It has been estimated that more than 200,000 Irishmen fought in the first World War. All were volunteers. Between 35,000 and 50,000 (approximately) were killed. At the Islandbridge memorial gardens in Dublin the figure is put at 49,435.
At a "Pathfinding Conference" to promote the memory of all Irishmen who died in the first World War, held in Dublin last March, Prof Keith Jeffery of Queen's University Belfast put the figure at approximately 35,000. Their deaths, he said, represented "the greatest catastrophe in Ireland since the Famine".
The Irish had a long tradition of joining the military. In the 18th century, when banned from joining British Crown forces, they enlisted in large numbers in French and Spanish armies.
After the Napoleonic wars in the early 19th century, Irishmen were allowed join Crown forces and by 1830 were said to represent (at 40,979) 42.2 per cent of the regular British army.
In 1878 a fifth of all British army officers were Irish and by 1914, before the war began, there were 58,000 Irishmen serving in the regular army. Between 1814 and 1914 joining the army was traditional in many Irish families and was seen as being neither anti-Irish nor pro-British. It was just part of the Irish way of life.
Danny Tiernan of the Connaught Rangers Association estimates that between 3,599 and 4,000 men of the regiment were killed in the first World War, 66 of them from Co Roscommon. They included three Wynne brothers from Boyle.
In all, 76 men from Boyle were killed in the first World War, and a total of 317 from Co Roscommon. (A total of 42 Roscommon men were killed in the War of Independence and are widely remembered there in stone and monument.)
At the Pathfinding Conference in Dublin last March it was also disclosed that of the 116,972 Irishmen who volunteered to serve in British regiments up to the end of January 1918 (the war continued until November 1918) 64,557 were Catholic and 52,365 were Protestant.
Of those figures 17,092 were Ulster Catholics, 45,798 Ulster Protestants; 25,307 were Leinster Catholics, 4,989 Leinster Protestants; 17,842 were Munster Catholics, 1,168 were Munster Protestants; 4,316 were Connacht Catholics, 410 were Connacht Protestants.
Only in Ulster did Protestants outnumber Catholic volunteers among recruits to the British army.