In the Ranks of Death: The Irish in the Second World War

Londonderry

Introduction

On 24 April 2003, a Catholic church in Ballyfermot, Dublin, was packed to capacity for a funeral. The deceased was a young man, aged only twenty-nine, which would have guaranteed a large funeral in most circumstances in Ireland. But the presence in the church of soldiers in scarlet tunics and dark oxford-blue trousers marked something very different about the young man whose death was being mourned and whose life was being celebrated. For the soldiers wore the full-dress uniforms of Her Majesty’s Irish Guards and were present to pay their final respects to one of their own.

Lance Corporal Ian Malone, of 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, had been shot dead in Basra, Iraq’s second city, on 6 April as Coalition forces advanced into the city during Operation TELIC. He was the sole fatality suffered by the Irish Guards, who were serving in 7 Armoured Brigade, known as the Desert Rats. His body was escorted to his final resting place by his fellow Irish Guards and pipers, from both the Irish Guards and the Irish Defence Forces, played laments. The funeral had been attended by senior politicians, including a TD (member of Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament) whose father had served in the Irish Guards.

That this young Dubliner had been serving in the British Army was not unusual. Ian Malone followed in the bootsteps of many Irishmen who had worn the scarlet or khaki of Britain’s army over many centuries. As long ago as Agincourt, Irishmen had been serving an English monarch and, over the intervening centuries, had earned a reputation for outstanding soldiering. To them, Wellington told Parliament, Britain owed her military pre-eminence and the Iron Duke had first-hand experience: his army in the Peninsular War was built around Irish soldiers, who probably constituted the greater part of his infantry.

In more recent years the civil unrest, the so-called ‘troubles’, in Northern Ireland had reduced the number of recruits from the Republic but there remained men, such as Ian Malone, who wanted to serve in the British Army. Their lives were at risk if their choice of profession became known to Republican terrorists and so many chose to tell even relatives and neighbours that they were working in England rather than soldiering for Britain. The intimidation endemic in those three and a half decades of terrorism even led to a rewriting of the history of the tradition of the Irish soldier in the British Army. It took courage to state publicly that one was a British soldier and Ian Malone showed such courage when he appeared in a TV documentary broadcast on RTE, Irish television, in November 2002. In that programme, All The Queen’s Men, made by Mint Productions, Ian Malone commented:

At the end of the day I’m just abroad doing a job. People go on about Irishmen dying for freedom and all that. That’s a fair one. They did. But they died to give men like me the freedom to choose what to do.

As with tens of thousands of Irishmen before him, Ian Malone chose to be a soldier in the British Army and had already served with his battalion in Kosovo in 1999 in Operation AGRICOLA. His death in action linked him even more so with that tradition of soldiering, and it is the Ian Malones of an earlier generation on whom this book will focus.

Although most of Ireland left the United Kingdom in 1922, that tradition of service continued and thousands of Irishmen and women chose to join the British forces during the Second World War. Most of them did so believing that this was the right thing to do, that fascism had to be confronted and defeated, and that Ireland as well as Britain would benefit from their decision. Many lost their lives, making the supreme sacrifice as Ian Malone did in 2003, and although their funerals may not have been as dignified, their memories live on in homes throughout Ireland.

During the Second World War at least 110,000 Irish volunteers, from both sides of the border, enlisted in Britain’s forces, in addition to the 20,000 or more who were already serving in September 1939. Many more served in the forces of Allied nations, especially those of the Commonwealth and the United States. Their story is a microcosm of the war since Irishmen were to be found in all of the war’s theatres.

They were field marshals and privates, RAF ‘aces’ and naval heroes, gaining many gallantry decorations, including at least nine Victoria Crosses, and earning the gratitude of Winston Churchill for their outstanding contribution to final Allied victory. They served as tank crews, Gunners, Sappers and ‘poor bloody infantry’, as well as flying Spitfires, Lancasters and Mosquitoes, or manning battleships, aircraft carriers and submarines.

