Irish servicemen's attitudes to the 1916 Rising

[depaor01]

Hi all,

I have been looking in vain for sources, preferably first hand, of what the average Irishman in the British Army thought of the rebellion in Dublin, and how their opinions may or may not have changed after the leaders' executions.

All I've found so far is this (fascinating) snippet: CLICK

Another piece of info I'm finding hard to confirm is the often quoted fact(?) that in Dublin at the outbreak of the Rising, the vast majority of British army regiments in Dublin were the Irish ones, their numbers later to be swelled by the addition of reinforcements from the mainland. Are there any official accounts showing this?

Thanks in advance,

Dave

[BrendanLee]

In General Maxwell’s report he gives the following list of regiments involved and where they were stationed.

® = Reserve, (ER) = Extra Reserve.

The Curragh Camp Kildare

• 3rd Cavalry Brigade ®
• 5th Battalion (Prince of Wales) The Leinster Regiment (ER)
• 5th Battalion The Royal Dublin Fusiliers (ER)
• 8th Cavalry Brigade ® made up of the 16th/17th Lancers, King Edward’s Horse and Dorset/Oxfordshire Yeomanry.
• 9th Cavalry Regiment ® made up of 3rd/7th Hussars and 2nd/3rd County of London Yeomanry.
• 25th Infantry Brigade ® (Not a full Brigade)
• 10 Cavalry Regiment ® made up of 4th/8th Hussars, Lancashire Hussars, Duke of Lancaster’s/Westmoreland/Cumberland Yeomanry.

Dublin Garrison

• Royal Barracks (now Collins Barracks). 10th Service Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers
• Richmond Barracks 3rd Reserve Battalion Royal Irish Regiment.
• Marlborough Barracks, Phoenix Park, 6th Reserve Cavalry Regiment ex-3rd Reserve Cavalry Brigade made up of 5th/12th Lancers, City of London/1st County of London Yeomanry.
• Portobello Barracks 3rd Reserve battalion Royal Irish Rifles

Athlone

• 5TH Reserve Artillery Brigade only 4 artillery pieces were operational.

Belfast

• 15th Reserve Infantry Brigade comprising 1000 men, all ranks.

Templemore

• 4th (ER) Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers ex-25th Reserve Infantry Brigade.

[CaroleHope]

I devote a chapter of my book - a biography about an Irish RC Military Chaplain who served and died with 16th (Irish) Division - to the Easter Rising. I quote below extracts from that chapter relating to the reaction of Irish servicemen, starting with a comment from Fr Willie Doyle. The number at the end of each quote is the reference source from the book and I have included those sources at the end of this reply to your topic.

The budget Willie Doyle commenced writing to his father on Saturday 13th May 1916 ended with the news he was to be “Mentioned in Dispatches.” It had begun, however, by referring to the Easter Rising, before going into further details about the gas attack. On the Easter Rising in Dublin he comments:

“I was on the point of writing to you when your ever welcome letter reached me – a thousand thanks for it (you cannot imagine how welcome your letters are) and also for the paper giving an account of the dreadful riots in Dublin. I am glad I was safe in the trenches during that time, for apparently the Bosches cannot hold a candle to the Sinn Feiners.”3

Monk Gibbon, serving with the Army Service Corps, was the son of a Church of Ireland rector in the Dundrum area of south Dublin; he joined up at the outbreak of war and was in Dublin when the Rising started. He observed that:

“For the duration of the rebellion it could be said that the sympathies of all parts of Dublin, including the slums, were on our side. There were far too many Dubliners fighting with Irish regiments, in France and elsewhere, for the population to feel that this was the right moment to embarrass England. The insurrection had little approval.”9

Eighteen year old Lieutenant Emmet Dalton, 9th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, went on to win the Military Cross for valour at the Somme a few months after the Rising; a few years after the war ended he was a General in the IRA. He said:

“I thought the insurrection was a mistake, but then I think the rest of the world might have judged it to be a mistake at that time … I thought that the insurrection as such was a hopeless gamble because it had no earthly hope of success as far as I could see … I can only speak of the people that I met and associated with at that time, and they were my contemporaries in the war and looked askance at the 1916 Rising … I think it should never have happened. I think if it had not happened the Home Rule Bill … could have been achieved …”20

Lieutenant Noel Drury, a southern Protestant committed to the union was, naturally, equally as scathing about the Rising, but also claimed to represent the opinion of his mainly Catholic battalion, 6th Royal Dublin Fusiliers:

