Books

Images capture Ireland’s role in first World War

A new book assembles hundreds of images from before the war until Armistice Day

Pictured is a doctor dressing the wounds of Lieut Guy Morgan of the Irish Guards at the start of what came to be known as the Third Battle of Ypres or the Battle of Passchendaele, a campaign that took place over the second half of 1917. One interviewer of first World War veterans concluded that soldiers considered it worse than the Somme. (Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, Q 5732)

Ronan McGreevy's face
Ronan McGreevy
Fri Nov 14 2014 - 11:59

The first World War was by far the biggest military conflict in which Irish people were engaged. More than 200,000 Irishmen fought and 35,000 were killed, although memories of the war were suppressed for political reasons afterwards. Those memories are now being recovered with the centenary of the outbreak of the war and the improved relationship between Britain and Ireland.

A new book, Ireland and the First World War (Mercier Press, €30), tells the tumultuous story of those four years through pictures and words. It gathers together hundreds of images from before the war until Armistice Day, by which time the relationship between Britain and nationalist Ireland had changed beyond measure.

Many of the images come from the Imperial War Museum or from the publisher’s own collection, but others are from private collections and individuals.

Image 1 of 4

Snipers were a constant danger to those in the trenches as well. Pictured is a Royal Irish Fusilier at Gallipoli in 1915 attempting to draw the fire of a Turkish sniper. He may have been doing this to get the sniper to reveal his position, or he might simply have been bored. (Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, Q 13447)

One image in particular, spontaneously taken, which was rare in those days because most photographs were posed, was of a tearful mother saying goodbye to her son who is in the Connaught Rangers as he embarks on a train for the Western Front. Her worst fears were justified. He was killed a year afterwards.

READ MORE

Some of the images graphically demonstrate the horrors endured by soldiers at the front. One image shows flies enveloping the body of a dead German soldier; another shows the men knee deep in the slime of the trenches.

Others, however, show that there was also levity amid all the horror and that the war took Irishmen to places they could never have conceived of visiting otherwise. One image shows Irish Catholic chaplains posing in front of the Pyramids in Egypt.

The book is edited by teacher and writer Cormac Ó Comhraí, who is from Furbo in Co Galway. It took several years to gather all the pictures together.

Cormac O Comhrai