Civil War in County Kildare (part)

Just a day or two after a former classmate of mine died I called into the traditional Irish music session in Clancys. It was there I last saw Seamus Byrne playing the uilleann pipes, accompanying a host of other traditional musicians, including my late colleague Tos Quinn. My visit was a pilgrimage of sorts to recall and remember the wonderful musicians who like Seamus had graced the music room over the years. It was 56 years ago that Tony Byrne, a Donegal fiddle player from Glencolumcille, with Neddy Whelan from Barrowhouse and a young Seamus Byrne came together to play the first music session in Clancys. They were welcomed by the club’s proprietors Jim and Maureen Clancy and those early sessions were held in the small bar. Pub conversations and pub noise generally did not provide the most ideal background for the musicians at play which prompted Jim and Maureen to clear a storeroom for the exclusive use of the musicians. That room is still in use for the Thursday evening Irish traditional music sessions. I first wrote of the Clancy sessions approximately 25 years ago following a visit to hear the musicians, including Seamus Byrne and Tos Quinn who were continuing a piping tradition which stretched back through Willie Clancy and Leo Rowsome to the legendary County Kildare piper William Kelly. I also mentioned Tony Byrne who came from Donegal in 1954 as principal of Ballyadams primary school. With them that night was Neddy Whelan, then an elderly man, a notable banjo player who was then playing the thin whistle, accompanied by the banjo master extraordinaire Martin Cooney. Sad to think that on my visit last week so many of the musicians of 25 years ago are no longer with us. The sessions however continue having earned the right to be regarded as Ireland’s longest running weekly Irish traditional music session. The present-day importance of the Clancy sessions is surely confirmed by the wide representation from outlining towns as the musicians from Athy were joined on Thursday last by musicians from Carlow, Abbeyleix, Newbridge, Baltinglass and Ballymount. On Saturday morning 15 members of the Clancy sessions came together at the Parish Church in Ballylinan for the burial of their friend and fellow musician Seamus Byrne. The outstanding piper Joe Byrne led off with a beautiful rendition of ‘Tabhair Dom do Lámh’ accompanied by his colleagues. During the communion the uilleann pipers Conor O’Carroll and Joe Byrne, again accompanied by the other musicians, played Seamus Byrne’s favorite tune ‘For Ireland’s sake I won’t tell her name’ and as the coffin was taken from the church three jigs were played by Joe Byrne with a wonderful expression of the young piper’s skill. At the graveside the Clancy session musicians took leave of their fellow musician and friend Seamus Byrne by playing a set of Seamus’s favourite jigs. We were reminded by Fr. Shelly of Seamus Byrne’s love of Irish traditional piping and how he followed his father, also a piper, who had died when Seamus was just a few days old. Seamus’s first piping lessons were on his father’s uilleann pipes which were repaired by Leo Rowsome and it was the famous Dublin based piper Rowsome who initially taught Seamus. Tos Quinn and Seamus Byrne were for so long leading members of the Clancy sessions, and it was Seamus who for many years was the unofficial fear an tí. He called the tunes and whenever unknown musicians joined the sessions always made them welcome and invited them to play. Uilleann piping has seen a resurgence in recent years, due in large measure to the setting up of Na Piobairi Uilleann in 1968. Here in Athy we are privileged to have a number of uilleann pipers and amongst them two of exceptional ability. Brian Hughes has given us many wonderful recordings of his uilleann piping and whistle playing and most recently Joe Byrne has produced his first piping CD. Seamus Byrne and Tos Quinn, two very good uilleann pipers, with the recently deceased Roddy Geoghegan for so long members of the Clancy music session are no longer with us. The sessions are now attracting a wide range of instrument players and the places of Seamus and Tos have now passed to uilleann pipers Conor O’Carroll and Joe Byrne. This traditional music session, like other sessions around the country, displays a great variety of instruments and a degree of musical competency which is delightful to hear. The Clancy music sessions are very much a part of the cultural reawakening of a town which over its lifetime at different stages underwent economic and social decline. Music is at the heart of that cultural movement and the session players are not alone in helping to recapture the spirit of this age. I was reminded of this during the 12 o’clock mass on Sunday having listened to the parish choir which was in splendid voice, admirably led by Anne-Maria Heskin whose solo singing was quite superb. Athy is the centre of our lives and the contribution that Irish traditional musicians such as the late Seamus Byrne and other musicians and singers make to the enjoyment and betterment of our community life cannot be underestimated.

