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.

TOM KETTLE

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There are a few things to be said about St. Mary's church, Haddington Rd.

It is a beautiful church.

It is the only Roman Catholic church in Dublin, and perhaps in the country, that has a quality plaque on the wall commemorating parishioners who died in WWI. We are used to seeing a profusion of these in Protestant churches but this is different.

The church is also host to a series of very high quality lectures, sometimes on church related topics and sometimes less so. They are part of the "Patrick Finn Lecture Series", so named after the, now sadly deceased, enlightened Parish Priest who instituted them.

Tonight (17/11/2016), it was fitting that the talk was about Tom Kettle, who was one of those parishioners who fell at the Somme on 9 September 1916.

And it was also fitting that the talk was given by Maurice Manning, who, incidentally, was one of my tutors in UCD in the 1960s. I have him to thank for giving me access to what was then a restricted access book by Paul Blanchard. Thanks Maurice.

Maurice has a deep understanding of, and empathy with, the history of this country, and in the course of his talk he also demonstrated a nuanced appreciation of this complicated man, Tom Kettle.

There is a fine bust of Kettle in St. Stephen's Green and that is where I first came across him many years ago. I didn't really know anything about him but assumed he was one of our heroes as a result of something or other. In fact, there was very little talk about him since until more recent times when the country started having to come to terms with the twin legacies of the 1916 Rising and WWI.

I am very aware of this as I was brought up on the Rising only to find, in more recent times, that I had an uncle killed on the Somme in the same year as the Rising.

It is this ambiguity that plagued Kettle in the final years of his life. He was essentially a nationalist and had been sent to Belgium to buy guns for the Volunteers. But the German atrocities he saw there convinced him that there was a wider cause to be supported if civilisation was to be preserved, and this is what motivated him to join the British army.

Initially denied the chance to go to the front, for health reasons, he embarked on an intensive campaign of recruiting for the British Army on the home front. For this he was frequently vilified and on one occasion badly beaten up.

He was jeered at for asking others to do what he himself did not, and this stung. So much so that, despite his abhorrence at the British reaction to the Rising, he contrived to get to the Western Front, and died in this, to him, greater cause.

He did his best not to be misunderstood and, as a result we have as part of his legacy, his poem explaining himself to his newly born daughter at home.

The final lines of the poem have by now become a cliché, but Maurice made the point that the earlier lines are a thing of beauty and to prove it he read the whole poem.

To My Daughter Betty, The Gift of God
by Thomas Michael Kettle
dated ‘In the field, before Guillemont, Somme, Sept. 4, 1916’.

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown
To beauty proud as was your mother's prime,
In that desired, delayed, incredible time,
You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,
And the dear heart that was your baby throne,
To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme
And reason: some will call the thing sublime,
And some decry it in a knowing tone.
So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,—
But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,
And for the secret Scripture of the poor.

As to the rest of his personal life and his career. He was apparently both brilliant and good company. He became professor of political economy at UCD, a component college of the newly established National University. He didn't necessarily know any much economics but had an enquiring mind and an enthusiasm that inspired his students.

He became an MP in the UK parliament but found that a bore. He mixed in London intellectual and literary circles. And then he took to the drink which sadly crucified him and his wife Mary from there on in. This flower of Irish youth was reduced to a serial promiser to quit the booze, again. So sad, and a part of his life that has been downplayed by the nationalist tradition. But it was part of him, and Maurice faced it full on. But he also reminded us that he rose above it, hence the quotation of the full poem.

So let us honour him in his full complexity and that of the times he lived in.

REMEMBERING THE SOMME

Flags of the 36th (Ulster) & 16th (Irish) Divisions
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There were great hopes during WWI that Northern and Southern Irish fighting side by side on the Somme would forge a reconciliation between the two parts of the country. But it was not to be. The problem was too intractable. Soldiers returned home to man their respective northern and southern trenches and we are still dealing with the problem today.

That brief moment of hope is captured in the flags of the 36th (Ulster) and 16th (Irish) divisions flying side by side in the Dublin City Archive where an exhibition, Dublin Stories: Remembering the Somme, was launched yesterday (21/10/2016). The emphasis here is not on the grand campaign, rather it tells the personal stories of some of the participants and it is all the more striking for this.

Overview of the Exhibition

It replaces the previous exhibition which recalled 1916 and it is this nationalist thread of our history which has taken precedence ever since, almost totally eclipsing our participation in WWI and the obscenity which was the Somme.

This eclipse is not fully reproduced in the new exhibition which retains an image of the GPO and a model of Nelson's Pillar originally constructed for the 1916 exhibition.