This history of Irish involvement in the bloodiest war in history analyses the size of Ireland’s contribution, examines why they served and looks at the stories of Irishmen and women in the deserts of North Africa, the steaming jungles of Burma and New Guinea, the mud and cold of Italy, on the Atlantic’s cold waters and in the skies over Britain, Europe, Africa and Asia. Their stories are illustrated with extracts from personal accounts, official documents and gallantry citations, all set against the background of the campaigns in which they fought.

Over centuries, Irishmen have fought in all Britain’s wars but no episode in that history brings them more credit than their part in the Second World War.

In 1999, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, I researched and wrote Irish Men and Women in the Second World War, which was published by Four Courts Press, Dublin. A second book, Irish Volunteers in the Second World War, followed in 2002. With the number of veterans diminishing as the years pass, and with much more research undertaken in the intervening years, especially on the numbers who served, I thought it appropriate that the seventieth anniversary of the war should also be marked by a book paying tribute to those Irish who served and I am especially grateful to Brigadier Henry Wilson, who served in the Irish Guards, for agreeing to publish this book. While it can only provide a snapshot of the many stories from so many Irish personnel, I hope that it manages to convey some idea of the contribution they made.

May their memory never die.

Chapter 1

Rumours of War

Adolf Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor in 1933, voted into power by a nation that believed it had been wronged at the end of the Great War. Most Germans were convinced that they had not lost the war but had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by their leaders. Dissatisfaction with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the difficulties of the Weimar Republic and, above all, Germany’s vulnerability to recession in the late-1920s and early-1930s all created a desire for change. Hitler personified that desire and seemed determined to exploit it, which he did. Within days of being elected Chancellor, he expressed the need for ‘unqualified Germanization’ in the East, not only in Poland and Czechoslovakia but even to the Ural mountains. When, three weeks later, the Reichstag was burned down, Hitler suspended all civil liberties, blaming communists for the blaze. An Enabling Act gave him dictatorial powers while the purging of his SA stormtroopers, the murder of their leader, and the death of President Hindenburg allowed him to declare himself Chancellor and Führer (leader) of the German Reich.

Driven by a sense of destiny, Hitler ordered the formation of an air force, the Luftwaffe, in contravention of the Versailles Treaty and the expansion of the Army, the Heer, and Navy, the Kriegsmarine, also in contravention of the Treaty. To arm his forces he took back the demilitarized industrial regions of the Saar and Ruhr – the former through a referendum in January 1935, the latter by sending in troops in March 1936. Hitler’s determination to right Germany’s perceived wrongs would plunge Europe into the most disastrous war in history. European leaders found themselves unable to stop the slide towards a war that spread eventually to almost every corner of the world. By the time Hitler had died, and the war was over, as many as 60 million people had perished. Destruction such as had never before been witnessed on the surface of the earth had touched villages, towns and cities from Britain to Japan.

The historian A.J.P. Taylor described the Second World War as a just war, a description applied to the conflict, whilst it raged, by Pope Pius XII. Few wars deserve the description ‘just’ but is there any doubt about the evil of Nazism, or the justice of the struggle against it? Taylor even went on to describe it as a noble crusade, and ‘[d]espite all the killing and destruction that accompanied it, … a good war’.¹

Early in Hitler’s regime it was possible for other countries to rationalize what was happening in Germany – the referendum on the Saar suggested a leader willing to work through recognized political ways. But the annexation of the Ruhr, and Hitler’s attitude to Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, left no doubt about the true nature of the man in Berlin.

There had been some voices raised in warning, including that of Winston Churchill in Britain, but it was almost too late when these warnings were heeded finally and those giving the warning were no longer denounced as warmongers. Britain and France began preparations for the war that finally came to pass in September 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland and ignored a Franco-British ultimatum to withdraw.

