Sir, – I was surprised to read Minister for Defence Alan Shatter has indicated that a pardon will be given to those soldiers who deserted Oglaigh na hÉireann during the Emergency period 1939/1945 (Front page, January 25th). There is a fundamental difference between those Irishmen who for whatever reason chose to directly join the British forces during the second World War and those who joined our Defence Forces and subsequently deserted during those years. It would appear that Mr Shatter does not accept this difference.
There should be no linking of the appalling horrors of the Holocaust and the proposed amnesty for those who deserted our country at a critical time.
How is it untenable that deserters were dishonourably discharged on returning to Ireland and as a result were excluded from State employment? Would Mr Shatter consider that the deserters should have been given parity for State employment with the circa 30,000 demobilised soldiers who had served our country loyally?
An amnesty for those who deserted will send out the wrong message to those currently serving in our Defence Forces and to those who will serve in the future. That such a proposal should be supported by the serving Minister for Defence defies credulity. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – While we should all be grateful for those who fought and defeated fascism during the second World War, including the circa 5,000 men who deserted the Irish Army to join the British army, the issue of a pardon is not as straightforward as your Editorial (January 26th) maintains.
Emergency Powers Order No 362 did not “strip these soldiers of pensions”; they lost their entitlements from the date they absconded. Not only were their entitlements paid in full up to that date but the Southern authorities made administrative provision to facilitate the payment of British pensions thereafter.
True, those deemed to have absconded (after a 180-day threshold, nearly six months), were barred from government-funded employment for a period of seven years. Apart from the stigma this was an irrelevance in practical terms since their desertion would have denied them a military discharge certificate, the necessary prerequisite for securing any employment. And in the context of the high unemployment and mass emigration of the post-war years it is a moot point as to what difference EPO 362 made in practical terms.
One of the grievances cited by campaigners (and your Editorial) is that these men were not dealt with through the normal channels of military justice. But would the rounding up, court martialing and imprisonment of nearly 5,000 men have been preferable, especially at a time when places like the Curragh were bursting at the seams with internees? Like neutrality itself, de Valera’s “one-size-fits-all” approach was a pragmatic (and fiscally neutral) response to a difficult and complex situation.
If there is to be a pardon we need to be clear what we are saying “sorry” for. Minister for Defence Alan Shatter’s speech on Monday at the opening of The Shoah in Europe exhibition provides a clue. “In the context of the Holocaust, Irish neutrality was a principle of moral bankruptcy”.
This is a nonsense and a classic case of reading history backwards. The war was fought by the Allies not to end the Holocaust but to defeat the Axis powers militarily. And, morally bankrupt or not, neutrality was the favoured policy of nearly every state at the time. Indeed, the two states that provided the vast bulk of Allied manpower, the USSR and US, were neutral – until they were attacked.
As a mark of respect for all those Irishmen who served at the time, whether on the beaches of Normandy or at home, this ill-conceived proposal should be dropped. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Re: “Pardon on the way for Irish who fought, says Shatter” (Front page ,January 25th): My late father, George Watson, an Englishman from Co Durham, served in the fleet air arm of the British royal navy on small aircraft carriers escorting convoys in the North Atlantic and on arduous winter convoys to Arctic Russia. His ship was attacked by enemy submarines and aircraft numerous times and in winter in the freezing Arctic seas the ship was in danger of rolling over due to the weight of ice that formed on the decks or being overwhelmed by ferocious storms.
As with many veterans, my father rarely talked about his war-time experiences, but I remember vividly that he said the bravest men he served with during the war were men from the Republic of Ireland. When I asked him why, he said: “When they went home on leave to Ireland they were out of reach of the British military authorities and could have stayed safely at home if they wanted. There was nothing to force them to come back but even in the blackest days of the war when things were at their worst they always came back to fight. Every one of them without fail.”
Men like that are a rare breed and Ireland should be proud of them. Every one of them. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Pardon on way for Irish who fought, according to Minister for Defence, Alan Shatter (Front page, January 25th).
That is good news. But now let him take a good look at what happened to soldiers’ children, charged and taken to court by the NSPCC and the ISPCC, to be criminally charged and sentenced to an industrial school for up to 16 years or life. Yes, I mean life, because the nuns could have you sent to a Magdalene Laundry or a mental institution just because your father was in the British forces, and then have it put on your records (like it stated on my records that went in with me to the industrial school at the age of three years old). Letters that were sent to the industrial school from the parents were sent on to the Department of Education. So the children never got to see their parents; the Department of Education and the nuns made us orphans. When we were released from the industrial schools there was no family to turn to.
We also were to be given the worst treatment possible, because as you know Ireland did not like the British. The Irish government gave the British government the bill for the children and the British government paid.
The Irish people who did join the British forces must have been the bravest people going, knowing that they were very likely to face death; to find that if they made it back home to Ireland, their own government and people rejected them: and this is supposed to be a good Christian country.
Ireland did not just incarcerate its own children; it also incarcerated a lot of foreign children in the industrial schools as well.
Proud to be a British soldier’s child. – Yours, etc,