TANKS, NO THANKS

Private John Dwyer

War poet Wilfred Owen died on this day one hundred years ago.

Below are some couplets in memory of my uncle, John Dwyer, a Private in the Civil Service Rifles, who died on the Somme, in the attack on High Wood, on 15 November 1916.

When he was 9 years of age, John won a book prize, presented to him by Padraig Pearse, at the Mayo Feis in 1903.

TANKS, NO THANKS

A day in September
A day to remember

From a prize at the Feis
To a tangled wire mesh

A new killing machine
For the first time was seen

Tanks were brought into play
Though not fit for the fray

General Barter had warned
His advice had been scorned

The big guns were silent
All over the salient

Then the tanks were let loose
Though they weren't fit for use

Infantry on their own
As the first tanks broke down

Other tanks went on fire
As the death toll climbed higher

Each tank that got lost
Had a high human cost

The attack on High Wood
Had a high cost in blood

As the soft bullets ripped
John's guts were unzipped

The remains of John Dwyer
Were lost in the mire.

Just a name on a wall
An imperial scrawl

Every death on the Somme
Resonated at home

A memorial card
Shrapnel's bitter-sweet shard

Bloody gentlemen all
In their rise and their fall

THANKS, NO TANKS

The corps commander overruled General Barter and insisted in deploying the tanks. This effectively resulted in depriving the infantry of artillery cover as the tanks proved more than useless in the event. In the subsequent witch-hunt General Barter was summarily relieved of his command. The General had earlier described the orders under which he was operating as "damned silly orders" which he, nevertheless, loyally carried out. The Official History eventually acknowledged this "tactical blunder". But by the time this vindication was published in 1938, Barter had been dead for seven years.

UNCLE LARRY

Uncle Larry NOT
Click on image for a larger version

Uncle Larry is not my uncle. Nevertheless, although I never even met him, I am calling him Uncle Larry. There is a tradition in our family that virtually all relations in the parents' generation, however distant, are known as uncles or aunts, and he is Mai Medlar's, my mother's cousin's, uncle.

But it's only after reading about and actually listening to his stories that you will really understand why I call him Uncle Larry. He is an open and warm person, has a keen sense of observation and an even keener sense of fun. And he does not take himself too seriously, unlike many of his contemporaries.

You will also understand why I refer to him in the present tense, though has been dead since 1986. He was exactly 90 years of age on the 12th of March 1978 when his son-in-law Dave recorded these stories.

BACKGROUND
I have had Larry's stories up on my website for a good while, but I thought I might bring them to a new audience in this blog post. My format is to give a commentary on the story and then let you listen to Larry himself tell it. These are all first hand stories, straight from the horse's mouth, and they are now part of history.

Larry was one of two children born to John Medlar and his wife Ellen (née Brennan). John was a blacksmith from Paulstown, Co. Kilkenny, and Ellen was from nearby Ballyellen, Co. Carlow. She had been in domestic service in Belvedere Place in Dublin when she married John and they were living in Fenian St. when the children were born, Patrick in 1885 and Larry in 1888.

John then went to America (USA) to his sister and was to send for the family when he found work. Unfortunately he died and Ellen was stranded in Dublin with two young children. So she farmed them out to their grandparents and went back into domestic service, this time in Merrion Square.

Patrick went to the Medlars in Paulstown where he became imbued with the cause of Irish independence, but that is another story.

This is the story, or part of it, of Larry, who was farmed out to the other grandparents on the upper Ballyellen lock on the Barrow River, which was part of the Grand Canal system.

Ellen subsequently remarried and settled in James's Street and the two lads came back to town where they remained and made their careers.

So Larry's stories are located initially in Ballyellen and then in Dublin.

THE STORIES
A Kilkenny Hanging

Larry's granny went to see the last public hanging in Kilkenny. I don't know what year this was but it could well have been a Fenian hanging, or even this one.



Lock, Cot and Barrow

If there's water, kids will fall in. I don't know how many times I fell into the Dodder myself but this sounds a little more serious. I wasn't fished out. I had to find my own way to the bank but fortunately I wasn't spanked when I got home.



