Forgotten Soldiers E-Book

Stephen Walker

• Herausgeber: Gill Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2007

Beschreibung

Drawing upon war diaries, court martial papers and interviews with veterans and family members, award-winning BBC journalist Stephen Walker explains how, often exhausted by battle, or suffering shell-shock, men who refused to fight were branded as cowards, and shot at dawn by a firing squad. From the cities and townlands of Ireland to the killing fields of the Western Front and Gallipoli, Forgotten Soldiers traces the lives of men who enlisted to fight an enemy but ended up being killed by their own side. For decades the full story of how the Irishmen died has largely remained a secret, but now one of the most controversial chapters in British military history can at last be told. In 2006 the British government finally pardoned those soldiers who were shot at dawn. Forgotten Soldiers is the first book to chronicle how relatives and campaigners fought to clear the men's names.

Leseprobe

FORGOTTEN SOLDIERS

The Irishmen Shot at Dawn

STEPHEN WALKER

Gill & Macmillan

CONTENTS

Cover

Title page

Preface

Chapter 1: Ninety years on

Chapter 2: The clash of the Croziers

Chapter 3: The new front

Chapter 4: Side by side

Chapter 5: Dying for Ireland

Chapter 6: Death on the Somme

Chapter 7: The shock of battle

Chapter 8: Looking for hope

Chapter 9: Heading for home

Chapter 10: Not in my name

Chapter 11: A class of their own

Chapter 12: One last chance

Chapter 13: The final executions

Chapter 14: The fight for change

Chapter 15: Ireland’s call

Notes

Sources

Appendix: Irish-born soldiers and members of Irish regiments executed, 1914–18

Map: The Western Front 1914–18

Copyright

About the Author

About Gill & Macmillan

PREFACE

It was early evening in Belfast, and in the open-plan offices that housed BBC Radio Ulster’s current affairs department in Broadcasting House my reporting shift had just begun. It was a frustratingly quiet news day. As the afternoon light faded outside I scanned the newspapers scattered over the desk, looking for stories that might make features for the next day’s edition of ‘Good Morning Ulster’.

A small item caught my eye about a Labour MP who had begun a campaign to secure pardons for First World War soldiers who had been shot for desertion or disobedience. The story intrigued me. Who were these men, and what did they do to deserve being shot at dawn? I wondered aloud, in earshot of my colleague, whether any of them were from our patch. Then I suggested optimistically that we might have at least one story for the morning. So I rang the MP, Andrew Mackinlay.

He was pleased to get the call and quickly confirmed that about two dozen Irishmen, including a number of Ulstermen, had been put before firing squads for deserting the trenches. It was a story that had me hooked and with typical black humour pleased my producer, who could at last see one item appearing on his empty running order.

That initial phone conversation in 1992 sparked a series of news stories and unwittingly marked the start of a fifteen-year journey that ultimately led to this book—an odyssey that has taken me around the battlefields of France and Flanders, to the national archives and public record offices in London and Belfast, to the homes of veterans and relatives, and to Dáil Éireann and the House of Commons.

I quickly discovered that it was the families of the executed men who were at the heart of this story, and over the past eighteen months I have been warmly received by many of those whose loved ones died at the hands of firing squads. While each case is different, all the families shared similar emotions and experiences. Many felt anger at what had happened nine decades ago; all felt they had been stigmatised for having a so-called coward in the family. I am most grateful to the relatives who came forward to share their stories with me, and I appreciate that even ninety years later this story still causes pain and emotional turmoil.

So why is it important to tell this story today?

For much of the last century the detail of how hundreds of British soldiers were executed has been a state secret. It is only in recent years that the details of the courts martial and the executions have become public. This story marks one of the most controversial chapters in British military history, and the emotion and pain that surround the men’s deaths. The long-running campaign to obtain pardons for them has clearly pricked the national consciousness in Britain and in Ireland.

The twenty-six Irish-born soldiers who were executed during the Great War were men of all faiths and backgrounds and from all parts of Ireland. This book examines their stories: who they were, where they enlisted, and how they died. Using previously confidential court martial records, battalion war diaries, personal diaries and interviews, I have been able to compile the most complete narrative of the Irish soldiers who were executed during the First World War.

Throughout I have attempted to be impartial and objective. It is easy to judge the events of the Great War through the eyes of 2007 and to use the standards of law we expect today, so I have endeavoured to understand what military commanders were thinking at the time.

This work is not an apology for the behaviour of those who were shot, nor is it a condemnation of those who gave the orders. It is an attempt to tell a story that for decades has been shrouded in secrecy but in recent years has rarely been far from the headlines.

