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Witness accounts of 1916 Rising and War of Independence unveiled

Dramatic new eyewitness accounts are available online for first time

PATRICK COUNIHAN,

IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, August 7, 2012, 7:27 AM

Updated Tuesday, August 7, 2012, 7:27 AM

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Artist's impression of Dublin's O'Connell Street in 1916

The 1916 Rising is online – with graphic eye witness accounts now available to the public for the first time.

Reports from witnesses to the Rising and the War of Independence that followed are online.
The Irish state’s military archives have been digitised and the once secret documents from the Bureau of Military History 1913-1921.

Ireland’s Defence Forces have unveiled limitless access to the records at www.militaryarchives.ie.

The Irish Times reports that the site features the personal recollections of hundreds of men and women who participated in the Rising and the War of Independence.

Minister for Defence Oscar Traynor created the Bureau of Military History in 1947.

It was established to gather first-hand accounts from virtually all the surviving figures in the political struggles from the formation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 to the truce with Britain in July 1921.

The memories of those involved were taken over a 10 year period in witness statements from members of organisations including the Irish Volunteers, Cumann na mBan, the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood), Sinn Féin and the Irish Citizen Army.

The documents were regarded as confidential and remained secret until now.

Capt Stephen Mac Eoin of Military Archives told the paper: “The material was then locked away in the Department of An Taoiseach for some 45 years until 2001, when it was transferred to the Defence Forces to prepare it for release into the public domain.”

The report states that the scale of the project was vast as a team of military archivists transferred the huge collection of 1,773 witness statements containing 360,000 pages of name- and word-searchable documents; rare photographs; and voice recordings onto the website.

The Irish Times printed the following statements from the website:

“As we got out the door into Henry Street, we lined up ‘two deep’ with the O’Rahilly standing in front and Patrick Pearse by his side . . . Our gallant attempt to break through failed and the survivors ended in an old burnt-out ruin in Moore Street. I saw O’Rahilly fall wounded and my nearest comrade, Pat O’Connor, was killed just in front of me, and falling on me pinned me under him.”

– Easter 1916: Éamonn Dore (Irish Volunteers, Limerick who was in the GPO, Dublin)

“After that I got so sick of the slaughter that I asked to be changed. Three refused to have their eyes bandaged … they all died like lions. The rifles of the firing party were waving like a field of corn. All the men were cut to ribbons at a range of about 10 yards.”

– Easter 1916: Capt E Gerrard, aide-de-camp to Gen Sir Hugh Jeudwine, OC 5 Division (British army) describes the executions of the 1916 leaders

“When the Black and Tans behaved in such an excited and unsoldierly way by endangering my daughter’s life when she was playing in St Stephen’s Green, I resolved to give all the help in my power to the resistance movement headed by Michael Collins. … I also gave him [Batt O’Connor] a latch key of my house, 15 Ely Place, and prepared that apparently impassable cul de sac so that Collins, if hard pressed, could use my garden and appear in St Stephen’s Green.”
– The War of Independence, 1919-1921: Oliver St John Gogarty, Dublin

“In April 1920, we decided to call an unofficial strike at the docks as a protest against the treatment meted out to the Irish political prisoners who were hunger-striking at Wormwood Scrubs. The dock labourers and the crews of the cross channel boats – BI, Cork, Limerick, Dundalk and Newry – came out to a man . . . The number employed was 5,024 and out of that number 5,016 came out on strike, completely crippling the movement of all ships in the port of Liverpool.”

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IrelandNorth | Aug 13, 2012, 06:49 AM EDT

The Act of Union, 1800/'01 was the constitutional equivalent of a gunshot wedding, after the bride had been raped by the groom. How can any ethical person justify perpetuating such a democratically challenged Union. The Freudian slip of 'Dominion' (for Dominican!) Republic and Haiti is telling. But if geography-of-scale doesn't predicate politics, are not England, Wales and Scotland destined to be seperated. And that a departitioned Ireland couldn't rejoin the Commonwealth of Nations as an amicable compromise for a reunited Ireland. Rather than shifting demographics within NI - radical secularisation (& multiculturalisation?) of ROI - inexhorable drift towards independence within UK proper - and federal convergence within EU being a doomsday scenario, they may be a golden opportunity for a renegotiation of relationships between our two Islands. The Mayan prediction for 20/12/2012 may be less for an end of the world than for an end of our way of being in that world! Partition costs money. Doesn't the Great Britain's taxpayer not have any say in how their money is squandered. And parochialism (of either strain) hasn't served this Island very well.