On Sunday 3 September 1939, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, as did France. A British Expeditionary Force was preparing to cross the Channel but it was a small army compared with the one that had been fielded at the end of the Great War. Within a week, however, every Commonwealth country, save one, had entered the war in support of Britain. The one exception was Britain’s closest neighbour, Ireland, which remained neutral.

In spite of that neutrality, many Irishmen chose to take arms against Germany and joined the British forces. During the Great War, when all Ireland was in the United Kingdom, their fathers had fought the Kaiser’s Germany and filled the ranks of three army divisions, 10th (Irish), 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster), in addition to numerous battalions of the Army. Many had joined the Royal Navy or the newly formed Royal Flying Corps, but for the Irish volunteers of 1939–45 there were no Irish divisions. Although that makes it more difficult to trace the Irish who served in the Second World War, they still created two brigades, one of Royal Artillery and the famous Irish Brigade, which fought in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy. The latter was formed, at the behest of Winston Churchill, from battalions of the three remaining Irish line infantry regiments.²

In 1922, all but the six north-eastern counties of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom to become Sáorstat Éireann, the Irish Free State, which remained within the Commonwealth, with King George V as head of state. However, the new dispensation had been negotiated in the heat of a bitter war which had left considerable antipathy towards Britain in Ireland – one of the reasons for the disbandment of most of the Irish regiments of King George V’s army. Ever keen to save money, the War Office had even proposed disbanding all Irish regiments, but its final decision was to disband six infantry regiments and a reserve cavalry regiment while amalgamating other cavalry regiments.

Thus the names of the Royal Irish Regiment, raised in the reign of Charles II, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, Connaught Rangers, the Leinster Regiment, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, Royal Dublin Fusiliers and South Irish Horse were scheduled to disappear from the Army List. The final disbandment order reprieved the Royal Irish Fusiliers which was, however, reduced to a single battalion and linked with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, also reduced to one battalion. Of the cavalry regiments, only the 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars retained its identity. The most senior, 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, amalgamated with 7th Dragoon Guards to form 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, a regiment with some residual Irish identity. While also undergoing amalgamation, with 5th Dragoons, 6th Inniskilling Dragoons had a partial reprieve when the new regiment, 5th/6th Dragoons, was redesignated 5th Inniskilling Dragoon Guards in 1927; eight years later it had another change of title to become 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards.³ However, the other regular Irish cavalry regiment, 5th Royal Irish Lancers, was less fortunate. Disbanded in 1799, the regiment had been re-formed in 1858 but was considered junior to 16th The Queen’s Lancers, with which it was amalgamated to form 16th/5th Lancers,⁴ which also retained some Irish identity. Another cavalry regiment, the North Irish Horse, existed for several years on paper only.

Irishmen continued serving in Britain’s Army. Of course, all citizens of the Free State were British citizens and were not restricted to serving in the surviving Irish regiments, but could join any regiment or corps in the Army, as had always been the case. They also continued volunteering for the Royal Navy and the infant Royal Air Force, although neither the senior nor the junior service had units that were distinctively, or traditionally, Irish. For many, there was a family tradition of service in the Royal Navy or the Army and the appeal of aeroplanes to young men was obvious. In spite of the bitterness that grew out of the conflict variously called the Anglo-Irish War, the War of Independence, or the Black and Tan War, Irishmen still felt comfortable joining regiments in which their fathers or uncles and grandfathers had served, or, where those regiments had disappeared, enlisting in English, Scottish or Welsh units whose ethos they found appealing.

The surviving Irish regiments included the Irish Guards and three Infantry of the Line units – Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, Royal Ulster Rifles and Royal Irish Fusiliers. (From 1924 until 1937 the fusilier regiments, reduced to single-battalion strength, formed the Corps of Royal Inniskilling and Royal Irish Fusiliers, a linkage broken on the restoration of second battalions.) There was also a Territorial Army (TA) battalion, the London Irish Rifles, which, from 1937, was part of the Royal Ulster Rifles making the Rifles unique as an Irish regiment with a TA battalion. The Territorial Force, created in 1908, was not extended to Ireland where the old Militia, renamed Special Reserve, continued. The Territorial Force was reconstituted in 1920 as the Territorial Army, reflecting official appreciation of the Territorials’ wartime contribution but, again, did not organize in Ireland.

