Irish Voices From The Great War

This pioneering study, first published in 1995, retains its rank as one of the most powerful histories ever written about Irish involvement in World War 1. This year, the centenary of the war, sees its timely re-publication as the Irishmen who fought in that war re-enter the national memory after decades of indifference and hostility. The gradual softening of attitudes over the last twenty years amid great historic change on the island of Ireland, is due in no small part to the efforts of historians, such as Myles Dungan, to tell thousands of forgotten stories. Drawing on the diaries, letters, literary works and oral accounts of soldiers, Myles Dungan tells some of the personal stories of what Irishmen, unionist and nationalist, went through during the Great War and how many of them drew closer together during that horror than at any time since. This volume deals with a selection of the most important battles and campaigns in which the three Irish Divisions participated.

A candid and brutal account of murder, abduction, and violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland-from two men on opposite sides of the conflict. After 'the long war' in Ireland came to an end, very few paramilitary leaders on either side spoke openly about their role in that bloody conflict, but in Voices from the Grave, two leading figures from opposing sides reveal their involvement in bombings, shootings and killings on one condition: that their stories were kept secret until after their deaths. In extensive interviews given to researchers from Boston College, Brendan Hughes and David Ervine spoke with astonishing openness about their turbulent, violent lives. Hughes was a legend in the Republican movement. An 'operator', a gun-runner and mastermind of some of the most savage IRA violence of the Troubles, he was a friend and close ally of Gerry Adams and was by his side during the most brutal years of the conflict. David Ervine was the most substantial political figure to emerge from the world of Loyalist paramilitaries. A former Ulster Volunteer Force bomber and confidante of its long-time leader Gusty Spence, Ervine helped steer Loyalism's gunmen towards peace, persuading the UVF's leaders to target IRA and Sinn Fein activists and push them down the road to a ceasefire. Now their stories have been woven into a vivid narrative which provides compelling insight into a secret world and events long hidden from history.

The British army was almost unique among the European armies of the Great War in that it did not suffer from a serious breakdown of discipline or collapse of morale. It did, however, inevitably suffer from disciplinary problems. While attention has hitherto focused on the 312 notorious ‘shot at dawn’ cases, many thousands of British soldiers were tried by court martial during the Great War. This book provides the first comprehensive study of discipline and morale in the British Army during the Great War by using a case study of the Irish regular and Special Reserve batallions. In doing so, Timothy Bowman demonstrates that breaches of discipline did occur in the Irish regiments but in most cases these were of a minor nature. Controversially, he suggests that where executions did take place, they were militarily necessary and served the purpose of restoring discipline in failing units. Bowman also shows that there was very little support for the emerging Sinn Fein movement within the Irish regiments. This book will be essential reading for military and Irish historians and their students, and will interest any general reader concerned with how units maintain discipline and morale under the most trying conditions.

This compilation brings together a selection of speeches, sermons and addresses from some of Ireland's greatest statesmen and women over the last 1,000 years. They are arranged in chronological order, with an introduction giving the background to each one.

The author of Bloody Belfast delivers “a vivid and unforgettable record” of the Northern Irish conflict that captures the “true horrors of war” (Best of British). There are stories from some of the most seminal moments during the troubles in Northern Ireland—the Crossmaglen firefights, the 1988 corporals killings, the Ballygawley bus bombing, and more—told from the perspective of the British soldiers who served there between 1969 and 1998. This was a war against terrorists who knew no mercy or compassion; a war involving sectarian hatred and violent death. Over 1,000 British lives were lost in a place just thirty minutes flying time away from the mainland. The British Army was sent into Northern Ireland on August 14, 1969, by the Wilson government as law and order had broken down and the population (mainly Catholics) and property were at grave risk. Between then and 1998, some 300,000 British troops served in Northern Ireland. This is their story—in their own words—from first to last. Receiving a remarkable amount of cooperation from Northern Ireland veterans eager to tell their story, the author has compiled a vivid and unforgettable record. Their experiences—sad and poignant, fearful and violent, courageous in the face of adversity, even downright hilarious—make for compelling reading. Their voices need to be heard. “One of the first and only books to offer the perspective of regular British soldiers serving in the Northern Irish conflict . . . a valuable addition to the extensive literature about the Irish Troubles.” —Choice