I have amassed many debts writing this story, and without the kindness of friends and family this work would not have been completed. Fergal Tobin and Susan Dalzell at Gill & Macmillan have a lot to answer for. They began the process by persuading me to write this book, and I am grateful for their encouragement and for the support of their colleague Deirdre Rennison Kunz. My employers at BBC Northern Ireland have been most generous in allowing me leave of absence to finish the work, and my BBC colleagues have been particularly supportive.

Bruce Batten unwittingly set this project in motion in 1992 when he commissioned me to present and produce a documentary about the Irish executions for BBC Radio Ulster. Since then I have reported the various twists and turns of this story in news programmes and bulletins and in 2005 I made a second BBC documentary, this time for ‘Spotlight’, under the expert guidance of Brian Earley. Many colleagues have shared their thoughts and ideas with me as I have tried to tell this story. My fellow-journalists Jeremy Adams, Michael Cairns, Mark Carruthers, Andrew Colman, Paul Clements, Gwyneth Jones, Hugh Jordan, Malachi O’Doherty, Vincent Kearney and Darragh MacIntyre have all contributed in different ways.

I would also like to place on record the assistance of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which was helpful during my leave of absence. Others have provided shelter and a quiet place to think and write, and I am particularly grateful to Ruth, Mark, Alison and George. Family friends have also been most helpful. Donna and Aaron Gooding acted as computer wizards and provided much-needed translations of French court martial papers. Allen and Fiona Cox have been loyal and supportive friends, particularly in the summer of 2006; and the hospitality of Paul and Gill Keating in London was most welcome.

The staff at the National Archives in London were always gracious, despite my long list of seemingly never-ending questions. I would also like to thank the officials at the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and the Royal Irish Fusiliers Museum in Armagh.

The Shot at Dawn campaigners Peter Mulvany and John Hipkin have been of great assistance, as have the soldiers’ families, including Muriel Davis, Christy Walsh, Sadie Malin, Eileen Hinken, John McGeehan, Derek Dunne, Paddy Byrne, Gertie Harris and Janet Booth.

Martin Brennan was most generous with information regarding John James Wishart; Timothy Bowman pointed me in helpful directions; and Ronnie Ferguson’s assistance on the Crozier case was very useful. Jeremy Shields kindly did some internet searching for relatives, and Colin Bateman was full of advice regarding publishing and writing. I would also like to thank Aidan O’Hara in Paris and Lize Chielens in Ypres.

A number of British and Irish politicians were prepared to discuss their roles in this story, and I am grateful to Des Browne MP, Tom Watson MP, Don Touhig MP, Andrew Mackinlay MP, Dermot Ahern TD and Martin Mansergh TD.

I am indebted to a trio of warm-hearted historians whose hospitality and patience I have tested to breaking point over the past eighteen months. Philip Orr, author of important books on the Somme and Gallipoli, had the painful task of reading various drafts of this work and ended up acting as my punctuation tsar. Julian Putkowski, whose book Shot at Dawn (1989) lifted the lid on the secret world of military executions, was most generous and by spotting my schoolboy errors has hopefully saved me from much embarrassment. Dr Gerard Oram provided a similar role, and his research and guidance have proved invaluable. Any mistakes, however, remain my sole responsibility.

My family have been particularly understanding, including my parents, brothers Matthew and Geoff and sister Kate, and my children Grace, Jack and Gabriel. In particular my wife, Katrin, has spurred me on at every step, and without her love, patience and endless encouragement this book would never have happened.

I am well aware of the work of other writers in this particular area. William Moore, Judge Anthony Babington, Julian Putkowski, Julian Sykes, Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson have all touched on different aspects of this story. But this book is different from other publications. It is the first to concentrate on the Irish dead, the first to include full details of all the Irish executions, and the first to chronicle in detail the pardons campaign. Essentially, I am telling two stories in this book: the story of the Irishmen who died and the story of the campaign to pardon them. I hope I have been able to shed new light on a subject that, ninety years later, still arouses great passions.

In Ireland the Shot at Dawn campaigners and the Irish government have recognised twenty-six Irish-born soldiers who were executed during the Great War. I have investigated their stories, but I have also examined the deaths of two other soldiers who I believe should be part of this narrative. One was an American citizen and the other was English-born. Both men served with Irish regiments and, like their Irish-born counterparts, died at the hands of firing squads.

Each story is different. It is easy to assume that every executed soldier was shell-shocked and was given no chance to change his ways. Some were suffering medically when they wandered away from battle; others were simply unable to adapt to life in the trenches and could not cope with the conditions. Some were serial deserters who had been warned repeatedly about the consequences of their behaviour. A number were not model soldiers and had serious disciplinary records, including prison sentences for desertion. That does not justify their fate but simply underlines the dilemma military commanders faced when trying to deal with difficult soldiers who clearly did not want to fight.