Brendan Teeling

The ceremonials were kicked off by Brendan Teeling, Assistant City Librarian, who welcomed a varied and overflowing audience to the Archive's conference and exhibition centre.

Margaret Hayes

First up was City Librarian, Margaret Hayes who spoke on the significance of this exhibition in the context of the 1916 commemorations. She told us that this building now houses the archives of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association (RDFA) from which the material for the exhibition had been drawn.

Brian Moroney

Brian Moroney from the RDFA, as well as giving us some of his own background, made two points which particularly resonated with me: almost every family in the country has some connection, however tenuous, with WWI; and, we should not confine our memories of events like the Somme just to the Irish regiments which took part as there were countless numbers of Irishmen serving in other regiments.

I was glad he made the latter point as my uncle John, who died on the Somme, was actually serving in the Civil Service Rifles because he had been working in the British Civil Service in London. He had joined this volunteer territorial regiment and ended up on the Western Front from the early days of the war.

Brendan Carr

Brendan Carr, who was introduced as Dublin's First Citizen, him being the current Lord Mayor, commended Dublin City Library and Archive for what he called "this thought-provoking exhibition which personalises the loss and hardship endured by Irishmen and their families".

A timely reminder that the suffering was not confined to the war front alone and that those left behind at home also had a hard time of it, particularly where loved ones either died or returned from the conflict injured. No doubt anyone who took part in that war in the trenches returned home a different person from when they set out on the great adventure.

Declan Kettle

Declan Kettle, a grand nephew of Tom Kettle who died on the Somme, read the poet's poem to his daughter. No matter how many times I hear its final lines, which must surely have attained the status of cliché in recent years, I find them a powerful vindication of the enduring humanity and idealism of those mired in this awful conflict.

Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,
But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,
And for the secret Scripture of the poor.

The audience's attention was then diverted to the door where the long awaited arrivals finally turned up. The Newtownabbey Youth Theatre Group, having overcome the obstacle that is Dublin traffic, were now here to perform an extract from their film, The Rose and the Fusilier, which is being screened in Dublin today.

The film shows the tragic thread of warfare for one Dublin family, the Naylors, whose story unfolded in both France and Ireland during Easter 1916.

The film is produced by NACN Theatre Company, a cross-community youth theatre group from Newtownabbey, Co Antrim and is supported by Dublin City Council’s Commemoration Programme. The Lord Mayor is hosting the group in Dublin over the weekend.

Noelle Mitchell and Ellen Murphy

So much for the preliminaries. Now it's time to have a look at this much praised exhibition. But first a word of congratulations to the two ladies from the Archive who are responsible for staging it, Ellen and Noelle.

Anyway, there I am in the middle of the crowd who are delicately striking a balance between drinking their coffee, nibbling their fingerfood and absorbing the personal stories of Somme soldiers on the display panels, when I spot a neighbour on the other side of the room. This is a lady I frequently chat with in the street or in the local Supervalu store in Raheny. "What" I ask her "are you doing here?".

Muriel Burke

Well, it turns out that she is one of two "celebrities" at the exhibition, the other being Declan Kettle. Both are listed in the advance press notice as being available for interview, so I decided to interview her.

She is the daughter of Richard Burke, who is one of those whose story has been chosen for the exhibition. What she told me about him is best encapsulated in the text prepared for the exhibition.

Richard Edward Burke from Dingle, County Kerry, had an excellent education and a good job in the National Bank, College Green when he applied to join the Army in 1914. Richard was in Dublin during the Easter Rising, in 1916, attached to the 3rd Royal Irish Regiment.

Later that year Richard was sent to the Western Front and at the age of 24 was awarded a bravery certificate for his actions at Ginchy. It was reported in the press at the time that ‘Capt. Burke distinguished himself on the 9th Sept. at Ginchy, being the only officer left out of his company’(14 Nov 1916). He later won a Military Cross in 1917 for continuing to lead his men despite being wounded in battle at Wijtschate.

After the war, Richard became a co-ordinator of the Soldiers and Sailors Land Trust which was set-up to provide housing for ex-servicemen. During the 1920s and 1930s the Trust provided over 4,000 houses throughout Ireland.

That's me

Muriel remembers visiting the Islandbridge memorial with her family in 1956 when the place was still a wreck. And sure enough there is a photo in the exhibitiion in which she points herself out.

At the National War Memorial, Islandbridge, 1956

That's her on the extreme left with her father, Richard, in the middle and her mother on the extreme right.

Soldiers' & Sailors' Land Trust map of Killester scheme

One of her father's Soldiers' and Sailors' Land Trust maps shows the "suburb of Killester" where the Trust constructed many houses for veterans. The diagonal parallels across the map are the Great Northern train line, just blow which is the Howth Road just north of Killester village. The bottom left quadrant shows the location of the newly constructed veterans' houses.