Some have suggested that since the United Kingdom government agreed ‘not to raise an army in Northern Ireland’ as a result of the Treaty, the TA was not extended to Northern Ireland.

Ulster had always wanted Territorials, but the circumstances were peculiar because the Government was in treaty bound with the Irish Free State not to raise an army in Northern Ireland, and was fearful of misunderstandings. These were removed on condition that the parentage of the new force was accepted entirely by the War Office, and the object of Territorial units in Northern Ireland was for Imperial defence only.⁵

The War Office saw no legal impediment to raising Territorial units in Northern Ireland, but was reluctant to do so, whereas Northern Ireland’s government was keen for such units to be raised. Northern Ireland’s prime minister, Sir James Craig, wanted an Ulster TA division, reflecting similar TA regional divisions across the UK. His proposal that such a division be formed from the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) was rejected by the War Office, which feared that this could damage relations with the Free State. A further fear existed: that Craig’s government might expect to deploy Territorial soldiers in aid of the civil power in the event of unrest.

In 1929, the War Office established a Northern Ireland Defence Committee and the possibility of a USC-based Territorial formation was reconsidered. By now Craig’s enthusiasm had dissipated, largely on advice from Sir Charles Wickham, Inspector General of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Wickham noted that many Specials were over military age, the force was almost entirely Protestant and its members’ prime role was protecting their local areas. He added that, since no religious discrimination could be practised with Territorials, there might be sectarian friction within any new formation. Most importantly, however, Territorials would be under War Office control rather than Northern Ireland’s government.

Lord Craigavon’s government⁶ agreed eventually to raising TA artillery units to man coastal defences in Northern Ireland. There was no desire for infantry units to be created, a reluctance stemming from fear that Republicans might use such units as:

training facilities [for] men – more especially in bomb-throwing and machine-gun practice – who might use the knowledge which they had acquired for subversive purposes. For some years, at any rate, it is thought inadvisable that there should be in Northern Ireland a territorial infantry organization.⁷

Thus no Northern Irish TA infantry existed before 1939. That the London Irish Rifles became the TA battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles was a result of the London Regiment, of which the London Irish constituted a battalion, being broken up in 1937 and its many battalions joining regiments with which they enjoyed affiliations.⁸ With a long affiliation between the London Irish and Royal Ulster Rifles, or its predecessors, the Rifles became the sole Irish line regiment to acquire a TA battalion between the wars.

In 1937, also, TA units were first raised in Northern Ireland. Two small coastal defence units came into being: a heavy artillery battery with a supporting engineer fortress company intended to defend Belfast Lough. Both 188 (Antrim) Heavy Battery, Royal Artillery (TA) and Antrim Fortress Company, Royal Engineers (TA) were deemed the successors of the Antrim Artillery and Militia Engineers who had earlier manned and maintained the same defences.⁹

A year later came an early expression of armed forces’ female emancipation: the raising of the Northern Ireland Group of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). On 9 September 1938, plans to recruit 20,000 women received royal assent and recruiting began later in the month. Some of the first volunteers came from Northern Ireland where the Group was administered by the Territorial Army and Auxiliary Air Force Association of County Antrim, itself created in 1937. Group HQ was in Belfast where 10th (Northern Ireland) Motor Driver Section and 8th (NI) Clerical Company were based; other company bases were in Belfast, Armagh, Omagh and Greypoint/Kilroot. An additional company, 18th (Ulster) Company RAF, at Aldergrove, subsequently formed the nucleus of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in Northern Ireland.¹⁰

