 1914 and January 1918. Time to show some belated respect, George?

Woodman: I'm missing something here. How did you fight for "Irish Home Rule" on the beaches of Turkey? The Turks weren't denyiing Irish Home Rule!

John Tobin: In the case of WW1 you can't distinguish Irish soldiers from "British". They were all British. Whatever about casualty rates, enlistment by Irishmen was much lower than it was in the rest of Britain. Remember that the British attempted to introduce conscription, because so many Irishmen had said "No Thanks" when asked to go off and kill people they had no quarrel with. I fully understand there were many social forces which impelled some men into joining the British Army and I recognize that some of these men later served their country (General Barry is the obvious example) in the War of Independence.

George D – Are you an American citizen? If so you have a rather strange and twisted sense of loyalty to your country, supporting the authors of the deaths of so many American sailors by the U Boat campaign of 1917-18. You laud Patrick Pearse as a man to follow. Could this be the same Pearse of the of blood sacrifice, as in his response to the arming of the Ulster Volunteers in 1913: ‘I am glad that the Orangemen have armed for it is a goodly thing to see arms in Irish hands. I would like to see the Ancient Order of Hibernians armed. I would like to see the Transport Workers armed. I would like to see any and every body of Irish citizens armed. We must accustom ourselves to the thought of arms, to the sight of arms, to the use of arms. We may make mistakes in the beginning and shoot the wrong people; but bloodshed is a cleansing and a sanctifying thing and a nation which regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood.’ Pearse on the Great War - the ‘most glorious in the history of Europe’ arguing that ‘ the old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields . . . When war comes to Ireland, she must welcome it as she would welcome the Angel of God.’ He certainly got what he wanted in the end…

Now Kevin…I prefer to deal with the evidence ‘at the time’, and not through some later revisionist ‘spin’. It does not sit well in the Republican narrative of moral superiority that a great number of Irishmen volunteered to go and fight…but they did. How much more convenient to claim they were forced through poverty to go...but as my post on the railway employees demonstrates many VOLUNTEERED, leaving safe, well paid jobs to do what they saw as their duty. It is somewhat insulting to these men to say that they were conned into it; they were sentient human beings, like you and me, who knew what life would be like under a Prussian jackboot. Were SEVEN MILLION Frenchmen who fought similarly conned, or later the millions of Americans…I don’t think so. Taoiseach Sean Lemass said in February, 1966, the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising: "In later years it was common - and I was also guilty in this respect - to question the motives of those men who joined the new British armies formed at the outbreak of the war, but it must in their honour and in fairness to their memory be said that they were motivated by the highest purpose." Now to George and his knowledge…again look at the evidence. He named an allied country, Serbia, as an enemy combatant, and now he is confusing the modern state of Turkey with the entity which actually did go to war, namely the Ottoman Empire. You say it was a lie that Germany invaded Belgium and committed many atrocities there…which war have you been reading about? What about the Belgian town of Dinant where 674 inhabitants were summarily executed by German troops; What about Leuven, where the entire population of 10.000 was expelled, with over 200 shot. All in the first month of the war, so one can’t blame any war fatigue for these. Of course none of these were Irish, so George thinks this was OK??

Irish soldiers who returned home at the end of World War One were in many cases very much"given the cold shoulder"by fellow citizens although afterwards many of them served vital roles on the Irish side in the War Of Indipendence.A similar situation occured during World War Two although not so much.It is only in recent years that the role they played in both wars has been recognised to any large extent.As a point of interest November the eleventh is known in Australia as Rememberance Day.I believe per head enlistments more Irish soldiers either lost their lives or were wounded than British.

Most of the Irish men who signed up for the British army, were encouraged to think they were fighting for Irish Home Rule, but of course the British reneged on that agreement completely. The British passed Home Rule right before the war but made no effort to implement it. The British "loyalists" in Ulster threatened war if any effort was made to implement it, British officers stationed in Ireland reported back to London, that we make no effort to implement the new law and would side with the "loyalists" who were allowed to march around with German weapons un accosted under the banner of the UVF - Ulster Volunteer Force. The weakness probably convinced the Kaiser that if the British could not control their "own kingdom." He could take aggressive action in Serbia to support his allies.

Most Irishmen did not join the Imperialist Army. Let us always take pride in that, and reject the jingoistic looney warmongers. And of those who joined, many were blackmailed into joining. If you were a Dublin working class man and worked for the big Unionist outfits such as Guinness, Dockrell etc. your arm was twisted into joining up. I have sympathy for the Irishmen who were strongarmed into enlisting. But they were fools, not heroes. The right road was the road signposted by Pearse and Connolly. The looney road lead nowhere except to national subjugation and disgrace.

Casement knew Imperialism. He had lived in the Heart of Darkness. He wrote that it was only when he saw the vile atrocities of (plucky little) Belgium in the Congo (mutilations, castrations, murder--and these are the ones the Irish fools wanted to protect)that he came to understand the evil of Colonialism and Imperialism. O'Loo ney would do well to read a little history--start with the book Kevin Kehoe recommends, you empty-head Looney.

War is such a horrible thing! Why can't men stop killing each other?

Now Dan I think George has a lot more knowledge about WW1 than you credit him with.Your comments ecco the same auld spill they commented on almost 100 years ago to con men to fight & die for a lie.For anyone interested there is a book writen by Roger Casement from 1911 to 1914 called "The Crime against Ireland and how the war may right it" you can read it for free on scribd.com and its a fascinating 100 pages

KevinKehoe: You make some very cogent points. As regards Colonel Blimp O'Looney, his reference to "German militarism" is particularly inane, given that it was British militarism that had been crushing Ireland for centuries! German militarism never killed an Irishman, never burned an Irish village, never supported an eviction of an Irish family from their home. Turkish "militarism" likewise. The Irish owe these nations an apology. Indeed most Irishmen, like O'Looney today, couldn't even find Turkey on a map. Yet Church and media urged Irishmen to leave their homes and travel vast distances in order to try to kill people they knew nothing of and who had never done them a wrong. Those Irishmen who followed Jingo deserve oblivion, that's all. Fortunately, the majority of Irishmen stayed put, and rejected the exhortations of the priests and the bosses. Lenin, Pearse, Connolly--they had the right line. It's striking how the looneys who claim to abhor "violence" always turn out to support violence, once it's on a sufficiently large scale. And as for "plucky little Belgium", remember that it was scarcely a decade since the great Roger Casement had exposed the nasty murder zone and concentration camp that "plucky" country had created in the Congo. Imperialist Belgium didn't merit one single life. Any Irishman who died thinking he was saving that sewer was an utter fool.