Captured GPO flag at the Parnell Monument, May 1916

Richard was active in Dublin during the Rising and is said to be one of those seated in this iconic photo of officers with the captured GPO flag, taken in front of the Parnell monument.

And this is Richard as he appears in the exhibition.

All of the above are nicely brought together in a single panel telling Richard's story.

There is also a glass case at the door which gives some idea of the stress and tragedy of that time, containing a letter Richard wrote, in his official capacity at the front, informing a parent of the death of their son. The lad was killed in action on 9 September 1916, on the same day as, and close to where, Tom Kettle had died.

I also spoke to Declan Kettle, who recalled his grand uncle's horror at the wartime atrocities he saw while in Belgium purchasing guns for the Volunteers. This motivated him to join up. He spoke passionately at recruitment meetings throughout the country before returning to the front at his own request and to his death on 9 September 1916.

But there is a lot more to this exhibition than Richard Burke and Tom Kettle. Take the story of Frank Gunning, for example, and this telegramme from Buckingham Palace, no less, telling his mother that her son, who had been assumed missing in action, had actually fallen. This must have really come as a blow and dashed what may have been months of hope that he had been taken prisoner and was alive somewhere. It also mirrors the experience of Richard Brewster's family in Dublin in the last year of the war.

I don't know why the telegramme came from Buckingham Palace and why their majesties are invoked. No doubt there is another story there. The manuscript correction from "falled" to "fallen" would intrigue you as to the identity of the writer or the originator of the telegramme.

On the home front, wives and girlfriends where thinking of their loved ones at war and wishing them home. At least that is the impression given in this seductive postcard, presumably designed to be sent to the war front.

Those at home were not kept in oomplete ignorance of conditions on the various war fronts and films of the Somme and Jutland were being shown in the Theatre Royal in September 1916. The films fell well short of showing the full horrors of the war. I don't remember if it was Lloyd George or General Haig who said that if the full story was known at home no soldiers would be coming to man the trenches.

Some Irish firms, such as Jacobs, were sending food packages to the front.

The exhibition also has some audio visual material including in Irish.

Something you could easily miss is the powerful sketches, by Trevor Wayman, on the reverse of one set of story panels.

These neatly catch the cross-fade from the earlier 1916 exhibition, which featured the GPO and Nelson's Pillar, to the current Somme exhibition.

Muriel Burke & Margaret Hayes

I'll call it a day with this gentler shot of Muriel Burke and Margaret Hayes chatting about the exhibition.

The exhibition also includes guided tours by expert members from the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association and if you're in town between now and the end of the year you'd be well advised to book yourself in on one of these.

The Association has taken on itself a much wider role in relation to WWI than simply documenting the Dublin Fusiliers Regiment. It has been actively involved in promoting remembrance of all aspects of WWI.

HEDGE SCHOOL

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This (19/7/2016) was my second hedge school. The first, also in the National Library of Ireland, was on Nelson's Pillar and I have done a blog post on that.

This one was on the Somme, which anniversary we are also in the middle of commemorating. The Pillar was only fifty years ago but the Somme was a full hundred years ago.

While we awaited the arrival of the hedge school master and his panelists the screen was showing the propaganda film of the Somme made in August 1916 and which is getting a showing around the place at this time.

The team finally arrived not long after we had all trouped back into the room following a brief evacuation at the sounding of the house alarm. What you might call a fairly dramatic entrance in the circumstances.

The team consisted of Tommy Graham (The Master), David Murphy (Maynooth), Lar Joye (National Museum), Jennifer Wellington (UCD), and Tom Burke (Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association).

You can see them taking last sips of water and getting mic'd up above.

Tommy Graham & David Murphy

The discussion flowed dynamically round the panel as Tommy dipped into his carefully prepared list of provocative questions. So I won't attribute remarks but simply record such items as particularly caught my attention.

The envelope, so to speak, had already been set out in the advance publicity for the school.

Fought between 1 July and 1 November 1916 the Somme Offensive was one of the bloodiest battles in history, costing the lives of more than 1.5 million men. On the first day alone the British Army suffered c. 60,000 casualties, many of them members of the 36th (Ulster) Division, and later soldiers of the 16th (Irish) Division were involved. While the involvement of the former continues to be extensively commemorated (especially in the North), Southern nationalist involvement has left a more ambiguous legacy.