Some of the executed Irishmen were teenagers, raw recruits who had never been away from home and were experiencing warfare for the first time; others were army veterans from such places as rural Cork or Clare. Yet despite their different backgrounds all shared a similar fate. In often hastily arranged court proceedings the men were tried, usually with no legal defence, in hearings that sometimes lasted a matter of minutes.

It was a legal lottery. The great majority of more than three thousand British and Commonwealth soldiers brought to court martial and sentenced to death were spared, but 10 per cent—some 306 soldiers—were shot for battlefield offences such as desertion or cowardice. During the past fifteen years I have been fascinated by the soldier-volunteers, some of whom were brought up, enlisted and trained for the Great War in places I know well. I wanted to know more about them, their families, their alleged crimes and the circumstances of their deaths. Although I was reminded constantly that I was stretching the definition of ‘current affairs’ by investigating the events of the Great War, the pardons story just would not go away.

By 2005 my interest had reached a point where I had amassed so much background material about this story that I wished I had written a book about it. It was a project I had repeatedly put off to concentrate on work and family commitments. Eventually I began writing, and then something remarkable happened. A court case brought by the daughter of a Yorkshire soldier, Private Harry Farr, resulted in the British government saying it would re-examine his case. Then, in the late summer of 2006, this story took its most dramatic twist. In the middle of August I found myself on the phone to Andrew Mackinlay MP, who was calling with the news he had been hoping for since we first began talking some fourteen years earlier. He told me that the government had agreed to a conditional pardon for Harry Farr and the other soldiers who had been executed for battlefield offences, such as desertion and cowardice.

The campaigners had won. The final chapter of this story could at last be written.

Stephen Walker

Co. Down, August 2007

Chapter 1

NINETY YEARS ON

We are going to have to sort this out.

—TOM WATSON, MINISTER FOR VETERANS’ AFFAIRS, 2006

London, 2006. On a summer’s day at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, 92-year-old Gertie Harris sat in one of the large-windowed rooms that overlook the Thames. The city’s tourist season was in full swing, and in the bright sunshine visitors and office workers were enjoying the warm weather. Outside the building, civil servants were having a smoking break; others were chatting and sipping takeaway coffee, and in the distance the London Eye was slowly turning.

Inside the offices that house the leading personnel in Britain’s military establishment it was a particularly busy time. Officials were answering phones, preparing presentations and holding meetings. With British forces on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was a constant stream of enquiries to answer.

At the rear of the building, in one of the ministerial rooms, a group of people had gathered to discuss the army’s behaviour in a foreign land; but it was not a modern conflict they had come to consider. As Gertie Harris, the daughter of Harry Farr, gathered her thoughts and members of her family settled into their seats she was thanked for coming, and then the man sitting beside her leaned forward and spoke. ‘Now, Gertie, I am just going to listen to your story. Myself or my staff won’t interrupt you; we are just here to hear your story. You take as long as you like.’1

For the next forty minutes the small audience listened carefully as she spoke movingly and quietly about a man she never knew. He had been a soldier, a husband and a father. She talked of how proudly he went to war, only to be killed by his own side. A survivor of the Battle of the Somme, he had been in hospital for five months with shell-shock and then later was found guilty of cowardice. He was so convinced of his innocence that at his execution he refused to wear a blindfold as he faced the firing squad.

Then Gertie Harris explained how the stigma and shame had affected her mother, how they were left penniless, with no army pension, and then made homeless. She recalled how his execution had been kept a family secret for decades, how her mother refused to talk about it, and why ninety years later it was time his name was cleared. When she finished her appeal she looked to her host, the newly appointed Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Tom Watson, who was beside her. He was so overwhelmed and emotional from what she had told him that tears welled in his eyes.

The Minister composed himself and after a few words brought the meeting to an end. He thanked the Farr family for coming and then organised tea for his guests. Afterwards, as he escorted his visitors out of the building, he promised them that he would do everything to find a resolution.

Watson’s officials were shocked by what they had just witnessed. They had not expected to see their Minister in tears, and the meeting was not the one they had planned for. They had come prepared to rebut the family’s arguments and had counselled the Minister to choose his words carefully during the encounter.

For months the Farr family and the Ministry of Defence had been locked in a legal battle, and Tom Watson had been warned by his legal advisers not to admit liability and to remain neutral. The tears were not part of the plan. The new Minister’s response to meeting the Farr family was genuine, and he was surprised at how the encounter had affected him. He had not expected to become emotional, as he had never previously thought strongly about the issue of pardons for those shot at dawn. The meeting with Harry Farr’s family changed all that. When his visitors left the building he turned to his officials and said, ‘We are going to have to sort this out.’

The issue of war pardons was not a new political challenge for officials in Whitehall, and the questions running through the new minister’s mind were the same that had been asked of previous government ministers.