Skool

We used to need an election or a freeze up or a bout of flu to get off school. Country life was much simpler. An excess of the gargle the night before and the teacher's hang over meant the day reduced to morning prayers, led by the teacher's sister. And off the pupils scooted home.



Larry's 1st Communion and Confirmation

There are not many people have the wheels come off just after they make their first holy communion. And then there's confirmation where Larry, anything but dressed for the occasion, joined his older brother in church and made a premature confirmation. I don't know if he ratified it two years later.



Locks & Barges

The canal was apparently used for more than just transporting cargo and Larry mentions the party boats with their canopies and well dressed ladies on their way to a day out at St. Mullins.

The lock where Larry was brought up was part of the canalisation of the Barrow river to make it navigable. It was part of the Grand Canal network which actually linked the Ballyellen Lock and the Harbour in Jame's St. where Larry was later to live and where his brother Patrick was to have a thriving undertaker business.




Locks, Eels & Salmon

The size of the lock-keeper's fee clearly necessitated a supplementary source of income. While Larry's grandfather and grandmother were supplying (legal) eels to Billingsgate, his uncle Pat was extending his activities into some slightly trickier areas.




1916

It's easy to forget the difficulties posed for families by the 1916 Rising when parts of the city were under lockdown. James's St. which Larry refers to was the location of the South Dublin Union, one of the flashpoints of the rising. Mrs. Mortimer was my granny. Larry also refers to Seán Connolly who led the abortive attack on Dublin Castle, killed a policeman and was himself shot by a sniper shortly afterwards.




Andy Duffy's Revolver

It was not good to be caught in possession of a revolver during the War of Independence. Andy Duffy was a pawnbroker married to my great aunt Lil. He was nervous about a revolver on the premises and asked Larry to get rid of it. On his way back home Larry nearly got caught by a Tans patrol. He eventually hid the revolver up the chimney in his place of work, the Dispensary. He subsequently passed it on in a pub to another man who promptly shot it off accidentally. Everyone was very nervous as the city was on high alert that day. Nothing came of it though.




Bloody Sunday

Larry was in Croke Park on Bloody Sunday and saw the shooting. On his way out he went to help a man on the ground and gave him some whiskey he had on him - only to find out that the reason the man was on the ground was that he was already drunk and couldn't hold his balance in the surging crowd. Larry was disgusted. But it is probably one of the few, if not the only funny story to come out of Croke Park on that day.




Civil War & The Four Courts

Larry was working in the Tivoli Theatre on Burgh Quay and after a few beers and a nosh up was asleep in his brother's house on Usher's Island when he was woken up, in the early hours of 28 June 1922, by the shelling of the Four Courts which effectively started the Civil War.




Alfie Byrne & Big Jim Larkin

The family had a fair amount of contact with Alfie Byrne. Partly because Larry's brother Patrick was on the Corporation (City Council) with him. They were effectively non-competing because Alfie's base was northside of the Liffey. They used to go to conferences of the Royal Liver Assurance, for whom Patrick was an agent. This story is probably from one such conference.

Alfie Byrne tells Larry that he sold his pub in Talbot St. to fight Jim Larkin in an election, which Alfie won.




God Save the King!

Larry and Alfie Byrne were clearly discommoded when they found themselves standing for "God Save The King",




Russell the Counsellor

Dr. Russel worked in the Dispensary (in Castle St.) and subsequently became the CMO of the Corporation. Larry clearly thought him quite a character.

A neighbour of Larry's got a dose from a woman but didn't want to go to the doctor with it. So Larry brought him in to Russell who inspected the damage and made a most impolite suggestion.




Russell the Dentist

Larry decided that the cure for his toothache was an extraction. Dr. Russell brought him over to the window, got him in a head hold, told him to open his mouth and yanked the tooth out with the "forceps". Larry was left for a week with an abscess which Russell then had to lance.




Russell the Prankster

Russell almost unhorsed a passing officer.




Prices & Shopping

The price of a pint or a packet of Woodbines. Thomas Street good for shops and street traders at Christmas.