The Civil War in Kerry

The good weather puts a gloss on things - not only on the countryside but almost inevitably on each and everyone of us.  Good humour is to be found everywhere, drawn out of us as if by a magnet of sunshine.  I was lucky to have arranged to spend the weekend in County Kerry which repays in scenes of unsurpassed rugged beauty the visitor who takes the time to travel to the South West.  The good weather allowed me to see Kerry at its best, even though early June is too early for the roadside fuchsia to be in bloom.  Some of the lakes and mountains of Kerry provide the most beautiful scenery I have ever looked upon, either in this country or anywhere abroad for that matter.

Amidst the beautiful scenery as you travel around Kerry there are always reminders of that terrible tragic period in our history when Irishmen fought each other in the Civil War.  I travelled one day to Cahirciveen, not in search of history but almost inevitably came in contact with the past when I examined the monument near the Parish Church which commemorates those “who died in the struggle for Irish freedom”.  Unlike other suchlike memorials which normally give the date of the struggle as either “1916-1923” or “1919-1923” the Cahirciveen memorial recorded it as “1916-19…”.  The inclusion of the name of an I.R.A. man who died in 1941 confirms that so far as Cahirciveen is concerned the struggle for Irish freedom did not end with the Treaty.  The hideous statue which tops off the Cahirciveen memorial is a repulsive looking representation of an I.R.A. gunman which in style and artistic deficiency is similar to the Sean Russell memorial which I used to pass in Fairview Park on my way to work many years ago.  The late T.J. Barrington whom I knew in the Institute of Public Administration in Dublin has referred to the Cahirciveen figure as “the hideous limestone hominid on the high plinth”. 

From the Cahirciveen memorial I passed to the former workhouse from where on 12^th March 1923, five men, prisoners of the Free State Army, were taken out, brought a short distance from the town and summarily executed.  I was interested in finding out why the five young men who fought on the anti-treaty side and who had been captured more than a week previously by the Free State Army had been killed without any pretext of a trial.  The answer was not long in coming.  Their killing was part of the concluding stage of the reprisals carried out by some Kerry-based Free State soldiers for what had happened just outside the small village of Knocknagoshel that same month.

On the way home later in the week I visited Knocknagoshel.  It is a place remembered in Irish history for the extraordinary banner carried aloft by local men at a Parnell rally in Newcastle West in 1891.  I can still remember the history lesson in the Christian Brothers School when the late Bill Ryan told us of the banner which read “Arise Knocknagoshel and take your place amongst the Nations of the earth”.  It was and remains equalled only by the memorable headline once carried in the Skibbereen Eagle, a local newspaper which announced, “The Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on Lord Palmerston and the Emperor of Russia”.

The banner bearing of 1891 is today commemorated with a plaque on the gable end of a house in the centre of Knocknagoshel village.  Just outside the village in a steeply inclined field, which in 1923 was part of Baranarigh Wood, five soldiers of the Irish Free State were killed by a booby trap mine on 6^th March of that year.  It was their deaths which would lead to the reprisals over the following few days, culminating in the killings outside Caherciveen.  The men killed at Knocknagoshel were Free State soldiers, three officers and two privates, one of whom was a local man.  Lieutenant Pat O’Connor was targeted by the I.R.A. because of his knowledge of the local I.R.A. organisation and the men involved in it and because of the energetic manner in which he pursued those who opposed the Irish Free State.  The atrocity was to lead to reprisals against the anti-treaty side and the first of these reprisals occurred the day after the killings.

Ballyseedy is the name of a townland just outside Tralee, which history might have bypassed but for the infamous incident which took place there on 7^th March 1923.  It was the day after the five Free State soldiers had been killed in Knocknagoshel and at Ballyseedy eight I.R.A. men would be killed in a similar fashion as a reprisal for the previous day’s events.  In fact nine prisoners were taken from Tralee Workhouse which was being used as a Free State Army base and a prison and brought to Ballyseedy Cross where they were bound hand and foot and tied together around a log lying across the road.  A mine concealed by the log was detonated and eight of the men died instantly.  The ninth man, Stephen Fuller, was blown away into a ditch from which he eventually escaped.  Ballyseedy, like the earlier Knocknagoshel incident, was an atrocity of barbarous proportions which has left a lingering dark stain on the personality of the people and the place which we have come to know as The Kingdom.

But even as the news of Ballyseedy was spreading across the locality, yet another atrocity was taking place just twenty miles or so away.  This time five men who were also prisoners of the Free State Army and held in the Great Southern Hotel which had been requisitioned as an Army base were taken to Countess Bridge in Killarney.  There they were fired upon by their guards, four of the men died on the spot, while the fifth like Stephen Fuller at Ballyseedy miraculously made his escape and survived to tell what happened.  The next act in what was to become known as the Tragedies of Kerry came five days later just outside Cahirciveen when more five republicans were executed.