“We got the most astonishing news on the 27th that a rebellion has broken out in Ireland. Isn’t it awful? Goodness knows what they think they are going to gain by it. It’s a regular stab in the back for our fellows out here, who don’t know how their people at home are … I don’t know how we will be able to hold our heads up here as we are sure to be looked upon with suspicion. The men are mad about it all, but don’t understand who is mixed up in the affair.” 21

Mostly the Irishmen had no time or inclination to dwell on the matter. Lieutenant Michael Fitzgerald of the Irish Guards was training in England at the time:

“Curiously enough, that was not talked about at all. On Easter Monday 1916 I was one of a battalion of Irish Guards marching near Worley in Essex. We passed by the newspaper shops as we marched along and, of course, saw what were the headlines on the billboards, ‘Rebellion in Ireland – Heavy Casualties’ or something like that. We looked at one another. When we got back to our rooms, of course, we discussed it briefly. We were angry, but we didn’t know the whole story, so we got on with our ordinary conversations until we could get the whole story. But I must say we were not impressed by the whole thing. We were too preoccupied with what was in front of us and what we had to do, and we were committed to what we had to do, and whatever might happen in Ireland after we’d gone we could do nothing about that. That was our attitude.”22

An Irish officer with the 1st Bn Irish Guards (the Irish Guards being the senior Irish regiment, recruited from all over Ireland, but strongly rural catholic) remembered:

“It must, I suppose, have been in the late spring or early summer in 1916 that news reached us of the Easter Rising in Dublin; I am uncertain for the good reason that it made no impact on the men of the battalion. All company officers got to know their men … one took part in countless discussions and could not help overhearing the men discussing things amongst themselves, but I can recollect no talk about the Rising or its implications. Perhaps the problems, all day and every day, of staying alive made news from home unreal and irrelevant. If there were differing views among guardsmen on the future of Ireland, they were as unimportant on active service as the fact that the battalion contained protestants amongst its massive majority of catholics.”23

However, some Irish sympathies were expressed for the Rising. Tom Barry went to war as a young man for adventure, before becoming radicalised and subsequently joining the IRA, after his exploits with the British Army came to an end at the finish of the war. He read the news of the Rising in a bulletin posted in his unit’s orderly room, whilst serving with the Royal Artillery in Mesopotamia:

“It was a rude awakening, guns being fired at people of my own race by soldiers of the same army with which I was serving.”24

On the other hand, Private F. Nulty from Drogheda wrote to his local paper, the Drogheda Independent:

“All the men from the town heartily agree with the measures taken to stop this rebellion said that even if it came to shooting down of our own countrymen it would be carried out to the letter.” 25

John Lucy profoundly disagreed:

“My fellow soldiers had no great sympathy with the rebels, but they got fed up when they heard of the execution of the leaders. I experienced a cold fury, because I would see the whole British Empire damned sooner than hear of an Irishman being killed in his own country by an intruding stranger.”26

Lucy, who was awaiting a commission in June 1916 following a period of sick leave, was introduced to a sergeant of the firing-squad:

“He was the first of a number of unhappy Englishmen who tried, and tried vainly, to square their acts against Ireland with me … He described in detail the way the leaders met their death. I cannot remember them all because my blood was racing … mentally I was wishing him and his like non-existent … I also refused to drink with him.”27

Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Bellingham, a Catholic from a land-owning family in County Louth, was the Officer Commanding 8th Royal Dublin Fusiliers in April 1916 and was sad to hear the news of the Easter Rising. Three days after the first shots were fired on Easter Monday in Dublin, his battalion took the brunt of the first German gas attack at Loos. He and his men were commended for their gallant stand by The GOC of 16th (Irish) Division, Major-General William Hickie. Subsequently, Lt Col Bellingham wrote to his father, asking him to express his profound sympathy to the families of five local men from close to the family estate, Castlebellingham, who lost their lives in the gas attack. The letter was published in the Dundalk Independent on 20 May 1916. Lt Col Bellingham also said:

“We had heavy casualties, but 50 per cent will return eventually. Our men were furious with the Sinn Feiners and asked to be allowed to go and finish them up. We were defending the empire, with serious losses, the very day those people were trying to help the Germans that we were fighting. It is all too sad.” 28

Monk Gibbon, after initially condemning the Rising out of hand, began to have reservations following the execution of the leaders. He had a discussion with a fellow officer:

“It would have been useless to point out to him that a traitor is someone who, having subscribed to a certain loyalty, subsequently turns his back on it. You cannot betray what you have always opposed. I enraged my companion by pointing this out to him. But his indignation soon passed. He refused to take me too seriously. The Irish were all mad. Supported by this premise, you did not allow yourself to be worried too much by any particular manifestation of their madness.” 30