Medlar & Claffey, Undertakers

Medlar and Claffey was a significant undertaking business in Dublin with branches in various parts of the city over time. The Medlar/Claffey partnership broke up in 1927.

Larry used to give a hand with the brother's business betimes and here tells of a trip from Clonliffe Rd. to Valentia Island, when the funeral went astray and the hotel had no "food" available.




THAT'S ALL FOLKS

My 1916

1916 Exhibition - Nightshot of Pearse St. Library
Click on any image for a larger version

I didn't set out to photograph 1916 in 2016 so all of these photos are opportunistic - a moment observed, a flash of inspiration, and CLICK.

When Michael Edwards set Remembering 1916 as the theme for this year's photo competition I wondered if I might have anything to enter. In fact an early version of the title (2016 remembering 1916) would have meant that any entry would have to have been taken in 2016. So I was scratching my head around the middle of the year and eventually identified the five shots below as being suitable. As it happens, they were all taken within that year and I ended up putting them in for the competition.

As you are not supposeed to put any writing on the picture mounts they are all anonymous as far as the adjudicator is concerned and the photo has to speak for itself.

So I thought I'd take the opportunity, now that the competition is over, to fill in a little of the background to the pictures.

Seomra 1916 - Coláiste Mhuire

This is the room in Parnell Square where nationalist leaders came together in September 1914 and decided to have a Rising. It was a broad decision in principle and the details were sketched in later over the course of the following year. The room was in what was then the headquarters of Conradh na Gaeilge, and it was both the library and the office of the Secretary General, Seán T Ó Ceallaigh.

The backstory is here.

The Foggy Dew - RHA

I am not an arty person and had never been inside the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). But I read in the Irish Times in January 2016 that there was a painting on show there of the RHA's old premises in Abbey Street on fire during the Rising.

I have an interest in the artist, Gordon Brewster, who lost two paintings in that fire and I got permission from Mick O'Dea, President of the RHA and the artist concerned, to go in and photograph the painting for a talk I was giving on Brewster.

Well, when I got in the door and saw the exhibition I was blown away.

The rest of the story is here.

Tarting Up - The Padraig Pearse Pub

I was heading into Pearse St. library one day when I saw the Padraig Pearse pub across the road in the course of being tarted up for the centenary year (better late than never). They were about three quarters of the way through the signage with one of Pearse's heads (the good side) still sitting on the ground waiting for a lift.

I wonder what Pearse would have thought of a pub being named after him just down the road from where he lived. Certainly in the few years run up to the Rising he was loudly proclaiming his denial of some of the pleasures of life, as here.

Two Volunteers - GPO

This pair caught my fancy passing the GPO one day. Two volunteers, one military, one social, the latter mopping up some of the mess not resolved since the Rising.

Who'd have thought the modern Irish State, a whole century on, would need soup kitchens for its poor and disinherited. Some shattered dream.

The GPO was restored but Irish society is still cracked down the middle and the soupers are still with us.

Clery's - O'Connell St.

Since I retired and started taking more photos around the city I'm inclined to look up more than I used to and it's amazing what you see sometimes.

On this occasion the flithered flag flying over Clery's really gave me a jolt. There is both cheek and negligence here, and that right across the road from the iconic GPO. Indeed, in its day Clery's was an icon in itself.

But this vista is a searing comment on what has not been achieved by the Rising or the State which followed it, when staff could be turfed out into the street while the moneybags scuttled off with pocketfulls of dosh gained from a disgraceful financial wheeze.

The tattered tricolour says it all.

So there you have it. Much to my surprise all five of the photos made it into the competition final in the individual (non photo club) category and Seomra 1916 came through as the overall category winner.

Thrilled I am.

JOB OXO

Click any image for a larger version

There I was, walking past the GPO, on the Clery's side of the road when I saw this. "What" I wondered "is going on here?"

Were they doing a retake of the The Spy Who Came In From The Cold? It certainly had resonances of the modern Checkpoint Charlie with its fake soldiers. Except this was the GPO and not McDonald's in the background.

