Clare and the Great War

by Joe Power

  While many soldiers wrote short accounts of their experiences in Gallipoli, the most comprehensive account of the campaign in Gallipoli was written by Capt. Poole Hickman from Kilmurry MacMahon, shortly before his death in 1915. Through all these sources people in Clare became familiar with the struggles in France and Belgium such as at Ypres and the Somme, as well as more distant places such as Gallipoli.

  The two Clare MPs also made observations about the war. Col Arthur Lynch, MP, gave illustrated lectures in Clare about the trench warfare in France and discussed war tactics. However, he managed to alienate his most powerful Clare supporters in the Catholic Church and in the nationalist paper, the Clare Champion, by writing a highly controversial book, Ireland: Vital Hour in 1915. He was finally given a commission as a colonel in the British Army to form an Irish Brigade in 1918, but he had very limited success in forming it before the war ended.

  On the other hand, Willie Redmond, MP, who had enlisted in January 1915, sent letters from the front line to significant people in Clare, such as his friend Councillor P.J. Linnane, JP, and to Bishop Fogarty. He also wrote articles for a British paper, the Daily Chronicle, which were posthumously published in a book called Trench Pictures from France. Willie Redmond had an idealistic vision that the unionists from the north, men of the 36th Ulster Division and nationalists from the south in the 16th Irish Division, would, by fighting together in France and elsewhere against the common enemy, forge a bond between themselves and help bring about Irish unity on the battlefields. Although the 16th Irish Division fought alongside the 36th Ulster Division at Messines in July 1917, and a fatally wounded Willie Redmond was cared for by men of the 36th Ulster Division, the unity in the battlefield did not translate into unity in Ireland. Willie Redmond’s ‘naive vision’ died, as did Willie Redmond, on the Western Front.

  The economy had mixed fortunes during the war. Initially, there was a panic and a run on the banks. Tourism was badly hampered by the war, especially in places like Kilkee, Lahinch and Killaloe as reserve officers were called up, and the bathing lodges were shut down for the rest of the season. However, tourism seems to have recovered by the summer of 1918 as the resort of Kilkee was crowded in early August of that year. Trade was also affected and dock workers in ports such as Clare Castle and Kilrush were badly affected by the downturn in commercial traffic as British coal was difficult to secure due to war priority needs in Britain.

  On the other hand, war was good for business and the farming and fishing economy of Clare got a significant boost through the government purchases of horses for cavalry as well as for transport purposes and provisions for the army and navy. The price of agricultural products increased sharply from the first months of the war and the cost of food had more than doubled by the end of the war. E.E. Lysaght, writing in 1918, stated that ‘Irish farming had become more profitable and more self-sustaining than it had been in the previous 70 years’. Likewise, the value of fish stocks also increased by more than 66 per cent in weight and by 400 per cent in value between 1914 and 1918.3

  The food supply in Ireland and in Clare became more urgent as the war continued and shipping losses mounted due to German submarine attacks. The farmers benefitted from this increased demand for food, but the weather was not always favourable to good harvests. This was especially the case during the years 1917 and 1918, when, due to terrible weather conditions, there was a real and genuine fear of famine. The shortage of food in the UK motivated the government to introduce compulsory tillage, with farmers obliged to till up to 15 per cent of their land, while farmers with over 200 acres were legally obliged to till at least 20 per cent of their land. This may explain why some of the extensive landowners were prepared to let out some of their large farmlands on conacre for grazing, as it would reduce the need for ploughing up their lands. The Tillage Act also created problems in a county such as Clare, where only about 30 per cent of the land was actually suitable for tillage, and only about 8 per cent of the total acreage in County Clare was deemed to be of ‘moderate to very good’ tillage land.

  The damper weather of Clare was not conducive to tillage either, compared with the sunnier and warmer east and south-east Ireland. The food shortages and genuine fears of famine during the years 1917 and 1918 sparked off a wave of illegal agrarian agitation with cattle drives and illegal ploughing in many parts of the county. The economy of Clare was also badly hampered by the introduction of Martial Law in 1916 and in 1918, with severe restrictions on movement into and out of the county, and the banning of all public meetings, even fairs and markets.