One of the most interesting new (for me) bits to emerge was the contrast between how the two armies (British and German) were structured. The Germans had a team approach. They all knew what they had to do including in contingencies such as losing their commanding officers. It had all been rehearsed ad nauseam. And the men were party to the rationale behind what was being done. They had been doing this for decades and it was very effective.

The British, on the other hand, had a strictly hierarchical system which ran on an excessively tight need to know basis. The officers more or less knew what they were supposed to be doing but most of it was kept secret from the men. So, when the officers were taken out the men were running around like headless chickens.

Lar Joye & Jennifer Wellington

The Germans also operated deep defence, which meant if they were pushed back they already had further defensive positions prepared into which they could retreat. This system operated up to around five kilometers and could in some cases extend even to ten.

As it turned out the whole battle of the Somme, from June to November 1916, for all the slaughter, was limited to a front line which only advanced six miles in all.

In fact the Germans were almost happy enough to retreat if the price they could exact from British forces in the meantime remained high enough.

Verdun and the Somme had not been chosen for their strategic value. The Germans chose to attack Verdun because of its symbolic value since the time of Charlemagne. The British chose the Somme because it was at the point where the British and French armies came together. But it was only a bit of land and not particularly important in itself, one way or another. Haig had apparently wanted to fight in Flanders and finally got his way later in the war.

Tom Burke

The value, or otherwise, of commemorating major events, such as the Somme, was discussed and the general feeling was that this was worthwhile if properly done. People should be aware of all aspects of their past and as well as this giving them a sense of identity they might actually learn some lessons from it. Reference was made to the value of recent North/South cooperation on the Somme project as having broken down some previouly existing barriers.

There was, however, a warning note sounded about commemoration unjustifiably turning into excessive celebration. The example quoted was Gallipoli which was an unmitigated disaster but was apparently commemorated in Australia, with a degree of national fervour and a high public spend, as though they had won and not lost that one.

Tommy invited the audience to pitch in at various points in the discussion. Interventions were substantive and one that stayed with me was the degree of intelligence (military not intellectual) available to both sides. They almost knew the names of the guys opposite (warning: poetic licence!).

David Murphy

I should mention in passing that David and I nearly shared a platform at the Alliance Français's Café Historique on the Martello Towers but it was not to be. So the Hedge School gave me an opportunity to say hello.

The panel were excellent and no one was in the least fazed by any of Tommy's googlies.

The above is only a small flavour of what went on at the Hedge School. The audio is now up here where you can catch up with the whole thing.

Gordon Brewster

With thanks to the National Library of Ireland

With the approach of Bloomsday on Monday next (16/6/2014) I am reminded of Gordon Brewster, who died in my mother's shop on that day in 1946.

I have blogged on the excellent NLI blog about his wonderful cartoons and have set out on my webpage some of his family story based around his gravestone in Kilbarrack cemetery.

I hope to be doing a talk in the National Library in November, based mainly on an introduction to, and an analysis of, his cartoons between 1922 and 1932. This is the period covered by the collection recently acquired by the NLI. It is a very interesting period in the history of the nation, spanning a decade which saw the formation and consolidation of the new state. While the cartoons take a poke at the Irish politicians of the day, mainly those in government, they also deal extensively with British politics and in some cases beyond that. There are quite a few references to Gandhi, for example.

One of the things that distinguishes Brewster from many of the other cartoonists of his day is that he was an actual artist and he exhibited in the Royal Hibernian Academy. He also became art editor at Independent newspapers.

I had the good fortune to meet his daughter, Dolores, recently. She is a delightful lady, now in her eighties. She is not only full of fun but she has a pile of stories about her father, whom she adored.

The wider family is also of interest. Gordon's father was secretary and then MD of Independent Newspapers and his brother was in charge of the Cork office of that company.

His other brother Richard was killed on the Somme towards the end of WWI and I gather that neither Gordon nor his father ever got over the loss.

Richard Gardiner Brewster, as you will see at the link above, is commemorated on the family gravestone in Kilbarrack though his remains were never recovered from the battlefield. His name also figures on the Pozières Memorial near where he died. But the most dramatic memorial is in St. George's (former) church in Dublin's Hardwicke Place. It is on a panel in a stained glass window devoted to those who fell in WWI. The former church is currently up for letting.

With thanks to Eugene O'Connor

Polyester Poppies

As Poppy Day again approaches I find my blood rising at the sight of everyone on all of the UK TV channels wearing the poppy, some even from mid-October. This polyester patriotism is nauseating. Others have written better about it than I could.

It is enough to say that in my youth I would never wear a poppy.

In the first place it was British and on the wrong side of the fight for Irish freedom. I later realised how it had been hijacked by the Northern Ireland Unionists to be flaunted in the face of the Nationalists on Remembrance Day. Once, at a checkpoint on Lifford Bridge on the Border, I was faced with a British soldier, rifle in one hand and poppy can in the other. Perhaps he noticed the car registration, but he never approached me on that score.