Then it struck me. I have been complaining for years about the flying of the national flag after dusk and boring people with the tale of the soldier who used to pass through my office in Government Buildings every day to take the flag down from the roof.

Well it's happening again, in front of my eyes. Halleluia. These are real soldiers and they are about to take the flag down from its pole at dusk.

This is something that every child in the nation should be brought to see. It should be on the tourist trail. After all, people line up to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, don't they?

The flag is carefully unclipped from its moorings. And just by the way, be thankful you can't fly the tricolour upside down, though I once saw a video of a Yank having a go at it.

The flag is ceremonially folded ...

... and draped over the NCO's arm. And off they go, to return at dawn.

Sign of a job well done and full marks to the defence forces for once again showing us all how to respect the national flag.

BROKEN BISCUITS

Click on any image for a larger version

Raheny library has a very interesting exhibition running through the month of August. The theme is W&R Jacob Biscuit Factory and the 1916 Rising.

It draws on the Jacob's Archive and that of Douglas Appleyard, both recently presented to the City Council, and on a number of other sources. It is curated by Ellen Murphy who is responsible for the Jacob's archive in the Dublin City Library & Archive.

So who needed the Pillar, or the Guinness Tower, or the Smithfield Distillery for that matter.

Long before Jim Figgerty and the public's obsession with how the fig got into the fig roll.

This little gem from the 50th anniversary of 1916. Two names which will be familiar to the oldies. Charlie Haughey as Minister for Agriculture, no less, congratulating Jacob's marketing director, Gordon Lambert, on the company's 1916 Jubilee Booklet and thanking him for the box of biscuits.

Do drop in and check out the rest of the exhibition. There's heaps of background here.

And the title of this post. Well, in my day, you could buy broken biscuits by weight in a brown paper bag. Put some of the posher biscuits within reach of the rest of us. A serious contribution to cherishing all the children of the nation equally.

REMEMBERING 1916

Click on any image for a larger version

This competition is now over and this post traces it from beginning to end. I have amended the post to bring it up to date (17/2/2017). There were five clubs entered in the clubs category and each got a month's exhibition. This was followed by an exhibition of the finalists and included those from the individual (non-club) category.

There was a set theme for this year's competition: Remembering 1916. This can be interpreted as loosely as you like and looking at the first club to exhibit, the Howth photo club, there is no shortage of ingenuity and imagination out there.

I am starting this post with a some shots which appealed to me from this first round.

Anyway, to the business. Why did I pick these particular photos? What was it that appealed to me?

HOWTH
August
The opening shot above is from a re-enactment of the Rising. I like the black and white and then the colour in the proclamation. Clery's in the background is also evocative as it was destroyed in 1916 and has recently been wrecked again, this time by the vultures.

The printing of the proclamation was a story in itself and much ingenuity was called for to get the finished product onto the streets. Having had an Adana hand press in my day I'm a sucker for anything to do with the old style printing where each individual letter had to be set up. I can nearly smell the ink looking at this photo. And I like the upside down "I" in the word RISING which I take to represent the many imperfections in the finished product on the day.

A standard posed shot but here counterpointing 2016 and 1916 as a young boy reflects on the fate of an ancestor, a member of the Citizen Army, killed during the Rising.

And finally, that element of 1916 that had been ignored by nationalists for most of the century since, the battle of the Somme in the latter half of 1916. I had an uncle killed in a High Command cock-up there in September 1916 and I'm glad to see this aspect of the times coming to the fore.


SUTTON
September

Click on any image for a larger version

This could have been a very conventional shot but it isn't. I like the quirky composition with the heads behind the papers. And full use is being made of that wonderful series of archive material The Revolution Papers which will be continuing publication up to the end of the year. Today's Miriam Lord adds her own quota of quirkiness.

I think it was an Italian squadron which actually provided this tricolour at the end of the day. But it is a fabulous shot and reminds me of the 1966 Vampire flypast at the GPO.

This apparently casual shot has many layers of meaning, at least for me. The GPO is the backdrop but it is the layman and not the nun who is collecting for the poor who were supposed to have gone by now. But what of this rare religious bird? What does she do for a living. Educate, rehabilitate or just pray? Not forgetting the wee ad for the visitor centre which includes a 1916 museum.