For decades successive Conservative and Labour governments had rejected the idea of granting posthumous pardons, and officials at the Ministry of Defence were well versed in the arguments. The campaigners often argued that the original trials were unfair and badly run and that soldiers were not given fair treatment. Those against the pardons stated that it was wrong to apply the standards of today to the events of the past. Critics also suggested that such a move would be interpreted as historical revisionism, and many argued that the move was impracticable, as there simply wasn’t enough evidence available to re-examine each case.

It was these arguments that were traditionally used by government ministers. In 1993 the Conservative Prime Minister John Major rejected the call for pardons, saying it would be rewriting history. Similarly in 1998, after he personally reviewed a hundred of the cases, John Reid, then a junior defence minister in the newly elected Labour government, concluded that pardons were not possible because the evidence was insufficient. He insisted that it was not possible to determine from the records who was innocent and who had deliberately deserted their colleagues.

Tom Watson’s radical departure from the Whitehall script was a U-turn in government thinking and was not universally accepted by his staff. Some were not prepared to countenance a change of policy without further discussions; and one official privately challenged Gertie Harris’s version of events.

Watson remained convinced that he had heard a powerful story of injustice, and he was determined that his department would bring comfort to the Farr family. Within hours his tearful reaction to Gertie Harris’s story had become common knowledge throughout the corridors and offices of Whitehall. The news became a topic of conversation, and days later the new Minister was offered tea and sympathy when a member of the catering staff remarked with a knowing smile, ‘I heard you had a difficult meeting with Mrs Harris the other day.’2

Recently promoted as a junior defence minister, the MP for West Bromwich East was enjoying the biggest job of his short political career. Elected in 2001, Watson had a typical CV that mapped out his Labour credentials. Before he was elected to Parliament he was a spokesman for Labour students and had worked as a full-time trade union official. He arrived in the department in May 2006 as part of a Cabinet reshuffle, changes that saw Des Browne take the top post of Secretary of State for Defence. Browne’s predecessor, John Reid, moved to the Home Office after Charles Clarke was sacked.

At thirty-nine, Tom Watson knew that this promotion was a golden opportunity to progress up the ministerial ladder, and he was keen to make his mark. Before he arrived in the department he sought out his predecessor, Don Touhig, to get an understanding of what awaited him in his new position. As a former Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Touhig had served under the previous Secretary of State for Defence, John Reid, and would prove helpful to Watson.

Touhig was very experienced in the machinations of government, having been Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, and later a whip in the House of Commons before he became a minister in the Welsh Office. When he took up his role in 2005 as Minister for Veterans’ Affairs he began to take an interest in the pardons issue and started by reading the court martial file of Private Harry Farr. When he read the notes he was alarmed at what he saw and quickly concluded that the Farr family had a good case. He realised that the Ministry of Defence needed to come up with a response that would satisfy not just the Farr relatives but all the other family members related to executed men.

He privately floated the idea that the government could simply issue a statement of regret, but after taking soundings from MPs sympathetic to the pardons campaigners he knew that would not be acceptable. Eventually he came to the conclusion that the only way to solve the issue was to bring in legislation granting a statutory pardon to all the executed men.

He knew it would be difficult to convince John Reid that a new response was needed, as Reid had originated the 1998 inquiry and would probably be against revisiting the issue. Touhig then invited his officials to discuss what steps the department should be considering, but this was not greeted with universal support:

The officials were not being wholly cooperative and were deliberately awkward. I thought they were putting barriers up. I was repeatedly told this was a complex and difficult issue.

It reminded me of that famous Gladstone quote about Ireland: that every time he came up with a solution to the Irish problem the Irish changed the problem. That was the same here: every time I suggested a solution I was told it was too difficult.3

Convinced that he was being thwarted, he pursued the issue with John Reid and told him that he believed the only way the pardons issue could be dealt with was through new legislation that would result in a pardon for all those guilty of battlefield offences such as desertion and disobedience. At first Reid was resistant but he eventually allowed Touhig to ask his officials to explore the idea and draft some legislation, which he would examine in detail. Although Reid endorsed this move, Touhig doesn’t think he was particularly enthusiastic about it.

I don’t think his heart was in it. I think I was being indulged. I am convinced that John Reid felt that such a move would bring him into conflict with the defence chiefs and former defence chiefs in the House of Lords.4

As the officials began drafting legislation, Touhig wanted to inform other government officials in relevant departments about their plans, but he claims he was told by one official to keep the issue secret until more work was done.

However, in May 2006, when he was sacked in the Cabinet reshuffle, Touhig felt he could at least confide in his successor. He told Tom Watson about the plans for the ‘shot at dawn’ cases but warned him that, as the review was confidential, officials in Whitehall would be wary if he appeared to have knowledge of it. When Watson got to the Ministry of Defence some days later he questioned one official about the pardons, and the reply was exactly as Touhig had predicted. ‘Oh, you know about that, do you? That’s meant to be confidential.’

