Eire & WWII

Written by Administrator

Wednesday, 14 March 2007

Prof Clair Wills. Dear Clair, I was very interested to hear your interview with Pat Kenny on RTE Radio 1 this morning, and also to see the important clarification in Saturday's Irish Independent review of your book regarding Provo journalist Frank "Colombia" Connolly's fabrications about Benedict Kiely . Vastly more Southerners joined the British Forces during WW II than served in the expanded Irish Defence Forces. Our full-time Army went up to nearly 40,000, [with another 103,000 in our part-time Local Defence Force], but over twice that number of Southerners [ 80,000 ] volunteered for the British Forces, as outlined in books by Richard Doherty - incidentally, a Derry Catholic, ex-RUC Reserve, and son of a British AA Artillery man]. About 98,296 Irish [ around 56,000 Southerners and 42,000 Northerners ] were in the British Army alone. The Southerners far outnumbered the Northerners in enlistments, and all the Irish were volunteers. Some 7,000 trained soldiers deserted the Irish Army, and almost all went North or acroos the water, to enlist in the UK Forces. 4,468 Irish soldiers were killed - maybe as many as in conflict on the whole Island from 1916 to 1923 inclusive. That is a perspective not yet present in popular consciousness, in North or South, or GB. Many Irish must have been among the 60,000 Civilians killed in bombing and V-1 or V-2attacks, which targeted the major cities where Irish emigrants were heavily concentrated. In total, up to 10,000 Irish may have perished, including UK & Irish Merchant Navy, over 900 in Belfast bombings, thousands among GB Civliian dead, and service dead. The South and North together provided about 130,000, and the South alone sent 100,000 civilian workers to Britain. I estimate 130,000 in total, by presuming that RAF & RN data were under-reported on the scale that Doherty proves the Army estimates were. We also provided RAF Fighter ace, with 31 hits, Wing-Commander Brendan Eamon Finucane, DFC, from Rathmines, born Oct 16, 1920, killed on July 15, 1942, leading the Spitfires of 154 Sqd, and from the same district, the 2 Cunningham Brothers, Andrew who became chief [First Sea Lord] of the Royal Navy, and his younger brother, General Alan, who liberated Ethiopia from the Italian Fascist invaders, while also from Rathmines came RAF Actg Cpl "Paddy" [ Maureen Patricia ] O'Sullivan, born 1918, in WAAF 1941, who joined the SOE [Special Operations Executive] in 1943 which engaged in sabotage with the French Resistance. See Marcus Binney - "The Women who Loved Danger". And Dublin also supplied Gen Tim Pile, GOC-in-Chief of the AAA Command throught out the war. And Sam Beckett risked his life in the French Resistance, first in Intelligence in Paris, then in the South of France. I met a woman who was reared in the Garda Barracks in Buncrana during WW II, who told me of drunken sailors, both USN, RN and RCN, being carried in the front door, and released out the back door by the Garda Sgt [her father] on Saturday nights, into the custody of the Navy Shore Patrols who took their comatose comrades back to the Derry Naval Bases. And [a] the RAF were allowed to fly from Fermanagh in an air corridor over South Donegal, on Atlantic Patrols, [b] our G-2 Mil Intel [under Director, Col Dan Bryan, from my native County, Kilkenny] worked closely with both MI-5 and British G-2, [c] they captured all 10 Nazi spies landed here, [d] RAF flyers were interned but released, while all Germans were held for the duration, [e] there were joint Irish-UK Plans for joint defence had the Nazis invaded, with 3 UK Divisions from NI coming South, to fight alongside the Irish Defence Forces, [f] the GOC in NI [a post held twice by a Southerner - Franklyn from Cork, and Alan Cunningham] and the Irish Chief of Staff, Lt-Gen Dan McKenna, toured the South's coast together and met frequwntly, [g] Irish Weather reports were supplied to UK, [h] reports from the 80 Irish Coast Look-out Posts went to UK re Nazi aircraft or subs spotted, and [i] UK military equipment was supplied to Ireland. And inApril-May 1941, Fire Brigades from the South sped to Belfast to aid in rescue and fire-fighting after the Nazi blitz there, which slaughtered over 900. My father also told of his very close relations with the RUC while he was in the Gardai on Border Duty during the war. The public awareness of the myth of Irish Neutrality, and of the depth and range of our pro-Allied commitment, is slowly being increased - your work should further accelerate that valuable process. The more interesting question may be not what impact official neutrality had subsequently on our mentality, and selfunderstanding, but the impact of the systematic official and media denial, the claim that we were neutral, when in fact we were not, either popularly or in State practice. Echoes here of the denial on "Irish Abortion".

 

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