ST. BENEDICT'S PHOTO GROUP
Donaghmede
October
Some interesting entries this month from the local photo group.

A few personal favourites below.

We might as well start with a bang. There are a lot of features in this photo which might escape the casual observer. You need just the right light, a convenient puff of wind and a good sense of positioning at the very least.

This is a very creative shot of the Children of Lir in the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square (just in case you were wondering). The sculpture itself is a beautiful piece of work but quite hard to photograph with any originality. The use of black and white adds a touch of the ethereal and the grotesque.

My first reaction to this one was "What the hell has this got to do with 1916?". Then I noticed the columns and realised that it was a view FROM the Custom House. Very clever.

Then I wondered "What had the Custom House got to do with 1916 other than look down on the Helga shelling the city centre?". But what I didn't know, and just checked out, was that 200 prisoners were held in the courtyard during the Rising without food, water or any treatment for their wounds.

And there must have been other people who knew the score, as these variations (above and below) attest. Nice thinking here and proof that, to the photographer, no source is inexhaustable.

This one made me smile. Maybe it's a bit on the cheeky side. But beautifully taken, right down to the water drops.

This one is not as easy as it looks. The idea is good and maybe not entirely original. I've tried it myself without success. Angles and lighting are very tricky and this shot has captured it all.

This is a particularly dramatic shot and must have been captured in the depth of a wet night to get that degree of abandonment.

This is a very creative photo which relies on some clever post-processing. The location of the Connolly statue limits very much the angles from which it can be taken. It is very hard to get any sense of depth or space with the rear wall so close to the statue and the traffic in front. It is almost like trying to photograph Connolly crossing the road among today's buses and cars. This is a beautiful piece of work.



RAHENY CAMERA CLUB
November
This month it's the turn of my own local club.

There were fewer entries this month than previously, though there may be more to come as the Bank Holiday intervened.

Some shots that struck me are reproduced below and I'll just make some general comments at the end.

Overall, I had difficulty seeing the link between 2016 and 1916 in some of the photos though I may have been missing the subtleties involved. I was glad to see that again this month's club had not forgotten the Somme and I was also glad to see some black and white entries.


SWORDS VIEWFINDERS
December

While this photo is clearly a re-enactment of 1916, it has an added dimension in its controversial backdrop honouring the constitutional thread in the struggle for home rule, which backdrop was shamefully removed following protests from those whose version of Irish history is a begrudging one.

I also like the relatively high black and white content in this month's exhibition.

I'm not sure how much symbolism is intentional here, but for me it is a very provocative photo and all the better for that.

I like the composition in this photo. It suggests lots of movement and is not shot from the usual angle. Unfortunately there is another similar photo in this month's exhibition.

Unfortunately my reproduction here doesn't do this photo justice. But it caught my eye for something of an abrasiveness or shrillness about it.

This representation of Frongoch is of a section of a ceramic panel showing various features of the camp site and its environs. I have to declare a particular interest in Frongoch and its surroundings and this photo caught my fancy.

I'm not sure how the connection with 1916 works here unless it is the funeral of a well known rebel. I note the undertakers are Masseys who have laid many of my family on the Ma's side to rest. I like the photo for its sense of dignity in death without overdoing the macabre.

The Swords Viewfinders are exhibiting their entries up to the end of December.


FINALISTS
February

The final exhibition in this year's competition has now gone up. It consists of the ten finalist images from each of the clubs' entries and also the ten finalist images in the public category. That makes 60 pictures in all in the final adjudication. That will take place on the evening of 16 February 2017 when the prizes will also be presented.

I'm not going to say too much about this particular exhibition as most of it comes from material covered above and I have entered the competition myself and am still in the running.

The Clubs

Many of the photos I have reproduced above have gone on into the final as have many others.

My own favourite is the one above. It shows great imagination and makes great use of two commemoration exercises, The Revolution Papers and a current newspaper supplement. It shows a good sense of humour and is well composed. Let's see if the judges, whoever they may be, agree with me.