Secrecy had haunted the pardons debate for decades, and campaigners had made political capital out of the fact that the original court martial papers had been hidden from public view for most of the twentieth century. The files were originally expected to be stored in government archives for a hundred years, but in the early 1990s many of the papers were made public. The court martial files for all the executed soldiers are stored in the National Archives in London, and they vary in size and content. Some are short documents that reveal little and contain only brief accounts of what the offenders were charged with and what the evidence was. Others have more detailed information, often containing summaries of what happened at the court martial and a history of the soldier’s disciplinary problems. They often include medical reports and testimony from senior officers and colleagues.

Over the past ninety years the soldiers’ files and the correspondence associated with them have generated filing cabinets full of paper at the Ministry of Defence. Tom Watson was keen to get a sense of what the documents revealed. He asked that briefing documents surrounding the latest government review be delivered to his office. When they arrived he was staggered when close to a thousand pieces of paper thundered down on his desk. He wondered whether his officials were trying to make a point.

I think they were basically trying to show me how difficult this problem was and perhaps making a visual point that this is a difficult issue which I was not going to solve quickly. I looked at it and thought, somewhere in the middle of all this lies the answer. However, I did read every single piece of paper that was placed in front of me.5

The new Minister’s reading matter included a 53-page report that had been gathering dust in the Ministry of Defence for eighteen months. The document was significant not just for its contents but because of its origins. The report had been submitted to the British government in October 2004 by the Irish government, which believed that twenty-six Irish-born soldiers had been unjustly executed and should be pardoned. The Irish investigation had started after officials had been lobbied by the Irish Shot at Dawn campaign, run by Peter Mulvany, a former merchant seaman.

In his fifties, Peter Mulvany, who had an interest in military history, was also involved in a campaign to secure compensation for Irishmen who had been taken prisoner by the Germans during the Second World War. He realised that the backgrounds and religions of the executed men meant that there was the potential to attract cross-community support, and he quickly won endorsements from all the major political parties, north and south of the border. His campaigning paid off in 2003 when the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, agreed to support the group’s objectives and vowed to take the matter up with the British government. Within months Irish officials had met their British counterparts and asked for the files of the Irish-born soldiers to be copied and forwarded, so that officials in Dublin could make an assessment of the ‘shot at dawn’ cases. After studying the files, Irish officials wrote a damning report that condemned the executions as unjust and alleged an apparent disparity in the treatment of Irish-born soldiers.

The report’s authors concluded that the men should be pardoned. Brian Cowen took the matter up at ministerial level with his British counterpart and publicly made this appeal:

As we approach the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War, and the world prepares to once again remember those who sacrificed so much during those terrible years of trench warfare, a retrospective action by the British government to redress the condemnation of those ‘shot at dawn’ would be widely welcomed, both in Ireland and further afield.6

Mulvany was amazed that the government was prepared to push the pardons campaign so forcefully, and he had not seriously expected his own government to commission a report or raise the matter with British Ministers:

I didn’t think they would come across with the support that they came across with. Remember, this was a nationalist government, who would call themselves republicans with a small ‘r’, and they supported a campaign such as this. All I expected was a letter coming from the Irish government simply expressing support. When I was told officials were writing a report I nearly fell off the chair. I did not expect that.7

The Irish intervention would prove to be most timely. In Britain the Shot at Dawn campaign appeared to be flagging after John Reid’s review in 1998 had rejected the introduction of pardons. Further disappointment followed when the Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay failed on several occasions to get approval for his Pardons Bill.

The involvement from Dublin proved to be both appropriate and historic. Twenty-six Irish-born soldiers were executed during the Great War, men who had different faiths and came from all parts of Ireland. They were Protestants and Catholics, unionists and nationalists, farmers’ sons and city boys, raw recruits and veterans—a religious and social mix that represented a slice of Irish life from a bygone age. They were members of twelve regiments, including the Royal Irish Rifles, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, Royal Irish Fusiliers, Leinster Regiment, and Royal Dublin Fusiliers—famous regiments that no longer existed and whose colours had long since left the field of battle. The Irish move not only breathed new life into the pardons debate but also demonstrated how official Irish attitudes to the First World War had changed.

For decades the memory of that time appeared to be made up of two competing images, each battling for the high ground of history. Unionists saw themselves as the loyal citizens of the empire, whose ‘blood sacrifice’ at such places as the Somme had secured the union with Britain, and as a result for much of the twentieth century the commemoration of Ireland’s First World War dead had been largely a unionist affair. In turn, nationalists had their own sacrifice to remember as they commemorated the dead of the Irish revolution of 1916. The positions cancelled each other out and left an important body of men adrift in the middle ground: the thousands of Catholic and nationalist Irishmen who had fought and died in the Great War wearing a British uniform. They had enlisted from all parts of Ireland and took the ‘king’s shilling’ for a variety of reasons. Some joined up simply because they believed it was a just fight; some went to secure Ireland’s freedom; others went to war purely for the money and the sense of adventure and comradeship. Unlike their English, Scottish and Welsh counterparts, the Irish recruits were largely volunteers, as plans to apply conscription in Ireland were never followed through.