Any lingering considerations for the feelings of the Irish government (the Free State had ceased to exist with de Valera’s new constitution in 1937) came to an end in 1938 when the War Office announced the creation of an antiaircraft (AA) brigade of Royal Artillery in Northern Ireland.¹¹ It might be argued that this did not infringe the Treaty, the role of AA gunners being solely defensive, but the opportunity was also taken, within a year, to revive the North Irish Horse, which had existed on paper only since 1920.¹²

Both the AA brigade and North Irish Horse were to be administered by the Antrim TA and AF Association, which also assumed responsibility for an Auxiliary Air Force squadron, No. 502 (Ulster) (Bomber) Squadron. Raised on 15 May 1925 as a Special Reserve squadron, this became an auxiliary squadron in 1937. As a Special Reserve unit, No. 502 Squadron was one of only five such squadrons, each manned by a cadre of regular personnel on permanent service, which could be brought quickly to operational status. On joining the Auxiliary Air Force the Squadron became a Territorial-type unit, manned by part-time volunteers but with permanent administrative and maintenance staff.¹³

In spite of being administered by a Territorial Army and Auxiliary Air Force Association, neither the anti-aircraft brigade nor the North Irish Horse were TA but were formed within the Supplementary Reserve, as the Special Reserve had become after the Great War. As such, 3 Anti-Aircraft Brigade and the North Irish Horse were unique. Normally, the Supplementary Reserve was formed of individuals fulfilling their training requirements with regular units, although there were some sub-units, including Royal Engineer railway companies and Royal Corps of Signals companies whose personnel were either railway or General Post Office (GPO) telegraphs specialists in civilian life. The anti-aircraft gunners were to be assigned to the field armies, with overseas responsibility, whereas equivalent TA units were assigned to UK air defence.¹⁴

Although a public announcement about the AA brigade was made in July 1938, the formation, its regiments, ancillary units and sub units, did not appear in the Army List until 1 January 1939.¹⁵ However, officer recruitment and commissioning began in December 1938 when a cadre of regular Royal Artillery personnel arrived to prepare for receiving and training recruits. Official recruiting opened on 1 April 1939 for 3 Anti-Aircraft Brigade’s two AA regiments, single searchlight regiment and supporting elements: 8th AA Regiment RA (SR); 9th AA Regiment RA (SR); 3rd SL Regiment RA (SR); 3rd AA Brigade Signal Company Royal Signals (SR); 3rd AA Brigade Company Royal Army Service Corps (SR); and 3rd AA Brigade Workshop Company Royal Army Ordnance Corps (SR). Each AA regiment included a headquarters element, three heavy AA batteries and a light AA (LAA) battery, an order of battle almost unique to 8th and 9th Regiments; with one exception it was not reflected in other AA regiments. That exception was 102nd AA Regiment, another Northern Ireland-raised regiment, formed in August 1939 as the province’s first full TA regiment.¹⁶

Creating 3 AA Brigade was part of the development of Britain’s air defences. Since it was formed at much the same time as the Cabinet decided that a British Expeditionary Force would deploy to France in case of war with Germany, it was logical that the Brigade should be assigned to the BEF. With the formation of 3 AA Brigade also following the Munich crisis, it provided the first large-scale opportunity for Northern Ireland men to commit themselves to the Army in the event of war.

Recruiting was brisk. Most of 3 AA Brigade was based in greater Belfast, including Regimental Headquarters (RHQ) and all three heavy batteries of 8th AA Regiment, RHQ, three of the four batteries of the searchlight regiment, the Brigade Signal Company, the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) Company and the Brigade Workshop of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC). Outside Belfast the Brigade’s principal element was 9th AA Regiment, with RHQ and two heavy batteries in Londonderry. The third heavy battery was centred on Ballymena and its light battery on Coleraine, while sections of the Londonderry-based heavy batteries were to be found as far apart as Limavady, Strabane and Enniskillen. In fact, 9th AA Regiment had the broadest recruiting base with, in addition to Londonderry city, counties Fermanagh, Tyrone, Londonderry and Antrim. Only the light battery of 8th AA Regiment was based outside Belfast, in North Down; a battery of 3rd Searchlight Regiment was located at Lurgan in County Armagh.¹⁷