Back at Loos, in the Hulluch sector, the Germans in front of the 8th Bn Royal Munster Fusiliers nailed placards in relation to the rebellion to two poles in view of the Irishmen. They were invited to:

“Throw away your arms; we give you a hearty welcome. We are Saxons. If you don’t fire, we won’t.”31

The invitation was declined:

“The Munsters, Catholic and Nationalist to a man, reacted with that extraordinary characteristic which bemuses and bewilders Englishmen. First the Munsters replied firing shots into the placards. Then they sang God Save The King. A night patrol cut their way through the enemy’s wire, strafed the Huns and captured the placards.” 32

Doyle, William, private family archive quoted in Carole Hope, Worshipper and Worshipped, Reveille Press, 2013 (Ref: 3)

Dungan, Myles, Irish Voices From The Great War, Irish Academic Press, 1995 (Ref:) 22

Dungan, Myles, They Shall Grow Not Old, Irish Soldiers and the Great War,1997, Four Courts Press (Refs: 9, 20, 21, 23, 24, 30, 31)

Hall, Donal, World War 1 and nationalist politics in County Louth 1914-1920, 2005, Four Courts Press (Refs: 25, 28)

Johnstone, Tom, Orange, Green & Khaki, The Story of the Irish Regiments in the Great War, 1914-1918, Gill and Macmillan Ltd, 1992 (Ref: 32)

Lucy, John. F., There’s a devil in the drum, Faber and Faber, 1938 (Refs: 26, 27)

Hope this helps

Carole

Edited 6 June , 2014 by Frezenberg1917

[depaor01]

Exactly what I was looking for. Many thanks indeed for the contributions.

Dave.

[Murrough]

Great post,Carole.

[CaroleHope]

Glad to have helped Dave and glad murrough liked the post too.

Carole Hope

[Theletterwriter]

Another book which touches upon this subject is Neil Richardson's "A coward if I return, a hero if I fail".

Douglas

[depaor01]

Another book which touches upon this subject is Neil Richardson's "A coward if I return, a hero if I fail".

Douglas

I borrowed that from the library. Hadn't looked through it for that subject

Thanks for the info,

Dave

[museumtom]

Dear Jim,-Just a few lines hoping they will find you in the best of health. I am still in the pink and on the land of the living. I have just arrived at the base, but expect to go up the line again soon; we don’t know the day, nor yet the hour, but hope to have a few weeks here. We are just beginning to have the fine weather here now, and it’s near time it did buck up and give us a chance of finishing the war this summer. I believe, from the way things are shaping, we intend finishing the war this summer. I believe, from the way things are shaping, we intend to have a very good try of making a job of it this year. I for one hope it will be successful, as we are not very keen on sticking another winter in the trenches. What do you think of the Sin Feiners? They are a right lot of rotters-after ruining Ireland. You should hear the boys out here “giving out the pay” about them. It’s a pity we could not get hold of at least a couple of thousand or so. I would guarantee tham a rough half-hour, and a peep into Kingdom Come at the end of it. I believe, from the papers we see, that half the city is destroyed and can hardly ever be replaced. We have had no letters from there since it started, and I need not tell you all the boys are very anxious about their friends and relatives. I also hear that there are a lot of women and children killed. No death would be bad enough for the fellows who caused all this. How did it effect you in Naas? I suppose the shops are only allowed to open at certain times under martial law, but I hope things will resume their normal way in a few days time. If you can possibly do it, send me out a few papers about that time; I will be thankful to you for them. Thank God, the National Volunteers had more sense or we were done altogether. I hope its bad effect won’t interfere with Home Rule. We have the famous ---out here; he joined us a couple of weeks ago. I suppose you know the bloke I mean—of Ladysmith fame.---is also here, landed about a fortnight ago from Egypt and is looking fit and well. There are a good few of the Naas boys kicking around here now. It’s a long lane that has no turning. Tell M--- I was asking for him; also tell him Pat—is here with me and wished to be remembered to him. Remember me to all the boys at home, although, from what I can hear, there must be very few left around Naas at all. Do you ever hear anything about Paddy----. I hope he is all right. I would like to meet him again; also C--. There will be a high old time if its our luck ever to meet in Naas again. Remember me to Bill---and W---; I expect they are still there. No more at present, so I conclude now, hoping this scribble will reach you in safety and won’t fall into the hands of the rebels (bad luck to them). P.S.-Don’t forget to tell—I was asking for him, that I, if he is there.