Madam, - Reading Oliver Fanning's Irishman's Diary of September 6th which argued for more recognition for Irishmen who joined the British army in the first World War, I thought of my grandfathers and how their first World War record is ignored.
Both my grandfathers refused to fight in that war, despite the publicity blitz at the time which assured the young men of Ireland that the war was just, noble and would be over by Christmas.
On April 23rd, 1918, a general strike in Ireland, the last action in a long campaign, served notice to the British Empire that Ireland would not be conscripted into the slaughter. It succeeded. Unlike other political activists in Europe opposed to the war - with the possible exception of the Russian Bolsheviks - Irish nationalists would no longer continue to be cannon fodder.
How many of the thousands of Irish nationalists in the trenches in 1918 supported them? Most, I believe. Had they been able to "down" tools and join in the strike without the threat of execution, they would have.
I think this stand, made by the most conservative archbishop through to the most radical Larkinist should also be remembered, maybe now more than ever. My grandfathers showed gallantry: one of them, like many others, was threatened with prison. Perhaps the Government could declare April 23rd National Neutrality Day? I won't hold my breath.
In the meantime, I wonder is Oliver Fanning also disappointed that Afghanistan and Pakistan do not commemorate the Connaught Rangers either? After all, these are the countries they "served" in.
Perhaps someone from the Connaught Rangers Association can tell us exactly what was so important to the people of Connaught that so many young lads, from small farms in the West of Ireland, had to travel thousands of miles and kill so many young lads from small farms in the North West Frontier of India? - Yours, etc.,
STEVE WOODS, Temple Cottages, Broadstone, Dublin 7.
A chara, - The account of executions of British soldiers during the first World War (An Irishman's Diary, September 11th) makes sad reading. However, there is one important omission: the thousands of unofficial executions that took place during that war, on-the-spot killings by British Army officers of terrified men who were retreating without orders and exhausted sentries found asleep at their post.
This is, of course, by a far a greater scandal and it deserves attention by historians - revisionist or otherwise. Evidence of this was mostly given by former British soldiers, many of whom were Irish and with whom I discussed these matters. Fortunately there is written evidence that this did occur.
General F. P. Crozier, in his book The Men I Killed, openly admits to this and admits to having carried out unofficial executions himself. This is the same General Crozier who caused a severe embarrassment to the British Government in 1921 when he resigned his command of the Auxiliaries in protest against the atrocities they had carried out and British government policy on Ireland.
If this is how the British military establishment treated their own men one wonders about their behaviour towards captured German prisoners of war.
The accounts of the sufferings and injustices suffered by ordinary Irish soldiers in British uniform during the First World War, provides a damning indictment of John Redmond and the British establishment here in Ireland who acted as recruiting agents for the British war machine. They were directly responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Irishmen and the wounding mentally and physically of possibly another 50,000, in a war that was absolutely no concern of theirs.
It also provides further evidence of the indebtedness of the Irish People to the 1916 leaders whose actions effectively ended recruitment to the British Army in Southern Ireland and thwarted British Government efforts to impose conscription on this country. - Is mise,
PÁDRAIG Ó CUANACHÁIN, Dún an Óir, Corcaigh.