The Western Front concentrates on the personal stories of Irish soldiers who fought in World War One, chronicling the experiences of officers and soldiers who served on the Front from recruitment, through training, to their experiences on the battlefields. These individual experiences are set within the wider context of the service and the military experiences of the various Irish regiments of the British Army to give a fascinating picture of life on the front line. This is the human story at the heart of a war that cost the lives of 35,000 Irishmen. From the Introduction 'This book seeks to free from archives ... the voices of officers and men who served in the Irish regiments, both Northern and Southern, in the First World War. The goal is to give readers an insight into the experiences, thoughts, hopes and fears of those who served ... It attempts to take the reader through the experience of enlistment and training, of life behind and in the trenches, and of the battles fought and losses mourned. This book is about the experiences of ordinary Irishmen in an extraordinary and terrible war.'

"Here are the voices of ordinary soldiers providing authentic, if often subjective, commentaries on a disillusioning war in which there were no winners [World War I, 1914-1918]."--Jacket.

In 1914, Ireland's Kildare County was a garrison county home to Kildare Barracks, the Curragh Camp, and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Depot in Naas, which ensured that Kildare's recruitment exceeded the national average. This fascinating study reveals the true extent that the military, political, social, and economic impact of World War I had on Kildare. The book demonstrates that, for the local community in Kildare, the Great War was remote only in geographic terms; its ravages being painfully felt in every aspect of Kildare life - food prices, the farming economy, Belgian refugees, the role of women, soldier Ã?Â?Ã?Â?suicide, and shell-shock. In a Time of War: Kildare 1914-1918 expertly recounts Kildare's unique experience with a war that had raged out of control. The book details the inept handling of recruitment and the later conscription crisis, and it tells the stark human story of Kildare's men leaving their towns and villages, humble cottages, and Big Houses for the carnage of the Western Front and Gallipoli. Sadly, over 700 never returned.

This is the first book-length study of the impact of the Great War on women's everyday lives in Ireland, focussing on the years of the war and its immediate aftermath. Fionnuala Walsh demonstrates how Irish women threw themselves into the war effort, mobilising in various different forms, such as nursing wounded soldiers, preparing hospital supplies and parcels of comforts, undertaking auxiliary military roles in port areas or behind the lines, and producing weapons of war. However, the war's impact was also felt beyond direct mobilisation, affecting women's household management, family relations, standard of living, and work conditions and opportunities. Drawing on extensive research in archives in Ireland and Britain, Walsh brings women's wartime experience out of the historical shadow and examines welfare and domestic life, bereavement, social morality, employment, war service, politicisation, and demobilisation to challenge ideas of emancipation and reflect upon the significant impact of the Great War on Irish society.

When American journalist Patrick Michael Rucker learned of the Northern Ireland peace accord signed on Good Friday, 1998, he knew he had to return. Rucker had last seen this torn country in 1991, when “the troubles” raged at a fever pitch of daily bombings and murder. Could such a violently divided society truly live in peace? What had changed? In the fall of 1998, Rucker returned to Belfast to see for himself, and this stark, gritty, spellbinding book is his report. A fearless and brilliant reporter, Rucker sought out victims and killers, leading IRA terrorists and the loyalist counterparts bent on assassinating them, British soldiers and innocent bystanders swept helplessly into an endless undeclared war. Rucker watched as Michelle Williamson chained herself outside a prison to protest the release of the IRA prisoner whose bomb killed her innocent parents. He visited the hospital room of Liam Cairns, a young man abducted by an IRA “punishment gang” and beaten beyond recognition. He tracked down the children of Jean McConville, a widow abducted and killed decades ago for aiding a British solider–a tragic mistake that the IRA finally was ready to admit. There are scores of encounters like these in the pages ofThis Troubled Land, shocking portraits of a society caught in a nightmare of rage and despair. But as Rucker discovers, despair has now begun to give way to a different mood–not forgiveness and reconciliation, exactly, for the wounds are still too raw, but a weary longing for closure. Rucker sees glimmers of hope in a Protestant mother murmuring an apology to a Catholic widow, in talk of forgetting the past, in the jarring vision of a glass-roofed double-decker bus carrying tourists down Belfast’s Madrid Street, where just a few years ago bullets flew between the Catholics and the Protestants. In vivid, electrifying prose, Rucker captures the soul of a country at a critical juncture, a country finally putting the darkest moments of its past behind and daring to look ahead.