  The price of food and many other products such as coal more than doubled during the war years and the poor people were very badly off as wages were not increased to compensate for the rise in prices. The economic impact on the poor was cushioned a little by the payment of separation allowances for the wives and children of serving soldiers and sailors while the men were at war.

  While many, especially young men of the farming class, sought to escape the war through emigration in the early years of the conflict, that avenue was largely closed off by 1918. Emigration from Ireland fell from 20,314 in 1914, to 2,111 in 1915 to only 980 in 1918.

  Other sectors of the economy also suffered due to shortages. For instance a shortage of newsprint forced the closure of one of the county’s oldest newspapers, the Clare Journal, in 1917. Its sister newspaper, the Saturday Record, had to increase its price by 50 per cent, from 1d to 1½d, while at the same time reducing the volume of the paper from six to four pages by the end of the war. The nationalist rival newspaper, the Clare Champion, was closed down by the British authorities for about six months in 1918 for political reasons. Thus, for more than six months the Saturday Record had a monopoly of circulation in the county.

  This temporary closure of the Clare Champion probably had little impact upon the spread of republican ideology and information in the county, but the general public were probably more affected. According to one police report ‘the general standard of education was so low that the views of the people were drawn from the local paper, the priest and the national schoolmaster’.4 Nationalists and republicans would probably not have purchased the unionist papers in Clare. Unionists, such as Lord Inchiquin, relied upon The Irish Times and the Clare Journal for news.

  Other businesses also suffered the downturn in trade and profits, for example, coal importers in ports like Clare Castle, who could not get adequate supplies due to the war demands in Britain and to the shortage of shipping. The dockers in the ports also suffered the loss of employment due to the reduction of coal imports. The grocers and traders of Ennis and other towns in the county took advantage of the poor economic outlook to stop the practice of giving ‘Christmas boxes’ to their customers in 1915.

  Sport and leisure was also affected by the war. Initially in 1914 events such as the County Agricultural Show at Ennis and the South of Ireland Golf Championship at Lahinch were cancelled. But these events were organised in the following years of the war. Business at tourist resorts like Kilkee and Lahinch seemed to have recovered after the initial setback of 1914. More British-type minority sports such as cricket, hockey and soccer were more affected by the war, especially cricket and hockey, as most of the players of those games were from the unionist community, who had probably enlisted in the army or navy for the duration of the war.

  Other country sports in the county such as fowling, fishing and hunting, as well as horse racing continued, though many of the younger male members of the gentry, the main supporters of these sports, were absent on military service. Big race meetings at Limerick and Galway attracted large numbers of fans throughout the war years, while race meetings were banned in England.

  However, the GAA seems to have been largely unaffected by the war, except during emergency periods of martial law in 1916 and in 1918, when all major sports meetings were banned. But, as seen above, the GAA publicly and successfully defied the ban on all unauthorised meetings on ‘Gaelic Sunday’ 4 August 1918. Fortunat
ely, the Clare senior and junior hurling teams won All-Ireland titles in 1914, while the Clare footballers were beaten in the All-Ireland senior football final in 1917.

  The war seems to have had a limited impact upon the GAA in Clare, probably affecting some urban clubs such as Ennis and Kilrush more than rural clubs. There were a number of reasons for this. First of all, the ‘Ban’ on members of the British forces from playing Gaelic games may have discouraged many young men from joining the British forces. It seems that there was only one high-profile member of the GAA who joined the army and that was Jack Fox of Newmarket-on-Fergus in 1915. His enlistment did not encourage large numbers of Gaels to join him in the army or navy. Secondly, it would appear to be the case that the Irish Volunteers were closely linked to the GAA in many instances. Thirdly, there was little recruitment among the farmers’ sons, who would have made up the majority of GAA members in the rural clubs throughout the county.

  Recruitment in County Clare seems to have largely been an urban phenomenon. Also, the vast number of recruits joined before the 1916 Rising, and there were very few after that date. According to reports, Kilrush was ‘weeded out’, sending more than 450 men, Ennistymon sent more than 200, while Ennis contributed around 800 men.