With personnel strength for each unit set at peacetime levels, 3 AA Brigade had an overall manpower of almost 3,000. When 102nd AA Regiment was raised in August 1939, it recruited 1,037 all ranks in less than three months, although some of its officers were transferred from 9th AA Regiment which had exceeded its officer complement. By early November 1939, 3 AA Brigade and 102nd AA Regiment had attracted some 4,000 men.¹⁸

On 9 May 1940, the designations of 3 AA Brigade and its regiments changed to indicate local affiliations, becoming 3 (Ulster) AA Brigade, 8th (Belfast) AA Regiment, 9th (Londonderry) AA Regiment and 3rd (Ulster) Searchlight Regiment. Then, on 1 June 1940, 8th, 9th and 102nd Regiments were redesignated Heavy Anti-Aircraft (HAA) Regiments, although 9th included a light AA battery in its order of battle for some time thereafter, while 102nd deployed two light batteries.¹⁹

After war broke out the Brigade’s ranks were increased by further volunteers, although most personnel were peacetime Supplementary Reserve soldiers, some of whom had crossed the border to enlist, an easier task with 9th Regiment since it was so close to County Donegal. Several Donegal men used accommodation addresses in Londonderry, although one gave his address as Lifford, the county town of Donegal, which seemed to pass unnoticed.²⁰

The volunteers of 3 AA Brigade and 102nd AA Regiment were, therefore, mainly from Northern Ireland. The three regiments – 8th and 9th HAA and 3rd Searchlight (later 4th LAA Regiment) – subsequently saw widespread service, but not with the Brigade. Generally, they adopted a Red Hand of Ulster badge, with one notable exception: 9th (Londonderry) HAA Regiment preferred symbols relating to Londonderry and Ballymena for its batteries.²¹ Thus 9th Regiment followed more faithfully that Royal Artillery tradition of a gunner’s first loyalty being to his battery.

While volunteers were joining, and training with, 3 AA Brigade, the many Irishmen, from both sides of the border, already in the services also prepared for war. Irish infantry battalions were spread widely: 1st Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were in India, as were 1st Royal Ulster Rifles, while 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers were in Guernsey; their second battalions were in Catterick in Yorkshire, Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight and Malta respectively. The battalions assigned to the BEF were those ‘at home’: 2nd Inniskillings, 2nd Rifles and 1st Irish Fusiliers. In London, the Irish Guards saw their 2nd Battalion, in suspended animation since March 1919, reactivated in July 1939. As we shall see, both battalions saw service in early campaigns with the 1st Battalion fighting in Norway and the 2nd in both the Low Countries and France. Two Irish cavalry regiments were at home – 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards and 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards – with 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars in Egypt and 16th/5th Lancers in India. Thus the former two regiments joined the BEF. The North Irish Horse were still at home training and recruiting, having been reactivated in May 1939.

With war all but inevitable, reservists were recalled to bring units up to war strength. These were men who had left the Army at the end of their period of enlistment but were obliged, for some years, to rejoin ‘the colours’ in an emergency.

Thus, in the summer of 1939, there were eight Irish infantry battalions, with one partially-Irish TA battalion, which, with reservists recalled, mustered some 7,000 men. Of these the vast majority, about 90 per cent, were Irish but the cavalry regiments were much less Irish. Even 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars, which had escaped amalgamation in 1922, were only about 50 per cent Irish, while the other regular regiments had even fewer Irish soldiers; 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards were probably the least Irish. In all, the regular Irish cavalry regiments would have included about 500 Irishmen.