The Civil War period left a legacy of bitterness and shame which those of the present generation might find difficult to understand.  Many of the young and not so young men involved at that time had to emigrate, usually to America, to escape the repercussions of the events and incidents in which they were involved or thought to be involved.  Even young women who sympathised or were involved with one side or the other were ill-treated and many, like school teacher Kathleen Walsh of Knocknagoshel who helped the local I.R.A. men in setting up the Knocknagoshel booby trap, had to emigrate after the Civil War.  Indeed three of Kathleen Walsh’s sisters took the same route to escape the bitter aftermath of the Civil War.

Ballyseedy Cross on the main Killarney/Tralee road has a fine memorial by the Breton sculptor Yann Renard-Goulet which commemorates the Kerry men who died in the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War.  Erected where the men were blown up on 7^th March 1923, the memorial nevertheless reflects the losses on all sides during the two wars and as such tries to transcend the legacy of bitterness which was left in the wake of the Civil War.

The memorial on Countess Bridge Killarney to the four men killed there makes no attempt to commemorate anyone other than the four men, “soldiers of the I.R.A. who were murdered here by Free State forces on March 7^th 1923”.  There are no memorials so far as I could see to the men who were killed in the wood at Knocknagoshel.

Throughout County Kerry there are many more memorials to the war dead of the time.  However, it was the events of March 1923 in Knocknagoshel, Ballyseedy, Killarney and Caherciveen which gave us the most deadly month in the history of the Civil War.

As I travelled around the beauty spots of Kerry in the bright June sunshine it was hard to imagine the tragedies which were once part of life in that county.  Tragedy in another form and in another county was again highlighted for me when passing through the village of Adare where I stopped to see the memorial plaque erected on the wall of the local Garda Station to the late Garda Gerry McCabe.  His death too was a barbarous atrocity which brought nothing but shame on the perpetrators and the organisation they represented. 

Shame is something we all feel at some time or other and in the town of Athy in the months and years which followed the Armistice of 11^th November 1918 it was a feeling which might justifiably have filled the thoughts of some locals.  They had turned their backs on the local men returning from the 1914-18 War just a few years after the same young men had been cheered as they marched to the Railway Station on their way to the Front.  For more than 80 years the men who fought and died in the First World War were written out of our history.  Over the past ten years or so the public’s attitude and indeed the State’s attitude has changed so that now it is possible to commemorate the sacrifices made by the men of the First World War and make amends for the neglect they endured in the intervening years.  As part of the reclaiming of a neglected part of our history the Chairman of Athy Town Council on Sunday 18^th June at 3.00 p.m. will unveil a plaque on the Town Hall to the memory of the men of South Kildare who fought in the 1914-18 War.

Over 2000 men from Athy and district enlisted during the 1914-18 War while more than 200 of them were killed in action or died of wounds or gas poisoning.  They are buried in places as far apart as Flanders and Gallipoli, in graves which family members back home in South Kildare never had an opportunity to visit.  The ceremony on 18^th will give the families of those men an opportunity to remember in a public way the lost generation from Athy and district.  It would be nice if the rest of us would come out that afternoon to lend our support.

World War II and County Kildare

A simple ceremony enacted in a canvass tent on the heath at Lüneburg in Germany in May 1945 marked the end of World War II in Europe where Germany formally surrendered to the allied forces.  The war which had convulsed Europe for six years had left much of the continent destroyed in its wake, having taken the lives of twelve million soldiers and civilians and displaced millions more.  Last month commemorative events were held all across Europe to mark the 60^th anniversary of the end of the war.  Many of the commemorative events were simple and evocative affairs where those elderly men and women marked, perhaps for the last time on such a large scale, their contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany.  I was struck that apart from the coverage in our own national papers referring to the events abroad there were little memorials of note held in this country.  It is characteristic of the schizophrenic attitude that we have to the war in this country in that the war years are still referred to as “The Emergency”, while in the rest of Europe it is still referred to as World War II.