  Therefore, the GAA clubs in towns such as Ennis and Kilrush may have had difficulty in fielding teams during the war. ‘Ennis Dals’ contested six county football finals between 1909 and 1915, winning three in a row between 1909-1911, and two in a row, 1913 and 1914. They were defeated in 1915, and did not contest another county football final until 1927. The decline of the team after 1915 may have been due to the loss of some players to the British forces during the war.

  Kilrush Shamrocks were bound to have been affected by the loss of players also, when about 30 per cent of the young men of the parish had gone to war before the Easter Rising. The ‘Shams’ won the county football final in 1912, but they did not contest another final until 1924.

  There was a similar pattern in hurling. Ennis Dalcassians won the county finals of 1914 and 1915, and they were beaten in the final of 1916, but they did not contest another senior hurling final until 1924. These were strong clubs before the war, but they did not achieve much after 1915. Recruitment into the British forces may have been a significant factor in this decline, but this cannot be stated definitively, as other clubs may have had better players at the time.5

  Apart from agrarian crimes such as cattle drives, illegal ploughing and the occupation of the large ranches, there were very few other indictable crimes committed in the county during the war years, except political crimes committed by the activities of the Irish or Sinn Féin Volunteers under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). This was remarked upon by resident magistrates and by the press during the war years. Even during the crisis of Easter Week 1916, the county was remarkably quiet and ‘white gloves’ were presented to magistrates at petty sessions courts in various parts of the county in the years 1915, 1916 and 1917. The fact that a significant number of the normally unemployed or casually employed working classes had joined the army or navy and were temporarily out of the country for most of the war years and had secured regular pay as well as support for their families, was probably a significant factor in this regard.

  Towards the end of the war County Clare, like the rest of Ireland and much of the world, was affected by the outbreak of the dreaded ‘Spanish Flu’ in 1918. Thankfully, the number of casualties was relatively small in the county, compared with other counties in Ireland. In fact County Clare had the lowest level of mortality in the country, with a mortality rate of only 0.4 per cent compared with a national average mortality rate of 2.5 per cent. The local newspapers noted about twenty Clare people who died because of the Spanish Flu.

  The war had lasted slightly more than four years and three months, from 2 August 1914 until 11 November 1918, and it had an immense impact upon County Clare. Estimates of the mortality from among all nations engaged in the conflict suggest that about 15 per cent of those who enlisted died directly or indirectly because of the war. McCarthy published a list of 500 people of Clare origin who died due to the war.6 On the other hand, Burnell suggests that over 600 people associated with County Clare died in this war.7

  It seems that about half of the recruits joined the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the local regiment for Clare, Limerick and Kerry. Fitzpatrick states that of 411 Clare men recruited between 15 October 1914 and 15 August 1915, 204 were recruited in Ennis and Kilrush. Fitzpatrick also states that 949 Clare men were recruited into the army from 4 August 1914 up to 15 October 1916. However, County Clare seems to have been among the counties with the lowest percentages of recruitment in Ireland. Indeed between 4 August 1914 and 15 April, only 3.5 per cent of the available manpower of Clare officially joined the forces, the lowest percentage in Ireland. He also notes that by the end of 1915 only about 300 National Volunteers had enlisted. That was about 6 per cent of the county force of 3,200 Volunteers in sixty companies at the middle of August 1914. Up to the middle of August 1915, Clare had contributed only 324 reservists and 519 army recruits from a population of more than 100,000. His table 3.1 of Irish Recruitment, 1914-18, shows that 344 Clare recruits joined in 1915 and an estimated 208 Clare men joined up in 1916. There were no figures for 1917 and 1918. It seems that Fitzpatrick has underestimated the number of those who enlisted. Nevertheless, it seems that despite the encouragement of the Home Rule Party, the two local MPs, Willie Redmond and Arthur Lynch, and the Catholic Church, the people of Clare were not as enthusiastic about the war as their political and religious leaders.8