Including the North Irish Horse, 3 AA Brigade, 102nd AA Regiment, 188 (Antrim) Heavy Battery and Antrim (Fortress) Company, there were almost 12,000 Irishmen in identifiably Irish units. However, there were many more Irishmen throughout the Army, especially in infantry regiments, which, including Guards, numbered 138 battalions, each with a nominal strength of 786. The infantry totalled over 100,000 men.²²

As 1937 ended, with Inniskilling and Irish Fusiliers restored to two-battalion status, the Army’s strength was 197,338, with 45 battalions – 53,951 men – in India. Although calculating from official records the numbers of Irishmen serving at this time is difficult, a reasonable assumption might be that about 6–7 per cent of the infantry – excluding Irish battalions – was Irish. The eight Irish regular battalions would have deployed 6,288 men, a small proportion of them non-Irish. A figure of 5,600 for the Irish battalions and 6 per cent Irishmen across the rest of the infantry produces a total of almost 12,000 Irish infantry soldiers. In other regiments and corps, deploying 89,000 men, there had always been a lower Irish proportion. An estimate of 2 per cent for units other than the Irish cavalry – which, as noted already, probably mustered no more than 500 Irishmen – would account for some 1,770, plus those 500 cavalrymen. Therefore the Army would probably have had about 14,000 Irish soldiers. Returning reservists would have increased that total to about 16,000. Since the Army had traditionally attracted the largest proportion of Irish who chose a service life, neither the Royal Navy nor the Royal Air Force would have matched its numbers of Irishmen, and both were smaller services anyway. Aeroplanes, then still relatively new, gave the RAF a more glamorous appeal before and during the war, which suggests that more Irish may have worn air force blue-grey than navy blue, although the strong seafaring tradition in certain parts of Ireland would have ensured recruits for the Royal Navy. Nonetheless, Irish regulars and reservists in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were unlikely to bring the Irish total in all three services to more than 20,000. Even so, this was a significant proportion of Britain’s regular forces in 1939.²³

How many Irish personnel, men and women, served in Britain’s wartime forces has long been debated, with the debate reflecting the political differences between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Late in the war, a figure of 300,000 was quoted in the letters’ column of the Manchester Guardian. Another letter, in the Daily Telegraph, suggested that 150,000 Irishmen had served in Britain’s forces whereas, in the United States, the New Yorker used a figure of 250,000.²⁴ Where does the truth lie?

The numbers enlisting in Northern Ireland during the war can be ascertained. Since the Dominions Office informed Sir Basil Brooke, then Northern Ireland’s premier, that 37,282 Northern Ireland men and women had served in all three forces, even the lowest figure quoted above suggests that a small neutral state, seen to be anti-British, made a greater manpower contribution than Northern Ireland. In January 1945, Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry figures presented to the Dominions Office showed that 42,665 men and women from Éire were serving in all three forces: 27,840 men and 3,060 women in the Army; 715 in the Royal Navy (a highly suspect figure as we shall see); and 11,050 in the RAF. Strangely, a year later, this figure was reduced to 38,000 with no explanation for the reduction. Can it be that some civil servant had decided to make the two figures more balanced?²⁵

Several writers have tried, with varying results, to ascertain how many Irish served. These include Joseph T. Carroll, Robert Fisk, Brian Barton, Brian Girvin and Yvonne McEwen. In Ireland in the War Years Carroll provides a breakdown from Dominion Office files and quotes a letter from General Sir Hubert Gough – of Curragh incident fame – in The Times in August 1944 claiming that there were 165,000 next-of-kin addresses in Ireland for British servicemen and women.²⁶ Gough’s biographer, Anthony Farrar-Hockley, does not discuss this topic, although he alludes briefly to Gough’s establishment of the Shamrock Club for Irish servicemen and women in London in 1943.²⁷ Since Gough had been a supporter of unionism, he is unlikely to have favoured de Valera. That he referred to next-of-kin addresses would also cover those many Irish who joined up in Britain, or who crossed the border to enlist in Northern Ireland. In fact, the letter appeared in The Times on 3 April 1946 rather than August 1944. In it Gough expresses frustration at the government’s apparent reluctance to provide accurate figures that would allow Britain to acknowledge officially the ‘debt of honour due to those volunteers who, in spite of their country’s neutrality, crowded unasked to the aid of the United Kingdom in its blackest crisis’. His reference to the next-of-kin address figures is even more interesting than Carroll suggests as he refers to:

confidential, but trustworthy, information that, in August–September 1944, the official lists of next-of-kin notifiable in case of casualties contained upwards of 165,000 addresses in Eire [author’s italics].

