Many of Ireland's second World War veterans have been overlooked by the history books. A new exhibition in Cork aims to give a voice to the men who fought in and lived through the war, writes BRIAN O'CONNELL
IT WASN’T until the 40th anniversary of the D-Day landings that Jill Kerly’s father Jack Allshire began to speak publicly about his experience during the second World War. Allshire was born in Cork city, before moving to the seaside town of Crosshaven. Aged just 15, he signed up for the Royal Ulster Rifles and participation in the war, along with his brother Thomas, who served in a tank division. Later, Allshire was part of the D-Day landings and suffered several wounds during his time at the front.
Even as a child when the war was being discussed in school, Kerly says she never relayed her father’s involvement in one of the most seminal moment of modern warfare.
Partly, her father’s silence was down to political reasons. “I never told anyone Dad had been involved,” Kerly says. “To me, history at that time meant Henry VIII and all that. It’s only as I got older that we realised how important the contribution was. I am incredibly proud now that Dad was part of it. In Ireland, because of neutrality, even today people still don’t appreciate it because the country wasn’t really involved. There were plenty who had doors slammed in their faces when they came home. We did hear those stories.”
Now the stories of Jack Allshire and many other Irish war veterans are part of WW2 Vets Project, an exhibition at the Cork City Council Offices until October 21st.
The project came about when Damian Drohan – then an MA student – was looking for a topic to focus on. Drohan’s father had served in the RAF in the 1950s and after hearing a radio discussion one evening, his interest in Irish veterans and war memory was sparked.
“I was in the car around Remembrance Sunday and heard a panel discussing the plight of Irish second World War veterans and I thought it would be a nice project to do,” Drohan says. “I started in December 2009. I have interviewed more than 20 veterans. There are probably 10 others I know of that I haven’t interviewed and another handful scattered around the country. I would guess there are less than 100 left in Ireland.”
Some 90 per cent of those photographed and interviewed for the exhibition (which also includes video footage of participants recalling their association with the war) are Irish, while some UK veterans who moved here after 1945 are also included. It hasn’t all been plain sailing though, as Drohan found it difficult to get galleries and exhibition spaces involved with the project. “I wanted to bring their stories to life. Some of the places I approached to exhibit it have dismissed it as purely historical in nature. It has not been easy to get people open to the idea of taking it on. There is a danger, I think, in this country to look at veterans as just relics of the past.”
Last night, a civic reception was held in Cork City Hall to honour the families and veterans who took part in the project. D-Day veteran Jack Allshire and his wife attended, and although his hearing is affected due to shrapnel damage, he is otherwise in very good health.
“My dad was shot in the leg during the war,” explains Kerly. “He was taken back to base and patched up and sent back out again. Eventually though, he was sent home. He didn’t talk about it, but this reception and exhibition is a great thing. I am only sorry I didn’t appreciate it a lot more myself. I think it is important we realise the sacrifice people made for the UK and for Ireland. If not for them, it could have been a very different story.”
WW2 Vets Projectruns at Cork City Council Office, Anglesea Street, until October 21st. It is available to view online at ww2vetsproject.com
The D-DAY veteren
David Ferguson was born in Cork and now lives in Dublin. He participated in the D-Day landings
“I joined in 1941 and was born in 1919 so that would [have made] me 22 years old [when I signed up]. The reason for my joining up was partly tradition, because I had an uncle who was a full-time soldier in an Indian regiment and my father had been in a regiment in a war and another uncle had served in South Africa.
“I went and did my training in the United States, in the southern states of Alabama, Georgia and Florida. The US air force was training a percentage of recruits from the British Isles. We trained on American planes but were retrained on British aircraft – Hurricanes and Spitfires – and eventually I was posted to a Spitfire squadron where the aircraft [were] on at least their second or third tours of duty. They were repaired and kitted out and so on, but cracks were beginning to show.
“The only danger we found was being shot at by anti-aircraft. They could be accurate at 3,000 or 4,000 feet.