In the years after the ending of the First World War many soldiers who had hoped Ireland would become independent felt disillusioned and let down by Britain. Thousands had supported the political leadership of John Redmond and had believed that once the hostilities with the Germans were over, Home Rule would be delivered as an acknowledgement of Irish support in the Great War. It didn’t materialise, and inevitably those in nationalist Ireland who had supported the Crown felt betrayed.

When partition finally came, many unionists claimed that it was their loyalty and sacrifice at places like the Somme that had secured the link with Britain and helped found the new state of Northern Ireland. Although Catholic ex-servicemen participated in commemorations throughout Northern Ireland, the events of the Great War and particularly the Somme were quickly woven into the fabric of Ulster unionism.

If the post-war commemorations in the north were viewed as political, so were those in the south. In the new Ireland, free from the trappings of the Crown, many republicans, such as Seán Lemass, saw such occasions as ‘an endeavour to use Ireland in the interests of the Empire.’ Parades marking the Irish sacrifice did take place in the 1920s, and they were often well attended, but tensions existed in the background between the government and veterans’ associations on the issue of how to mark Ireland’s Great War contribution. When attempts were made to build a memorial in Dublin in 1927, Kevin O’Higgins, Minister for Justice in the Irish Free State, said that he had no hostility to ex-servicemen.

No one denies the sacrifice, and no one denies the patriotic motives which induced the vast majority of these men to join the British Army to take part in the Great War, and yet it is not on their sacrifice that this state is based and I have no desire to see it suggested that it is.8

For much of the last century the Irish Great War experience was exclusive to one section of society, and those Catholic Irishmen who fought in the 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions were the forgotten men. However, in the 1960s the attitude in the Republic showed signs of changing when the Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, a past critic of Remembrance parades, remarked that Irishmen who served the British Army in the Great War should be recognised.

They were motivated by the highest purpose, and died in their tens of thousands in Flanders and Gallipoli, believing that they were giving their lives in the cause of human liberty everywhere, not excluding Ireland.9

Lemass’s comments marked a shift in how Ireland viewed those who had died in the uniform of the Crown. It recognised that among the three-quarters of a million British servicemen who lost their lives in the Great War there were thirty-five thousand Irish-born, men who deserved the same recognition as those who had died in the Easter Rising of 1916.

Over the last twenty years Ireland’s Great War experience has slowly moved from being the preserve of one culture to a shared history that both unionist and nationalist traditions can relate to. It has been a slow transition, but the ‘official amnesia’ that prevailed for most of the last century in southern Ireland lifted spectacularly in 1998 at the opening of the Island of Ireland Peace Tower at Messines in Belgium. On a November day the tower, made from stone exported from Ireland, was unveiled by the King of Belgium, Queen Elizabeth and President Mary McAleese, who declared that the monument should bear witness to the ‘redeeming of the memory’ of those Irishmen who died in the Great War.

The choice of Messines for a peace memorial was deliberate. It was in the mud in June 1917 that men from the 16th (Irish) Division fought alongside their comrades in the 36th (Ulster) Division, Irishmen of different hues united by a common cause. Belgium was also appropriate because the retreat from the town of Mons in August 1914 had an enormous impact in Ireland, both north and south.

After the British Expeditionary Force sustained heavy losses, new recruits were quickly needed, and Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, increasingly looked to Ireland for help. Government posters encouraging Irishmen to enlist featured the German invasion of Belgium and in September the pressure on Irish politicians to support the war effort intensified.

John Redmond would have a crucial role in the story of Ireland and the Great War. As the leader of the Irish Party he had significant influence over the Irish Volunteers, a nationalist army formed in 1913 to fight for Home Rule and to oppose the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Although he had some reservations about Irishmen serving the Crown, when the war broke out Redmond believed the plight of Belgium could not be ignored.

The struggle of Belgium appeals in a very special way to the sentiments and feelings of Ireland . . . There is no sacrifice I believe which Ireland would not be willing to make to come to their assistance.10

A defining moment came on 20 September 1914 when Redmond used a speech at Woodenbridge, Co. Wicklow, to pledge the Irish Volunteers to the war effort. He made his call after the Better Government of Ireland Bill—popularly known as the Home Rule Bill—became law but was suspended for the duration, and he was confident that after the war the legislation would be put into effect and Ireland would at last gain political freedom. Redmond hoped that if Irish soldiers aided the British war effort, such generosity would be reciprocated after the war. He also knew that if civil conflict broke out in Ireland after the war, having thousands of Irishmen trained in the use of firearms would aid the nationalist cause.