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DanOLoingsigh | Aug 13, 2012, 03:49 AM EDT

Agree the commonality between Irish and Brits...we spent years emphasising the differences...that's changed now...all for the better, imo..

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Seanmor | Aug 11, 2012, 03:51 PM EDT

DanO: I'm not advocating and defending Republicanism and I should mention that Sinn Féin's founder, Arthur Griffith, proposed an arrangement of Dual Monarchy, which would have established a Parliament of its own for the whole country, which would recognize the English monarch as its hea of state. As far as I'm concerned, Dual Monarchy would be preferable to the Partition Treaty to which Sinn Féin agreed in Dec., 1921. Whether we like it or not, Irish natives, North and South, have much more in common with the English, Scots and Welsh that with the Germanics and Slavs. But these along with Arabs, Indians and Africans are now considered the New Irish by official Dublin, while our fellow Irish men and wmen across the artificial Borde are considered foreigners.

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DanOLoingsigh | Aug 11, 2012, 11:42 AM EDT

Seanmor - The union was not a happy marriage, I agree - but from Gladstone onwards a great effort was made to right historic wrongs - republicans persist in the fantasy that nothing changed until 1916 etc. but reforms such as the Land Commission had effectively ended Landlordism before then...Irish pensioners had to take a paycut post independence, as Ireland was a net beneficiary of funds from the UK - Sorry if this doesn't fit the republican narrative, but selective quotes do not constitute evidence...

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DanOLoingsigh | Aug 11, 2012, 11:28 AM EDT

ancavker - I didn't say it was democratically based, but it was legal by the norms of 18th/19th century standards -tell me were millions of african-americans, or native americans consulted or allowed a say in US independence decision?

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Seanmor | Aug 10, 2012, 01:50 PM EDT

DanO: To begin with, I seem to have given the wrong impression about columnist Buckley because he had NO sympathy for Sands or anyone else who resisted the injustice of British rule in Ireland, but Buckley did compare Sands views to those of Lincln. What you call "a legally constituted union" was actually an act of fraud inposed on Henry Grattan's All-Protestant Irish parliament by the governnment of G.B. As Woodham-Smith mentions in her book "The Great Hunger" that he Union was not a consentual marriage but the brutal rape of Ireland. On his death bed, Henry Grattan said ths: "I die with a love of liberty in my heart and this declaration in favo of my country in my hand". No matter how hard revisionists historianns try to justify Partition, the fact remains that 4 of the 6 British-held Irish counties have Nationalist majorities.

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ancavker | Aug 10, 2012, 12:52 PM EDT

Dan: And as many mistakes as was made in the Free State/Republic, just as many were made in the northern state. They had sixty off years before the troubles broke out again, to show the south how to create and run a modern, successful, and democratic state. They failed miserably.

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ancavker | Aug 10, 2012, 12:49 PM EDT

Dan: A legally constituted union? Are you kidding? The overwhelmingly majority of Irish had no say in joining that so called legal union. You are really stretching there.

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DanOLoingsigh | Aug 10, 2012, 10:23 AM EDT

ancavker - I'm not disagreeing, yes the unionists took more than their fair share...yes, it may have been better to have a smaller, more agreeable hinterland...it's how the parties dealt with that in the following years that mattered...almost everything helped to drive the two sides apart...miscalculations and misjudgements by most...industrial deafness to the aspirations and fears of the other side...TG those days seem to be over!!

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DanOLoingsigh | Aug 10, 2012, 10:12 AM EDT

Seanmor - strange argument there - The Irish in Westminster were in a minority, in a legally constituted union (UKGB&I)- The Lincoln argument would imply that all of Ireland should have been forced by arms to remain in that union - or are some unions more worthy than others?