“We did a lot of night flying or semi-night flying and nothing really to show for it. The sad thing was that people who died were always the ones who shouldn’t have died. What would have been the evening of D-Day, it was cancelled. I ended up on my own for some reason to go and protect something that was being towed along the coast off Eastbourne. I didn’t know what it was and it was going very slowly. Nobody came near us. And then I came back. It was dark and we were supposed to be fully trained in night flying, but I’d never flown in the dark. We got a brief we were going off at 4.30 in the morning. We were geared for having guts and great glory and shooting down German planes and so on and so forth. In 10 days flying over the beaches, we never saw a German aeroplane.”
The wartime child
Brian Smith remembers his family involvement in the war and his own experience of it as a child
“I live in Co Cork. I was born in Swansea in south Wales and came to live in Ireland permanently in 1972.
“It was on a Sunday afternoon and my father, mother and two brothers were sitting around the table having finished our lunch and the prime minister Neville Chamberlain made the announcement that Germany had marched into Poland and because of the pact, Britain was at war with Germany as from midnight that night.
“My father just said, ‘Oh well, here we go again.’ My mother broke info floods of tears because she knew my eldest brother was of the age to be conscripted into the British forces.
“My uncle – my mother’s brother – was in the cavalry and my father was in the infantry [in the first World War]. They would talk about Ypres, Mets and all these places. I knew them as if they were like Ballincollig and Clonakilty.
“When they had a few drinks they would talk about the battles. My father was gassed with chlorine gas. He always had chest problems and that killed him eventually . . . My uncle was buried alive with shellfire. He said, ‘I was having my dinner and next thing I woke up in hospital.’
They would talk about the mud, usually. The mud, the corpses, the rats and trench foot were the main topics of conversation. They never spoke about going over the top or killing people. My mother, because she was a driver, had to join the Civil Defence. In the first World War, when she was 16, she worked in the munitions factory for the duration. We were sent to mid-Wales, so I went off for one year. Then it was deemed to be safe to come back. There was a party at my aunts, and the air sirens went. All my aunts were screaming and crying and the air raid shelter was hopping up and down off the ground. The next day, I was back down the station and back out again. So my sojourn in Swansea was round about 24 hours.
“Immediately [after the war] there was singing and drinking and parties were held. There were no fireworks as such and people were sick of noises anyway. And then it calmed down and it was over.”
The memorabilia collector
Paddy Bassett grew up in the UK and moved to Co Cork in 1952. He remembers the war as a child and since then has collected much memorabilia
“I got one of the German incendiary bombs. All we would see would be the burnt out tin tails, they could be hanging in bushes or scattered about the place. This one fell in someone’s garden, sank and got no oxygen and it burned out. That is a memory of a firebomb raid on London, or wherever.
“As a child, one didn’t collect things for what they were other than as curiosities, which were then thrown away when the interest waned. Now, one would say, ‘I wish I had kept that bit, because it was a memory of X incident.’ Like the bit of Spitfire I’ve got. It’s only a tiny bit of metal, but I saw the dogfight and the Spitfire come off second best and the pilot bail out. I saw the aircraft come down and crash and we went to the crash site. We were told to go away. I kicked that bit of metal, picked it up and kept it. That happened about 1943.
“Wherever there was a prisoner of war (POW) camp, you could come across columns of POWs on exercise. Fairly early on in the war, there were a whole lot of Italian POWs spud picking for the local farmer.
“There are objects that have been given to me either by previous owners or objects and articles that someone just had and had no interest in. But they knew the history of it. Like some of the uniforms.
“I’ve got the summer tropical trousers and shirt of a Lieut Col in the American army who used to live close to me. That to me is of double interest. One, it is an American army uniform complete with all the badges. But it was a man called Dan Harris who gave it to me. I think that must be recorded so in the future people will be able to say this is of that period and it belonged to this bloke.”