Redmond’s arguments did not gain universal approval among the wider nationalist family. His call to support the British war effort led to a split in the ranks, and republicans who opposed him broke away to form their own Volunteer movement.

Redmond’s rallying cry would do more than split the Volunteer movement. His speech signed the death warrant of his own group, the National Volunteers, as an effective nationalist voice and would set in train a series of events that would ultimately lead to the Easter Rising of 1916. Those who formed the anti-Redmond group in the Irish Volunteers worked hard to discourage young Irishmen from enlisting in the British Army. Anti-recruitment posters and leaflets were distributed that depicted Redmond as a recruiting sergeant for the British Army, and Irishmen who took the ‘king’s shilling’ were branded as traitors to Ireland. Much political capital was made of the British government’s decision to delay Home Rule for the duration of the war, and republicans argued that freedom from British rule remained a hope rather than a political certainty.

In Belfast, political manoeuvring of a different kind was going on that involved Sir Edward Carson, the Ulster Unionist leader. For most of 1914 Ireland had been holding its breath as civil war edged closer. The Ulster Volunteer Force, under Carson’s leadership, was backed with men and smuggled weapons. It had threatened to use its firepower if the Liberal government proceeded with Home Rule. Ireland was now awash with guns, largely because of gun-running, and in effect contained three different armies: the British Army, the UVF, and the less well-armed Irish Volunteers. When war with Germany was declared, Carson was placed in a dilemma. He knew that as a unionist he could not ignore Britain and the empire in its time of need, yet he wanted to gain some concessions and try to keep Ulster within the union. To this end he tried first to negotiate with London by offering the services of UVF men in return for a postponement of the Home Rule Bill. His game of bluff failed as events in Belgium forced his hand, and government pressure led him to promise recruits unconditionally. On 7 September he would declare: ‘We do not seek to purchase terms by selling our patriotism . . . England’s difficulty is our difficulty.’11

From its headquarters in Wellington Place in Belfast the Ulster Division began to recruit and organise into a series of brigades and battalions. Men came forward in their thousands, now that the UVF and Carson were promising their loyalty to the Crown and to an army that they had been prepared to fight only weeks before. Throughout Ireland, north and south, men responded to Lord Kitchener’s call, and volunteers packed out recruiting offices. Within a few weeks there would be three Irish divisions in the British Army: the 36th, known as the Ulster Division, and two Irish divisions, the 10th and the 16th. By the autumn of 1914 Ireland’s role in the Great War had truly begun.

Chapter 2

THE CLASH OF THE CROZIERS

War is all pot-luck, some get a hero’s halo, others a coward’s cross.

—LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FRANK PERCY CROZIER, 9TH BATTALION, ROYAL IRISH RIFLES

As they journeyed across the English Channel on their way to France, the Ulstermen wanted to enjoy their last few hours of freedom. However, what many on board really wanted was a drink: wine, whiskey, beer—anything they could get their hands on that would lift their morale and while away the time as they went to war. Under the blackness of an autumn evening the men hatched a plan. Within minutes the door of the ship’s liquor store was breached, hands quickly reached in, and dozens of bottles were removed. As the volunteers from the 9th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles sailed to battle they began to get drunk on stolen wine.

To avoid alerting the enemy, their sailing from Folkestone had been made without the use of lights, and the soldiers had been forbidden to smoke on deck during the crossing. The men arrived in France as they had set off, in complete darkness, and they would have to wait until daybreak to fully appreciate their new surroundings. Once ashore, by now tired and hungry, they were escorted to their rest camp and told to grab a few hours’ sleep before breakfast.

When they awoke on their first day on French soil, trouble was brewing. The cross-channel binge had come with a heavy price, and it was more than a hangover.

The theft of ten pounds’ worth of wine was reported to Frank Percy Crozier, the battalion’s second in command, who had personally recruited many of the men and who had tried to instil in them a sense of duty and honour. Crozier felt his men had let him down on their opening day of active service. He told the battalion’s colonel that the ship’s owner should be compensated for the theft. ‘We had I think better pay up to avoid a bad mark on arrival in the country.’1

To avoid further trouble, the drinks bill was settled, but not before Frank Percy Crozier attempted to discover who was responsible. Feeling groggy from a night’s drinking and looking a little tired, the West Belfast recruits presented themselves for duty. As they stood in line, their overnight drink-fuelled exploits were condemned, and the offenders were asked to be honest enough to identify themselves. But the alcohol appeared to have prompted a bout of amnesia: the men remained silent; no-one stepped forward. Frank Percy Crozier later recalled the incident:

Of course not a man moves; so the men who were on that part of the deck nearest to the bar are placed under stoppages to make good the amount. Such is war and booze.2

Among those under Crozier’s command was a young soldier whom he had helped to enlist. James Crozier (unrelated to his namesake) had left his job at the shipyard in Belfast and had joined the Royal Irish Rifles in September 1914. His arrival in France in October 1915 was the start of a great adventure, a life-changing experience that he hoped would make him a man. It was the day he had waited for as he trained in camps in Co. Down, Hampshire, and Sussex. Crossing the twenty-two miles of water from Kent was more than a simple journey: this was a rite of passage, the moment when his boyhood ended and he began life in earnest.

