Since I had a stroke six and a half years ago my short term memory has gone to Hell. If I’m
interrupted doing some task I forget to go back to it.
I spend time looking for spectacles and hearing aids, sometimes finding the specs still on my face,
and the aids in my ears..
I find myself in the bathroom forgetting why I went there, only to remember, with embarrassed
discomfort halfway down the stairs.
I can remember clearly December 28, 1941, on the Hill of Howth. It was my third birthday and I recall
apple pie, and getting a present which my elder brother described as a four-engined bomber.
In my haven of peace and tranquillity, which I now blame on Eamon de Valera (described in a
BBC programme a few years ago as “Ireland’s Hated Hero”) I knew nothing of bombs or bombers.
I had not heard of Dev, nor did I know that the Battle of the Bulge was raging in France and most
of the world was going through Hell.
In February 1942, though I didn’t know it, my mother’s younger sibling, Leo Burke a Warrant
Officer in Britain’s Royal Army Service Corps, was last seen swimming towards Bali, after
his troopship, evacuated from Singapore, was torpedoed by the Japanese. News of his death
came in 1946.from the British War Office,
In August 1942 the Howth Regatta and Lambay Races were filmed in Colour and is available on YouTube. A musical soundtrack was added in recent years added. It is glorious. It’s about 10
minutes long.
It’s evidence which may be used for the canonisation or damnation of De Valera, as you wish.
I have been in England nearly 59 years. And I recall how, at Easter 1966 the British media,
radio, TV , and in print from THE TELEGRAPH to THE SUNDAY TIMES, heaped praise on the 1916
Insurgents, including De Valera. Even the rabidly right-wing Cold Warrior, Constantine Fitzgibbon, author of the off-the-wall novel “When the Kissing Had To Stop” wrote “Out Of The Lion’s Paw – Ireland Wins Her Freedom” a paean of praise for those reviled by today’s vile scribblers,
Hugh Leonard’s TV contribution to the celebration of the Golden Jubilee “INSURRECTION” made for
RTE was screened on British TV and admired by my English workmates, many of them veterans of WWII an those a couple of years older than I who had done National Service. Between Val Doonican
and Dave Allen we Irish in England were the flavour of that era.
It was before La Trahesion Des Clercs when Hugh Leonard could be coralled by Gay Byrne into a
Lynch Mob confronting his “Guest” Gerry Adams on the Late Late Show, and the defection of the Cruiser to MI6 and the CIA.
Dear God, I remember in about 1968, when Michael McInerney, veteran of the Republican Garrison of the Four Courts in 1922, and then Political Editor of The Irish Times, prevailed on theCruiser to rejoin the Irish Labour Party, which he had left in the 1930s when he went into the Civil Service.
The Irish Times. under its splendid Editor, Douglas Gageby, gave the Cruiser’s Liberty Hall address on his return to the fold, the coverage that a Christian organ might give the Second Coming of Our Divine Redeemer.
By chance I had seen the coverage The Irish Press had given in August 1945 to the bombiing of Hiroshima and the commentary on its significance by Major Vivian de Valera.
Small Beer, compared to the Cruiser’s homecoming to Liberty Hall.
Incidentally, Michael McInerney was the first Editor of Irish Freedom in 1939 which soon after became The Irish Democrat
.
Desmond Greaves, Editor of The Irish Democrat from 1948 to his death in 1988 visited McInerney in the Irish Times office.
McInerney told Desmond, that he, Desmond, was sitting in the very chair that the Cruiser sat in when he was persuaded to rejoin Labour.
It reminded me, but I did not tell Desmond of the story of Khrushchev in the Kremlin, pointing out the Chair Lavrentia Beria had been sitting in before he had been arrested at gunpoint prior to his later execution.
Anyhow La Trahesian Des Clercs embraces much of the media and academia in Ireland. Academia is
plagued and perhaps poxed with an Embarrassment of Cads.
The Treason of Jerks, who can be bought for a Luncheon with Lockheed, more easily than more desperate people had their souls bought during the Great Starvation for a bowl of soup.
Those Jerks purport to support justice and morality. Not one of them would know a moral compass
if it pricked them in the arse
Fantastic as usual Donal .
Correction: I remember my 3rd Birthday, 28 December 1944.(not 1941).