If that figure was accurate and included only personnel from Éire, then it would seem that a higher figure must be applied to the Irish who joined the British forces. Adding the figure of 52,000 volunteers from Northern Ireland, arrived at in Irish Men and Women in the Second World War, would increase the Irish total to over 217,000.

Less than a week later, Ronald Ross MP, the member for Londonderry and one-time commanding officer of the North Irish Horse, wrote to support Sir Hubert’s appeal for accurate figures. Although both men were of Unionist backgrounds, it seems that Ross’s overall intention differed from that of Gough as he wrote that such information:

would not only assist the gallant volunteers from Éire, where they seem to be rewarded by victimization for their services to the cause of the United Nations, but it would also put an end to unfounded rumours that volunteers in Northern Ireland were probably lower.

Ross goes on to quote Admiralty figures, provided to the House of Commons, of Irish recruits to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines from 3 September 1939 to 31 December 1944, of whom 5,511 were from Northern Ireland and only 431 from Éire.²⁸ As we have already noted the Admiralty figures are highly suspect but Ross accepted them as accurate, having no reason to do otherwise.

Fisk looks at the figures already quoted, excluding Carroll’s, and notes that the 150,000 figure also appeared in a newspaper published by Catholic missionaries in Basutoland (now Lesotho). He comments that Northern Ireland politicians felt embarrassed by figures suggesting that there were more volunteers from Éire than from Northern Ireland, a comment supported by Ross’s letter. Fisk also includes comments from Irish advocates to the effect that if Éire’s contribution was only 42,000 volunteers then ‘how could it be that as many as eight Victoria Crosses and a George Cross were awarded to Irishmen from the twenty-six counties when Canada, with a million of her citizens in the armed forces, received only ten?’ Anthony Cave Brown’s statement, in A Bodyguard of Lies, that ‘Ireland, in spite of her neutrality, had permitted 165,000 of her men to leave the country and serve in the British armed forces’²⁹ is included with a hint of scepticism. That hint of scepticism notwithstanding, Cave Brown’s figure may be much closer to the truth than Fisk was prepared to accept. In the end, however, Fisk draws no conclusion on the numbers of Irish in the British forces.³⁰

Barton notes the 1943 protest by Germany’s minister in Dublin, Hempel, that ‘despite their professed neutrality, they [Irish ministers] were treating Britain more leniently than Germany’. He further notes that over 100,000 Irish worked in British munitions factories, without restriction, and that ‘upwards of 60,000 enlisted in crown forces’. Those latter enlisted either in Northern Ireland or in Britain with 28,654 Éire citizens joining the Army, 9,426 the Royal Air Force and 4,893 the Royal Navy. In addition, Barton refers to about 5,000 NCOs and other ranks of the Irish Defence Forces who deserted to join the British forces or to work in Britain, a phenomenon also noted by Fisk who puts the number at 7,000. Barton notes that southern Irish in British uniform earned 780 decorations, including eight Victoria Crosses. By pointing out that between September 1941 and May 1945, 11,500 individuals from Northern Ireland volunteered, while recruiting centres in the province approved a further 18,600 recruits from across the border, he emphasized the embarrassment felt by Brooke since the figure supplied to him of Northern Ireland personnel in the forces must have included a proportion of recruits who had crossed the border to enlist.³¹

Girvin provides a well-researched discussion, adding to the material already presented.