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Seanmor | Aug 10, 2012, 08:27 AM EDT

In 1981 Bobby Sands (M.P) and his fellow hunger strickers tried to continue the struggle that began in 1916. When Sands died, Conservative Bill Buckley mentioned in his column that the dead hunger striker sought Lincolnian democracy for Ireland. Lincoln refused to allow 11 Sothen states majorit rule and forced them back into the Union against their will. When Sinn Féin were forced to sign the Partition Treaty in Dec. of 1921, they held 73 of Ireland's 105 seats in Westministe. If majority rule is democratic for the U.S., why not for Ireland?

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seanomelb | Aug 09, 2012, 06:59 PM EDT

Well said IrishNorth!! the Brits and their Irish minions below will not be happy with your common sense assessment. They live in denial of truth and justice to justify their bigotry.

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allan07 | Aug 09, 2012, 02:29 PM EDT

@ancavker its 2012 but you talk as if its 1912. I am very glad not to be part of the failed free state. You talk about a land grab well thats what you continiously talk about. I accept the partition and the fact that Northern Ireland is a complete separate identity. I am so glad we are. The theory that one island must be one country is incorrect. Take Haiti and the Dominion Republic, what about England, Scotland and Wales all on the same island. Lots of examples prove my point. To put the record straight as a protestant born in NORTHERN ireland i am British 100% and your continious force feeding your bigotted arguments 24/7 is not going to change anything. Never never not this side of hell freezing over. So accept the facts and stop your continious attempts to force feed your nationalist agenda down the throats of people like myself. Your not born here so its got nothing to do with you anyway. You talk "i have copies of all the papers". So what and personally talking whom are you to stand as judge and jury. I was born here and you should keep your nose out of my business and Northern Irelands business. In short mind your own business. Find something that is of concern to you.

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ancavker | Aug 09, 2012, 10:51 AM EDT

Dan: I have often stated that partition might have been a temporary necessity, as Lloyd George led Collins and Griffith to believe. But the fact that 6 counties were carved out to make this statelet, was nothing more than a land grab by the Unionists. I have copies of all the papers surrounding the boundary commission and the including the Free States dismal performance in these negotiations. There are even notes where British civil servants were trying to convince Craig that if he would not agree to let Fermanagh and Tyrone go into the Free State, he should at least let south Armagh go. He was even warned that keeping south Armagh could ultimately destabilize the new statelet. How prophetic was that!

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IrelandNorth | Aug 09, 2012, 07:40 AM EDT

General Sir Hugh Maxwell, the Scottish-British unionist which the English-British sent over to supress the Rising, was highly critical of the rapacious Anglo-Irish middle-classes for the squalor in which they kept their Gaelic-Irish working classes. But more pertinently, of his own English-British political overlords for not confronting the Curragh Mutiny, and Carson's subversive setting up of the UVF. "Without the UVF there wouldn't have been an IRA", he's reputed to have said. The neo-provincial statelet of Northern Ireland came into existence to provide a spurious majority for perpetuation of an Act of Union which was a constitutional sleight-of-hand, a constitutional fault line upon which NI is still built. A majority in NI couldn't have made up their mind to remain with GB, since NI didn't as yet exist - other than geographically. Interesting to see that some posters see the British Empire as a contender with Nazi Germany for the title of champion imperialist. A Freudian slip - perhaps? The British argument that as long as 3,000 British nationals on the Islas de Malvinas wish to remain British, that the UK will continue to claim jurisdiction there. Similar to her arguments in other dependencies closer to home. If the 3,000 British subjects of the Malvinas were to cop on an leave this glorified bird sanctuary, the English would probably confer citizenship on the sheep left behind, and train then to stamp their inked hooves on the 'yes-to-Britain' tick box - to perpetuate her claim. The presence of whites in many parts of the world was due to displacement by an imperialism closer to home, a domino effect of tragic proportions. It was originally called Transplantation for nonconformists. Subsequently transportation for incriminated individuals. Read ex-Irish Army officer Sean Ó Callaghan's (2000) book "To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland (Kerry: Brandon Books, 2006). And Robert Hughes' "The Fatal Shore".

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