Without doubt the neutral stance adopted by De Valera’s government in 1939 ensured that the south was not exposed to the mass destruction and loss of life endured by those in mainland Europe but at the same time during the course of the war there was a grudging acceptance and awareness that there was a substantial contribution made to the allied war effort by Irish men and women.  I was reminded of this recently when I came across a slim little booklet published by the British Government in March 1943, titled “Volunteers from Eire who have won Distinctions serving the British Forces”.  It was published to acknowledge the contribution of those Irish men and women serving in the British forces, be it army, navy or air force.  Undoubtedly the pamphlet was produced for propaganda purposes, perhaps with a view to embarrassing the Irish Government but at the same time it was a tacit acknowledgement of these brave Irish men and womens’ service.  Some of those mentioned were from County Kildare.  Col. William James Fitzpatrick Easie, from Newbridge, serving with the Royal Army Service Corps. was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and also awarded the Distinguished Service Order.  He was  a Deputy Director of supplying transport for one of the larger British Army Units serving at the famous Battle of El Alamein in the North African desert.  The citation stated that “by his drive and energy he did magnificent work which had a direct and powerful bearing on the success of operations”.  He was described as being imperturbable on all occasions, including during enemy air bombings and machine gun attacks and he was an inspiration to his officers and men with whom he worked.  “No amount of road strafing by hostile aircraft ever deterred him from his frequent visits to all parts of the battle area to encourage his troops to yet greater efforts.”

Acting squadron leader T.M. Hunt, a native of Naas, received the Distinguished Flying Cross while serving with the R.A.F. for gallantry and devotion to duty during air operations.  As did Flying Officer C.M. Miller who received the award on two occasions.   Born in the Curragh, Miller was the pilot of an aircraft detailed to attack an enemy minefield.  He carried out a number of attacks, despite vigorous counterfire from German anti-aircraft guns.  On returning to his base he had his plane re-armed, despite the fact that he knew he would be encountering heavy opposition and returned to make a further attack on the anti-aircraft guns. 

The Royal Air Force seemed to have a particular attraction for Kildare men.  Flying Officer J.W.W. Hurndall received a Distinguished Flying Cross, as did Warrant Officer John Conleth Grehan, originally from Naas, serving with 148 Squadron.  He had joined the R.A.F. in 1939, abandoning his law studies to do so.  Another Kildare man who joined the R.A.F. and awarded the Airforce Cross was pilot Flying Officer A.H. Tomkins. 

Such devotion to duty and willingness to expose themselves to danger in the allies cause was not restricted to men.  Elizabeth Scully, a nurse originally from Laois, was working in her hospital ward when it was struck by a high explosive bomb.  The walls of the ward collapsed and all the windows were blown out.  Notwithstanding the danger to herself Nurse Scully wrapped the patients who were under her care in blankets and in complete darkness successfully brought her patients out through a window and pulled them to safety over mounds of glass and rubble, having suffered numerous cuts and bruises as a result of her exertions. 

Notwithstanding Ireland’s declaration of neutrality De Valera decided that at the start of the war that the Irish Army and its reserve forces would have to be increased to counter any threat be it from Germany or even from the Allies.  The men of Athy responded enthusiastically to De Valera’s call and in their hundreds joined both the regular Army and the local Defence Forces.  After the initial surge of enthusiasm the reality of life in the war time Irish Army hit home.  It was a difficult period where the government’s resources were taxed to the extreme and at times the rationing and the equipping of a much extended Irish army was difficult.  In those circumstances the more youthful and adventurous of those who had joined the Irish Army decided that the prospect of service in a peacetime Irish Army was not as glorious or exciting as it first seemed.  During the course of the war almost 5,000 men, including 19 from Athy, deserted from the Irish Army but in reality the desertion was a response to the frustrations they felt serving the peacetime army and a willingness to be involved in the events across mainland Europe.  Many of those who deserted in reality went north of the border or across the Irish Sea to join the British armed forces.  While I am not aware of any sanctions which were suffered by men of Athy and from other parts of Kildare for this act of desertion, it appears that the government took a pragmatic view in the immediate years after the war in that a general amnesty applied in respect of those who had been officially described as being “dismissed for desertion”. 

The Irish contribution to the war in general is difficult to estimate at this remove.  The estimates of those Irish men and women who served in the British armed forces varies widely between the numbers 40,000 to 300,000.  Indeed the range of Irish involvement from a neutral country is quite remarkable.  I recently came across an article which indicated that up to 161 Catholic priests from Irish dioceses served in British forces, not taking into account those Irish priests who had previously worked in Britain.  The Church of Ireland itself provided 61 chaplains from Irish dioceses, plus a number of others from English dioceses.

The effect of the war was not as marked upon Athy as the first World War was but it is difficult now to imagine at this distance the sights, sounds and experiences of men like Lowly Walsh from Barrack Street who landing on the shores of France travelled all the way to Berlin.  I wrote in detail about Lowly’s experiences in the war in the Eye on the Past 180.  It seems appropriate that with the 60^th anniversary of the end of the war just past, that a fitting memorial to those men and women who experienced the war both here and abroad would be to have their experiences recorded for future generations, and I would encourage anybody to contact me with their reminiscences.