  The list of casualties in the county, as suggested by Burnell and Browne, has a total of Clare war dead numbering about 600 men. Of these, approximately thirty-six were drowned and six were killed in air crashes. More than 275 Clare soldiers were laid to rest in the battlefields of France where they died. At least ninety-six Claremen are buried in Belgium, while ninety-eight more are buried in the UK. At least forty-eight Claremen are buried in Turkey, mainly in Gallipoli. Seventeen men have graves in Greece (Salonika) and at least fifteen are laid to rest in Iraq. A few soldiers are buried in Ireland, including a couple in County Clare. At least twenty Clare victims of the war, including sailors and civilians, men and women are buried at sea. The rest of the Clare war dead are buried in various other countries, including Egypt, Israel, Germany, India, Pakistan, Australia, Burma, Canada, Chile, Sudan, Tanzania and South Africa.9

  According to Patrick Casey, County Clare had the second lowest percentage of casualties in Ireland of the total of 35,000 estimated Irish casualties, with 1.27 per cent of the eligible males, based on the 1911 census.10

  The majority of those who enlisted were from the towns of Clare, especially from Ennis and Kilrush, from where about 800 and 400 men, respectively, joined the colours. The evidence is anecdotal for Ennis, as this figure was merely mentioned by several politicians and others in favour of recruitment. Indeed, one of the ex-soldiers noted in 1918 that Ennis alone had provided more than 1,200 men for the war, but that number cannot be verified and it does seem very high.

  However, C.E. Glynn, recruitment organiser for West Clare, drew up a list of men from Kilrush, who served in the army and navy. His list, which was compiled just after the war, ended in November 1918 and is probably quite accurate, as he recorded the men who enlisted on a street-by-street basis. His list totalled 416 men. He also drew up a separate list of men who were former employees of Michael Glynn and Co., Flour Millers, Kilrush, who had enlisted. In all, he counted 106 former employees of his family company who had served in the forces.

  Henry R. Glynn, brother of C.E. Glynn, mentioned in several of his letters how many of their employees, and others from Kilrush, had joined the forces. On 5 August 1914 he told John Redmond that about 100 men had left the town of Kilrush for the war. (It would seem that many of these men were reservists.) In March 1915 he informed the vice-admiral at Queenstown that eighty of the firm’s former employees had enlisted and that more than 200 m
en had gone from Kilrush to the war. Later in the month, he wrote to Maj. Ievers, of Mount Ievers, Sixmilebridge, saying that more than eighty-five of their former employees had enlisted. At the end of March 1915, he informed the admiralty in London that more than 100 of their men, who had worked part-time or full-time for the company, had joined the services and that about 300 Kilrush men out of a population of 3,600 had enlisted up to then. Around this time he wrote to Prime Minister Lloyd George, informing him that more than 260 men were serving in the army and navy and that during the previous week fifty more had volunteered to join up.11

  Taking the figures produced by H.R. Glynn and C.E. Glynn as being reliable sources, it would seem that about 75 per cent of the total recruitment from Kilrush town took place before 1 April 1915. C.E. Glynn also wrote that he had enlisted more than 100 recruits from the time he was appointed recruiting organiser in November 1915 up to early February 1916, but these men were drawn from all over West Clare. The figures for Kilrush clearly indicate that recruitment dropped off sharply after March 1915, with about 300 enlisting in the first six months and only 116 men joining up over the next three-and-a-half years. One reason for the decline may be the high mortality rate during 1915, which may have deterred young men from enlisting. From Glynn’s list of soldiers enlisted in the Royal Munster Fusiliers, thirty-five men died in service over the four years. However, half of those men died in the year 1915 alone, with six Kilrush men dying on 9 May. Staunton gives the Kilrush mortality in the Royal Munster Fusiliers by year as: two in 1914, eighteen in 1915, seven in 1916, four in 1917, and four in 1918. Staunton also states that Kilrush, as a port, provided an above average number of men to the Royal Navy and most of them came through the war unscathed. It seems that a number of men from other coastal locations in Clare, such as Quilty, also joined the navy during the war.12