The Individuals

Again I have to compliment Michael Edwards for introducing this new category in the centenary year. It is clear from his shop and Facebook page that he is interested in promoting photography among the wider public and this is a great incentive for people to jump in and click.

This is the new centenary wall, so to speak, the finalist images in the public category. I think it was probably planned for this category to have its own exhibition, as did the clubs, but between on thing and another, including Christmas and Santa, the programme fell behind schedule. I suspect the clubs may have been getting a bit impatient for the final adjudication. In any event the public category went directly into the final phase.

You can see from that display that the images covered a broad range of 1916 related locations.

This one evokes what must be a unique event. A non-combatant wife shot in Ringsend during the Rising while her husband perished on the Western Front on the same day. She died from her wounds a few days later. He fell in Hullach, in Northern France, where a German gas attack poisoned 385 members of his regiment. One thing we have learned during the recent commemorations is that the Rising cannot be considered in isolation from WWI, and I was glad to see that theme taken up in a number of entries.

Clerys also figures in a number of entries. It is a searing comment on what has not been achieved by the Rising or the State which followed it, when staff could be turfed out into the street while the moneybags scuttled off with pocketfulls of dosh gained from a disgraceful financial wheeze. The tattered tricolour says it all.



THE FINAL
16 February 2017

And so the great moment finally arrived. The judge had a good pedigree and we were all anxiously awaiting the outcome. Kay's café were lining up the refreshments and the prizes were out on display. Some very handsome bronze plaques commemorating individual Proclamation signatories and some medallions commemorating all of them.

Unfortunately Kyran couldn't make it to the presentation but he had done his adjudication and the prizewinners in the overall clubs category had little rosettes beside their exhibits.

So it was up to Michael to do the honours, and we were all on tenterhooks to see who was the overall winner of this prestigious competition.

The Clubs

And the well deserved winner was Pat Carey from St. Benedict's Photo Group, the local club in Donaghmede.

Pat later posed proudly with his winning shot, which was one of those I had picked out at the Benedict's exhibition (above) as a favourite.

And just to let you have another look at it in all its glory.

Pat was actually the first person I met when I arrived on the scene last night. He told me I had embarrassed him, but fortunately not mortally! It turned out that the nine favourites I had picked out of the Benedict's entries for inclusion above had all been his. Seems like we both have good taste when it comes to photography.

The Individuals

I had a few shots riding in the individual category, but when I checked out that category I didn't see any rosettes on the wall, so I was a bit disappointed. Then I noticed that cards had appeared on three of the entries since I last saw them and I assumed that these were the prizewinners in that category. None of them were mine.

As it happened, Michael started with this category, though I missed him saying that. He started praising a photo for its simplicity, relevance, and natural lighting and I was trying to figure out which one that was when it turned out to be the one below, Seomra 1916.

I was thrilled as this was one of mine and it turned out I had won the individual category in the first year of its existence as a separate category.

I have been taking photos since the 1950s and this is the first time I ever won anything in a competition.

You can get the backstory on the photo here.

Raheny

I'm glad to report that, again this year, Raheny did well on the prizes front.

Anne Nathan

Anne Nathan with another lily, and this one is bleeding.

Dom O'Brien's lady with a rifle in one hand and a mobile phone in the other.

A special prize for Sharon Hughes's look back to Joseph Plunkett through a modern child's history homework and two different generations of letter, one on paper from Joseph to Grace and one on a mobile phone referring to the homework.

And I'm in Raheny myself.

---

Next Year

Finally, Dermot announced the theme for the next (2017) competition, Our Town - what makes where we are from special.

---

I would just add a general qualification/apology to any of the photographers who may be looking at their own photos on this post. There may be slight variations in lighting and perspective from the originals as I photographed the exhibits on the wall under the prevailing lighting and in some cases had to do a little post-processing to get back as near to the original as possible.

Thanks to Michael Edwards and the Howth, Sutton, Donaghmede, Raheny & Swords Photo Clubs for allowing me to reproduce the images

---