This being the week that it is, it's hard now to recall how controversial the issue of remembrance of the Irish dead of two world wars once was, writes Kevin Myers.
In the 1980s, during the baleful and diseased suzerainty of Charles Haughey, the Army was actually prevented from honouring the Irish fallen of two world wars, though he ordered it to attend the annual service at Glencree to commemorate Nazi war dead. This, surely, was a moral nadir, one which finally matched the dismal abyss achieved by Eamon de Valera in proffering his personal sympathies to Legate Hempel on the Führer's tragic death.
- Such a loss, Herr Hempel: so much to give: and relatively so young!
- Mr de Valera, there is more. Heidi, she is dead also.
- What? His dog too? Enough already.
One of the very first British serviceman to die in the war was Pilot Officer William Joseph Murphy, the 23-year old son of William and Katherine Murphy of Mitchelstown. He and the rest of his colleagues of 107 Squadron of the RAF were massacred as they attempted the first daylight raid of the war on German warships, at dawn on Monday, September 4th, 1939.
As Oliver Murphy's research for Belvedere College suggests, and the war memorial at St Canice's Church of Ireland Cathedral in Kilkenny tends to confirm, Irish involvement in the RAF in the second World War was far higher than has hitherto been suspected.
A trawl through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission archives gives us a glimpse of these forgotten Irishmen, such as Flight Sergeant Andrew Murphy of Clifden, Kilkenny, who was shot down and killed during the Arnhem operation in 1944. Flying Officer Desmond O'Sullivan of Camolin, Co Wexford had been shot down over Denmark a couple of weeks earlier.
Did Sergeant Michael O'Sullivan, RAF flight engineer, who died on January 15th, 1945 and is buried in Castlemahon graveyard, Co Limerick, succumb at home to wounds received in action? Did Aircraftman 2nd Class Timothy O'Sullivan, aged 20, who died in September 1945, and who is buried at Kilfinane, Co Limerick, meet a similar end? And what of Aircraftman Patrick Jerry O'Rourke, aged 30, who died in November 1945 and is buried in Bray? Did he too finally perish of injuries so soon after victory was won?
Leading Aircraftman Patrick Behan most probably did. He was 21 when he died in December 1945 in 64th Military Hospital in Germany, and he is buried in Celle War Cemetery, Niedersachsen. He left behind a widow, Mary Carmel, in Crumlin, Dublin. What became of her and her young life? Corporal John Patrick O'Neill, from Tullow, Co Carlow, RAF Volunteer Reserve, went to his grave in the Pas de Calais earlier that year, aged 32.
Many more Irishmen than has perhaps been recognised served in the Royal Navy. At least five of them were killed in the opening days of the war when the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous was torpedoed. Stoker Joseph Patrick Brunt from Waterford was 22 when he died. Able Seaman Henry McCauley was 39. His body was washed ashore, and it is buried near his home in Ballydare, Co Antrim - some consolation for his parents, for the body of his brother Robert, who was killed in the first World War, was never found. No such token consolation for Elizabeth Millar, of Belfast, whose husband Samuel went down on the Courageous.
Two of the dead of the Courageous came from Cork. One was Commissioned Boatswain Patrick Joseph O'Brien of Leap, and the other was Air Mechanic Michael Anthony McCarthy of Rosscarbery. Also from Cork was Leading Stoker Patrick Joseph Murphy of HMS Valiant, son of Denis and Margaret Murphy of Skibbereen, and who died at the end of the war. These men remind us of the sea-going traditions of our maritime communities: hence Ordinary Seaman Patrick Murphy, HMS Charybdis, from Westport, Co Mayo, killed in action in October 1943, or Cornelius Murphy, HMS Hurworth, from Lismore, Co Waterford, killed in action the same day, and Able Seaman John Murphy, from Fethard, killed on HMS Matabele in January 1942.
Finally, we now know about Irish casualties in the British army, 1939-45. Definitive research on the subject by the historian Yvonne McEwen shows that 4,543 Irishmen died while serving in the army - 2,241 from the North, 2,302 from Éire, as the State was then called. Of those deaths, 1,358 occurred in Irish regiments. She believes about 100,000 Irishmen served in the army alone, a slight majority from the South. The North-South disparity for women was greater: 41 women from the South - nurses and ATS - died in the war, and 11 from the North.
There are no figures (yet) for the RN or the RAF - nor indeed for Irish casualties in the Commonwealth and Indian armies, nor the five US services: the USAAF, the USN, the Marine Corps, the army and the Coast Guard. All in all, the Irish involvement in the second World War was very substantial. Ours, truly, was a most peculiar neutrality.
Irish men and women served a foreign flag during the last World War for complex reasons - economic need, family tradition, loyalty to the crown, and because they felt that Hitler had to be opposed by force of arms. Most Irish people today are generous enough in their judgment, in their sense of identity, and in their grasp of history to accept that there is reason for pride in what these men and women did; for the cause they served was just, and in the end, victorious. On Sunday, some of us will remember them.