The two Croziers shared a surname, a regiment and a common enemy but little else. Their lives and backgrounds could not have been more different. Frank Percy Crozier, who had recruited James in his home city of Belfast, was twenty years older than his young charge. He was a career soldier from an upper-class Anglo-Irish family that had produced a long line of army officers. Renowned as a disciplinarian, he became one of the most controversial figures to serve in the Royal Irish Rifles. Privately educated in England, like so many children of the Irish gentry, the young Frank spent his summer holidays in Dublin and every Christmas at a stately home with friends or family in Scotland. His life had been one of opportunity, privilege and wealth.

In contrast, James Crozier had been brought up in a small terrace house in Battenberg Street in the Shankill district of Belfast, one of the toughest and poorest parts of the country. Unemployment and poverty were endemic, and young James’s apprenticeship at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, famous for building the ill-fated Titanic, brought in much-needed money to the Crozier household. The family, however, were better off than many of their neighbours, as James’s parents, Elizabeth and James senior, ran a grocery shop close to their home. Even so they were difficult times.

Inner-city Belfast had all the economic problems of other pre-war industrial towns, and family life was understandably hard for those with little money and plenty of time on their hands. For the children of the Shankill the streets and fields of the district were their playgrounds. In the summer they played games in the meadows along the banks of the Farset River, where the milk-round horses were taken to graze. In the winter they built snowmen at Woodvale Park and skated on the frozen factory reservoirs.

It was a simple childhood; but for many youngsters this tranquillity was interrupted in the late summer of 1914. For boys like James Crozier, the outbreak of war ended the innocence of adolescence and opened up a new world.

The daily chore of travelling across Belfast by tram to the shipyard and the long working hours may have done little to satisfy the young apprentice’s boyish sense of adventure. So when Britain declared war on Germany he rushed to join the colours, and it was only natural that he would go to the local battalion, the 9th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles, also known as the West Belfast Volunteers.

James Crozier and his friends were all volunteers who came from adjoining streets in West Belfast. Crozier was a Presbyterian, and the Shankill district, which was overwhelmingly Protestant and unionist, was an ideal recruiting ground for enlisting those who wanted to fight for King and country. Some men needed little encouragement to join up: they simply had a thirst for excitement and were desperate to leave the daily grind of being a weaver, a mill hand or a shipyard apprentice. Some volunteered simply to follow friends and family, while others needed the money.

To the hundreds of unemployed men in districts such as the Shankill, joining the army was a lifeline, a golden opportunity to escape the ravages of poverty and regain a personal sense of worth and purpose.

In 1914, after the outbreak of war, Frank Percy Crozier did more than simply encourage young James Crozier to join up: he claims he witnessed his enlistment. When the youngster arrived at the recruiting office he was accompanied by his mother, Elizabeth. Although records suggest that James was twenty years old when he enlisted, Frank Percy would claim that the young man’s mother said he was only seventeen. She was unhappy about her son’s desire to fight and had threatened to tell the authorities that he was not of age. Army rules dictated that recruits had to be at least eighteen. The regulations meant that thousands of under-age boys simply lied about their age. No birth certificates were required, and recruiting sergeants in many instances turned a blind eye to boy soldiers joining up.

Once inside the recruiting office, the now tearful Mrs Crozier at first kept her silence and simply watched as her son prepared to become a soldier. As the would-be recruit began to fill in his papers, Frank Percy Crozier was standing nearby and introduced himself to Elizabeth. He had spotted the family name and struck up a conversation with her. As her son signed the papers, Frank Percy Crozier promised her he would take good care of her son. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after him, I will see no harm comes to him.’ Unconvinced, Elizabeth Crozier replied, ‘How can you do that? How can you stop him from being shot?’ Anxious to allay her fears, Frank Crozier said: ‘We shan’t be going to war for a long time,’ and he added, ‘Untrained battalions aren’t sent to war.’

Frank Percy Crozier’s arguments cut little ice with James’s mother. ‘They’ll all go sooner or later,’ Elizabeth replied.3

She then turned and, according to Crozier, without another word walked out of the recruiting office. Eighteen months later Frank Percy Crozier’s pledge to look after Elizabeth Crozier’s boy would be put to the ultimate test in the mud and slaughter of the Somme. Writing in his memoirs, he claims he tried to look after his namesake: