Clare and the Great War

by Joe Power

  Tommy Kinnane, Old IRA.

  (Courtesy of Eric Shaw, per the Gillespie Collection)

  John ‘Pal’ Horan

  There was an interesting article in the Clare Champion of 27 September 1958 about John Horan of Madden’s Terrace, Clare Castle, a veteran of the Great War, who was then 84 years old. This was, I believe, the first interview with a Great War veteran in the Clare Champion since the war ended in 1918. In this article headed PROFILE OF A GRAND OLD MAN, he was described as ‘a fine elderly character, who had many years service with the British Army.’

  He played at full forward position on the Clare Castle football team that won the Clare Senior Football championship in 1908 and he also played for the county against Limerick in the Munster Football Championship.

  John ‘Pal’ Horan had joined the Clare Militia in 1894 for a soldier’s pay of 9d a day, trained in Dover and Plymouth and served in the Coastal Defence Artillery at Queenstown in defence of Cork Harbour. He retired from the army as a reservist, but was ‘called up’ in August 1914, at the start of the Great War. He was assigned to the 9th Battalion of the Munster Fusiliers and was sent to France in 1915 after some training in Buttevant County Cork.

  John ‘Pal’ Horan in 1958.

  (Courtesy of Eric Shaw)

  He took part in many engagements with the Germans, had numerous narrow escapes in the trenches and came through without any wounds. In 1917 he was transferred back to the Coastal Defence Artillery. But, shortly afterwards, he was assigned to the Labour Corps in France and he ended his war years on the ground staff of the Royal Flying Corps. He was then 44 years old.

  In the interview John Horan, like so many other Great War veterans, did not mention much about his wartime experiences, except to say ‘we had good times and bad times in the army’.22

  Michael ‘Robineen’ Gallagher

  Another veteran was Michael ‘Robineen’ Gallagher of Burton Street, Kilrush, who was interviewed by a Clare Champion reporter in August 1985. He was then 88 years old. In the interview he gave a brief account of his early life and war service.

  I was born in 1897 at Fermoy, Co. Cork, where my father was a quarter master in the army. Within a few weeks of being born my father was killed by a horse and my mother moved to Kilrush. Times were tough then. We had a small house because we could not afford anything else. My mother had one shilling a week to pay for the house and look after us. This wasn’t enough and she was forced to go out to work to earn more money.

  When I was 17 Lord Swinbourne [sic], Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was in Kilrush recruiting for the army and along with a good number of locals I joined up. It was the last day of December 1914 at the old Post Office in the Square here in Kilrush. I joined the army not to serve anyone, but to get the money to feed ourselves.

  After signing up we went to Aghada Camp in Cork … and from there we were sent to Durham for further training and from there to the Dardenelles. Three of us were picked up and sent to Egypt because we were too young. After being sent to a few different places we were brought back to England and discharged as we were under-age.

  I came back home to Kilrush, but a couple of weeks later re-enlisted with the Royal Garrison Artillery and went to Spike Island in Cork in early 1916. From there we were sent to fight in all the major battles of the war.

  For a bed we used to spread a ground sheet on the wet, use our fists for a pillow and we had the sky over us for a blanket. On many occasions we slept in vaults, which were swarming with rats. I remember arriving at a little church during the war which had no roof. As we went in the doorway there was a big drop. There was a vault underneath for coffins but there were no headstones. The Englishmen took out the remains of the coffins to make beds, but I, being a Catholic, just could not do this. I recall that I slept standing up against a wall in the wet and dirt on many occasions.

  Michael ‘Robineen’ Gallagher. (Courtesy of the Gallagher family, per Peadar McNamara Collection)

  On one occasion (during the Battle of the Somme in July 1916) I was sent by an officer to get a container of water and ended up buried under a pile of rubble after a shell landed. When I was dug out by my comrades I could not lift my legs and I was moved to hospital for a few weeks before being moved to Warrington in England for further treatment.

  After the war I came home to Kilrush, where I stayed for a month, but I enlisted again in 1919 and was sent to Dacca in India, where I stayed until 1924 when I left the British army …

  Michael ‘Robineen’ Gallagher died at the end of December 1988, aged 91. He was, reputedly, the last survivor of the hundreds of men from Kilrush and the district of West Clare who had served in the Great War.23

  Joe Hawes

  Joe Hawes was another Clare war hero, who had served with the British Army from 9 January 1916 to the end of the war, and continued his service with the British Army for a few years afterwards. He was sentenced to death for his republican actions in 1920, but was fortunately reprieved and returned to Ireland as a hero. Indeed he was one of the few British soldiers who was accorded hero status at that time, but that was due to his brave protest in opposition to British atrocities in Ireland during the War of Independence.

  Joe Hawes was born in Kilkeedy, Tubber on 20 August 1883, the son of a tailor. He enlisted in the 4th Battalion Munster Fusiliers in Galway on 9 January 1916 and served with the regiment until it was disbanded after the war on 18 February 1919. His military career started in Tralee Barracks. He was then posted to the 6th Battalion Munsters Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 28 August 1916. He served in Salonika and Palestine and was wounded in action on 15 March 1918 at Garza on the Nablus Road, Palestine.

  Joe hawes, c. 1950. (Courtesy of Oliver Hawes)

  Between 16 May and 26 October he was posted to France with the British Expeditionary Force. He returned to barracks at Plymouth on 28 September 1918. Fortunately, he survived these battles. When the war ended the Munster Fusiliers were disbanded on 18 February 1919. However, Joe decided to stay with the British Army and joined the Connaught Rangers the next day, 19 February 1919. He was sent to the Punjab in India and arrived at Bombay on 24 November 1919. From there he was sent to Wellington Barracks at Jallundar in the Punjab, on the North West Frontier.

  While home on leave in 1920 he heard about and witnessed the activities of the British Army and the atrocities committed in Clare and elsewhere by the British Army and by the ‘Black and Tans’ during the War of Independence. When he returned to duty in India Joe Hawes told his Irish comrades what was happening at home and he was the instigator of what became known as the ‘Connaught Rangers Mutiny’ on 29 June 1920, when he led a number of Irish soldiers in protest against ‘British atrocities in Ireland’.

  Joe and the other mutineers were court-martialled at Dhagsai Prison on 23 August 1920. For his actions as one of the ringleaders, Joe, along with sixteen other Irish soldiers, was sentenced to death on 4 September 1920; but fortunately for him only one Irishman, John Daly, was executed for the mutiny. Joe’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He spent some time in solitary confinement in British prisons such as Maidstone, Portland and Shrewsbury and went on hunger strike to protest against his barbaric treatment.

  Under the amnesty agreement after the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Joe Hawes was released on 4 January 1923. On the next day he returned to Ireland a hero and settled in Kilrush for the rest of his life. He joined the 12th Battalion of the Irish Army on 8 May 1923 at Union Barracks, Clonmel. He was discharged on medical grounds on 19 March 1924. He then set up a business as a barber in Kilrush. He married Mary Quinn at Tubber on 29 April 1923 and had five children, two sons and three daughters. He died on 29 November 1972 while on holiday in Birmingham and was buried in Shanakyle, Kilrush on 6 December, where his tombstone has the following inscription: ‘… Joseph Hawes, leader of the Connaught Rangers Mutiny, India 1920 …’24

  Patrick ‘Pappy’ Neville

  The last known Ennis-born Great War veteran to pass away and perhaps the
last Clare-born surviving veteran of that terrible conflict was Pappy Neville, who died in Carrigoran Nursing Home at Newmarket-on-Fergus on 5 January 1993 about seventy-five years after the Armistice. He was 103 years old! His centenary was marked by family and friends at a special Mass in Carrigoran. One of his visitors on that occasion was Lady Inchiquin of Dromoland Castle. The Clare Champion article was headed, ‘WAR HERO CELEBRATES A CENTURY’.

  It is noteworthy that the word ‘hero’ has been used by journalists in the local Clare publications since the early 1990s to describe veterans such as Pte ‘Pappy’ Neville, who survived the war into extreme old age in 1993 and Pte Thomas Davis, who was executed by the British in 1915. That term was not used to describe First World War combatants between the 1920s and the 1990s in the local papers of County Clare. That word ‘hero’ in itself reflects a cultural change, an acceptance of the bravery of the men and women from the county who served in the Great War as ‘one of our own’. It was an acknowledgement of their sacrifices, a rehabilitation of their character and a welcome integration into national and local historiography.

  Patrick ‘Pappy’ Neville, c. 1990, (Courtesy of the Neville family and Eddie Lough, per the Peadar McNamara Collection)

  Patrick ‘Pappy’ Neville was born in Ennis on 5 August 1890. He trained as a tailor, but joined the Royal Irish Regiment in January 1912, enlisting at Clonmel. After training and service in India, Pte Neville, Reg. No. 10568, was transferred to France at the outbreak of the war after doing some training at a home barracks from 13 October to 18 December, 1914. On 19 December he was sent to France to fight in Flanders. During the early spring of 1915 he was seriously wounded at the Battle of Ypres, suffered frostbite, had one foot amputated and had another partially amputated. He was invalided out of the army and discharged on 14 May 1915 and he returned to Ennis in 1916. He had served fifty-nine days in the trenches at the front.

  He later married and had a family and settled in one of the ex-servicemen’s cottages at Clonroad, Ennis. These cottages for disabled ex-servicemen were built in many towns and villages in County Clare around 1923 under the aegis of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Association.25

  (Note, according to this newspaper article of 20 July 1990, at least 538 Ennis men served in the Second World War of whom seventy-one were killed serving with the Munster Fusiliers and seventy-one others died while serving in other regiments. When the war ended there were 382 Ennis men still in the services. Of these, twenty-three were from the Turnpike Road, where Patrick Neville had lived.)

