I’m indebted to your correspondent Patsy McGarry (Jan 4) for telling me that the word “commemoration” originated in English in the 14th century, that it derives from Latin and means “to call to mind.”
As used by Mr McGarry, alas, it is a clarion call to mindlessness. For he asserts that the 1916 Battle of the Somme was airbrushed from Irish History. It wasn’t, any more than Irish involvement in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign was, despite the assertions of other “experts” favoured in your columns.
For decades under Cumann na nGaedhal and Fianna Fail Governments James Carty’s Classbook of Irish History was a staple in Irish schools and it recounted the involvement of Irishmen in foreign wars, including the First World War. It particularly recalled the tribute paid the Dublin Fusiliers by General Von Sanders who commanded the defence of Gallipoli from the British attack. In the 1950s in Fianna Fail’s Irish Press, Brendan Behan had a weekly column in which he celebrated neighbours who had been in the “Dubs”, their widows and children, with great warmth and wit. One story concerned their attending a film, called in its place of origin “Tell England” but re-titled for Dublin viewers as “Gallipoli.” If there was any airbrushing out of Irish involvement in the campaign in the film’s making, it wasn’t done in Ireland.In the 1950s Sinn Fein’s monthly UNITED IRISHMAN had a long article on Gallipoli. It recalled a British officer surveying the beaches through binoculars and asking why the Irish soldiers were resting. The “resting” soldiers were dead.
Irish Defence Forces marched at Easter to THE FOGGY DEW whose original lyric had been replaced by one celebrating the Insurgents of 1916 but recognising also those bidden by Britain to promote the freedom of small nations who died by Suvla’s waves (by Gallipoli) and the shores of the great North Sea. The brass plaques commemorating railwaymen who died in the Great War remain undefiled in stations in Leinster, Munster and Connacht which were dedicated to leaders of the 19i6 Rising as late as 1966.
I have myself published sympathetic reviews of Philip Orr’s “THE ROAD TO THE SOMME” in THE IRISH DEMOCRAT in May 1988 and a reflective piece “SERMONS IN STONES” in July 1986 (the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Somme battle) following a visit to the scene of that slaughter. They can be accessed free on line. The IRISH DEMOCRAT is published by the Connolly Association.
The Great War which created Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Syria,Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine, destroyed Germany, Tsarist Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and ushered in an unending cycle of violence which may yet obliterate us all. It is not a success story with a happy ending.
The 1916 Rising, with a comparatively small body count, as Mr McGarry stresses, ushered in for most of Ireland 93 years of peace. Those with the message “Peace to men of goodwill” may be forgiven wondering why Mr McGarry didn’t get the message, Can he really blame it on the GPO?
Comments are closed.