The History Page

HEROIC OPTION: The Irish in the British Army
The story of Irish soldiers in the British army from the seventeenth century until the First World War is a distinguished one, with battle honours in every campaign from Fontenoy to the Somme. Completed by his wife Jean, the late Desmond Bowen’s book Heroic Option sympathetically recounts this spectacular history and is a useful addition to the growing literature of Irish arms. The army was popular in Ireland, even in the eighteenth century, when penal prohibitions on catholics slowed recruitement, but it was still possible to find men, by shipping Irish recruits to Scotland, and then transferring them back to Ireland to be enlisted as ‘Scotsmen�?By the early nineteenth century the need for men was so great that recruits were consciously being mustered in Irish regiments, like the Inniskillings or the Royal Irish Fusiliers, whose reputations in the British army were second to none.Irish soliders, moreover, distinguished themselves for courage and intelligence. Wellington is the most famous, but men like General Sir Brian Mahon and Sir Garnett Wolsey were national heroes, regardless of their religious backgrounds, both in Ireland and England.Not for nothing would Ireland’s ascendany class be considered the English equivalent of Prussian Junkers. Having said that, Irish soliders were not invariably successful: consider the sad story of general Sir Charles McCarthy, ‘a stately, bearded pigheaded Irishman�? who had risen to the rank of British Military Governor in West Africa.When Ashanti warriors decided to attack the small British forts there, McCarthy determined to punish this insolence.He incautiously advanced into the jungle with only a small force and was wiped out.McCarthy literally lost his head: preserved as a fetish, his skull was used as a drinking mug in Ashanti royal feasts - a salutatory lesson to those who think that African warriors are a pushover.After 1867 the hitherto straightforward relationship between the army and Ireland was complicated by growing nationalist demands for home rule, a cause which divided individual soldiers as much as it did the Irish nation.The terrible events of spring and summer 1916 brought this sharply into focus.The Easter Rising was fought by some 1800 volunteers of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and 2,500 Irish troops of the Dublin garrison.Unpopular with the people of Dublin, the political ineptitude of its suppression turned Ireland violently against the British administration.This painful event was compounded by the bloody battles for the Somme.The march of the 36th (Ulster) Division across the moonscape of no mansland won it four VCs for breaching the German lines, but at a terrible cost. Unfortunately the 36th (a purely volunteer formation) had no regular battalions as ‘stiffeners�?so that the breakthrough couldn‘t be exploited, and another small chance to change the bloody pattern of attrition in the Great War was lost. However, the terror of the Somme did not belong only to Ulster. in late September 1916 the 16th (Irish) Division was committed to the battle, also with much loss of life.Among the dead was Tom Kettle, the poet who had enlisted in 1915, whose death was witnessed by his friend, Lieutenant Emmet Dalton, who subsequently gained high rank in Michael Collins�?Free State Army.The creation of the Free State in 1921 brought these tensons into focus.Ideology prompted the Free State Government progressively to deny any Irish involvement in the First World War because it conflicted with Republicanism’s need to present itself as the sole guardian to the tradition of Irish arms. As the Bowens point out, this attitude was long in changing. Between the wars the annual Armistice Day parade by the British Legion, in which Irish veterans were represented, was met by strong opposition from Republicans. As late as 1960, a memorial bust of Tom Kettle was removed at night from its plinth in St Stephen’s Green and dumped in a pond. Things are changing and in 1998 Mrs. McAleese, the President of Ireland King Albert of Belgium, and H.M. the Queen were present at a ceremony to mark the first joint memorial service to all Ireland’s dead in the Great War.

Important Announcement The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More
The History Page	[email protected]

HEROIC OPTION: The Irish in the British Army