  Thomas Davis Pardoned

  Between October 2001 and April 2009 several articles were written in the Clare Champion by various writers about the fate of Ennis man Pte Thomas Davis, who was executed by the British Army at Gully Beach, Gallipoli on 2 July 1915 after being found guilty of leaving his post. The purpose of these articles was to highlight the issue and seek a posthumous pardon for Pte Davis and more than twenty other British soldiers executed during the war. He was finally exonerated and described as a World War ‘hero’ in these reports. These articles also served to raise awareness of the Clareman who served in the First World War.26

  Public Acknowledgement

  The Clare war dead were publicly acknowledged in other ways also around this time. Two war memorials were erected in 1999 in Clare, one at Kilrush and the other at Ennistymon. The erection of these memorials may have been partly due to the peace in Northern Ireland, after The Belfast Agreement of Good Friday 1998. The belated interest of journalists in the local papers and the work of Peadar McNamara and other interested people in places such as Kilrush and Ennistymon may also have been significant in this.

  At Kilrush ‘a very moving prayer service’ in remembrance of the men and women from Kilrush and West Clare, who served in the Great War was held at Old Shanakyle graveyard on Sunday, 14 November 1999. A ‘poignant moment’ during the prayer service was when the names of the thirty-seven members of the Royal Munster Fuslilers Regiment from Kilrush who died in the war were read out. The keynote address was delivered by Mr Tom Prendeville, NT, a Fianna Fail member of Clare County Council. After he unveiled the plaque a wreath was laid and the ceremony concluded with a rendition of ‘The Green Fields of France’. The ceremony was organised by Mr George Harratt of Kilrush. Since then, Remembrance Day ceremonies have taken place annually at Old Shanakyle.27

  A memorial was also erected at Churchill cemetery, Ennistymon, in November 1999. However, this memorial plaque is not exclusively related to men and women from Ennistymon and North Clare, who fought and died in the Great War. It is an all-embracing one including all Irish men and Irish women who fought and died in all wars before and after the Great War. Furthermore, it commemorates all members of the permanent defence forces of Ireland who died in service at home and abroad, especially those who died on the United Nations peacekeeping missions.

  This memorial plaque was erected in ‘a spirit of peace and reconciliation’ by the North Clare War Memorial Committee. After a special commemoration Mass was held at Ennistymon church the plaque was unveiled on Sunday, 21 November 1999 by Mr Paddy Harte, former Fine Gael TD from Donegal, who was Joint Co-executive Chairman of A Journey of Reconciliation Trust.28

  The development of more friendly relationships between Britain and Ireland during the late twentieth century, with a joint ceremony at Messines Peace Park in Belgium attended by Queen Elizabeth II and President McAleese on Remembrance Day 1998, Queen Elizabeth’s historic visit to Ireland in 2011, and the state visit by President Higgins to Britain in 2013, combined with power-sharing administrations in Northern Ireland, has removed much of the legacy of bitterness in Anglo-Irish relations.

  The centenary of the outbreak of the Great War also acted as a spur to individuals and local communities to commemorate those who took part in that terrible conflict and has led to a deeper appreciation of the bona fides of the men and women who participated in that awful tragedy. Parishes throughout the county are now beginning to acknowledge the people from their communities who served and suffered during the First World War. This is reflected in parish newsletters, booklets, newspaper articles, memorial plaques and a greater interest in the story of the men and women from County Clare who served in the Great War.

  Historiography of the Great War in Clare

  ‘The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’

  Oscar Wilde.

  Apart from the Remembrance Day ceremonies in the various churches and Poppy Day collections, besides the occasional references to Great War veterans such as John ‘Pal’ Horan, ‘Pappy’ Neville and Michael ‘Robineen’ Gallagher, little was written about the contribution of Clare men and women to the Great War between the years 1918 and 1988.

  The seminal historical work on the years 1913-1921 in Clare was written by David Fitzpatrick in his book, Politics and Irish Life 1913-1921, Provincial Experience of War and Revolution, which was published in 1977. However, the main focus of this great study is the rise of Sinn Féin in the county, while the Great War looms in the background.

  Gen. Michael Brennan, a native of Meelick, was a leading republican in Clare and became commandant of the East Clare Brigade IRA during the War of Independence. His memoir, The War in Clare 1911-1921, Personal Memoirs of the Irish War of Independence, which was published in 1980, gives a very impressive first-hand account of these troubled times from a republican perspective, but it does not say much about the Great War.

  Martin Staunton published an article in The Irish Sword, the Journal of the Military History Society of Ireland, Vol. XV1 (1984-85) on ‘Kilrush Co. Clare and the Royal Munster Fusiliers’. This was a detailed study of the men from Kilrush who fought in the war, and, as such, the first academic study of the impact of the Great War on County Clare.

  Other academic studies on the county during the war years include Daniel McCarthy’s, Ireland’s Banner County, County Clare from the Fall of Parnell to the Great War, 1890-1918, which was published in 2002. This book devotes sev
eral chapters to the war and indeed more than 110 pages to County Clare during the war years. This volume also has an appendix listing more than 500 Clare men and women who died in the war.

  Paul O’Brien has also written a study of recruitment in Kilrush during the war entitled ‘Provincial Recruiting in the First World War: The Glynns of Kilrush’, in militaryheritage.ie. This was published in 2013, based on his study of the Glynn papers.