Later, in following up my family history, I found that my uncle John had died on the Somme in 1916. So, in order to honour him and, in part, to reclaim the poppy from the Unionists, I took to wearing one for a few years. I have recounted this elsewhere.

Then the sheer sick political correctness and exploitation behind the push to wear the poppy got to me. Wearing it has become obligatory in the UK as a sign of patriotism, including support for more recent illegal invasions of other countries and the slaughtering of their civilians with weapons of unspeakable horror, which weapons are banned by international conventions signed up to by the invading states.

So, having done my bit for my uncle, I will no longer wear the poppy.

Instead, today, I will remember the deaths in WWI of two very different men.

Rifleman John P Dwyer
1893 - 1916

John Dwyer was born in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo, in 1893. He seems to have had some Irish language or nationalist leanings, having won a book prize at the 1903 Mayo Feis. By 1914 he was working in the Civil Service in London and by 1916 he was serving with the Civil Service Rifles on the Somme. He died that year in the offensive on High Wood, a victim of the arrogance of the British High Command.

He still lies where he died. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial and in the Mayo Remembrance Park in Castlebar.

Further details on my website

Lieutenant Richard Gardiner Brewster
1892 - 1918

Richard was born in D'Olier St., Dublin, in 1892. He was the son of William Theodore Brewster, then an accountant, but subsequently to become manager of the Irish Independent. Richard was renowned as a fine horseman and in 1912, after a period as a civil servant in the Department of Agriculture, he joined the South Irish Horse Regiment. He had two stints at the front in WWI and it was during the second of these that he died, in March 1918.

He still lies where he died. He is commemorated on the memorial in Pozières and on his family's gravestone in Kilbarrack Cemetery, Co. Dublin.

Further details on my website
Today these two men lie beneath French soil, separated by a just a few kilometres.

John Dwyer was my uncle.

And my connection with Richard Brewster?

Well, in 1946, Richard's brother, Gordon, died in my mother's shop in Howth, Co. Dublin. As a result, I was conscious of Gordon Brewster from an early age. You can read about that on the excellent blog of the National Library of Ireland. When I started rooting out my own family history in recent years I decided to check out Gordon's as well. And that is how I came across Richard.

How sad that these two young soldiers died in vain.

Today, let us at least honour their memory.

Irish Volunteers?

Jeremy Paxman

In a recent interview with Seán O'Rourke on RTE radio, which discussed his new book, Great Britain's Great War, Jeremy Paxman remarked on the large number of Irishmen who died in WWI and said that they were all volunteers.

Well, some of them were and some of them weren't.

While conscription was not enforced in Ireland, despite it being then part of the UK, those Irishmen who lived in England were liable to be conscripted.

Lyn Ebenezer, in his book on Frongoch, relates how the British Authorites were trying very hard to determine which of the 1916 Rising prisoners had actually been living in England before the Rising, so that they could conscript them. Fellow IRA prisoners declined to cooperate in this exercise.

My Granny sent my Uncle Willie, her eldest son, over to London to bring back his brother Michael, who was working in the Post Office, for fear that he would be conscripted and lose his life in the war.

I don't know whether this was before or after Michael's brother, John, died on the Somme in 1916, and I don't know whether John was conscripted or might even have joined up before the war. He was working in the UK civil service in London and ended up in the Civil Service Rifles.

I did have a grand-uncle, John, who did actually volunteer in Dublin in 1915, but as this is reputed to have been in a pub and the British Army were virtually bullying people to join up, I'm not sure how much of an actual volunteer he was. I'd say he got a shock when the call up came in the post shortly afterwards. However, he was already a casualty of sorts at that stage, because, as soon as his father found he had joined up, he disinherited him, kicking him and his wife and three children out of the "company house" in Rialto, and banishing them across the Liffey to the Northside (Oxmantown Rd.). John had been in line to take over his father's thriving shoemaking business in James's St., on his father's imminent retirement.

John was wounded, but survived the war, and subsequently had the pleasure of getting to know Bono's mother's family in Oxmantown.

Incidentally, Seán O'Rourke's interview was excellent. It was such a welcome change from The Plank showing off, to have a proper interview where the content is actually teased out of the subject, rather than being flaunted by the presenter on foot of his pre-programme briefing.

O'Rourke actually let Paxman talk, and he was interesting. However, he came through as a right patronising bollix at the end of the interview. Good on Seán for keeping his cool. You can listen to the interview here.

Seán O'Rourke