'The Black and Tans 1920/'21' and 'The World War 1 Dead of Co. Kildare'

Two important books arrived on my desk in the last week, both of them with listings of men who served our neighbouring country at a time when Ireland was an unwilling part of the British empire. The first book was Jim Herlihy’s latest publication, ‘The Black and Tans 1920 – 1921’, which added to his impressive list of previously published works makes him the outstanding author of policing before and during Ireland’s War of Independence. Subtitled ‘A complete Alphabetical List, Short History and Genealogical Guide’, the book is a complete listing of the 7,684 men who enlisted in the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve, or as they were better known the Black and Tans. The Black and Tans were recruited to compensate for the shortfall in R.I.C. members, resulting from the IRA campaign against the police which forced so many policemen to resign. Between 6th January 1920 and 7th July the following year 7,684 men were recruited in Britain and brought to Ireland to join the R.I.C. Special Reserve. Amongst their numbers were 381 native Irishmen, including 9 from County Kildare, 6 from County Laois and 5 from County Carlow. The Black and Tans, so called because they dressed in black trousers and tan tunics, were initially trained in the R.I.C. Depot at Phoenix Park, but later in the Hare Park Camp on the Curragh before ending up in September of 1920 in Gormanstown Camp, Co. Meath. On completion of their one month training the R.I.C. Special Reserve were transferred to R.I.C. Barracks around the country. Athy, while not regarded as an active rebel town, had a small number of Black and Tans stationed in the old Cavalry Barracks at Woodstock Street. While recruiting for the Special Reserves stopped on 7th July 1921 the members of that force only began to leave Ireland in January of the following year. At least one member of the Black and Tans who was based in Athy remained in the town or later returned, which I do not know, for he married a local girl. The story of the Black and Tans is one which we Irish remember as one of killings and atrocities by men who were a law unto themselves. Jim Herlihy’s book is a comprehensive listing of the men who during the 18 months they were in Ireland suffered 143 casualties. During their time in Ireland they earned the outrage of Irish men and women who regarded them as terrorists. The second book published by the County Kildare Decade of Commemoration Committee is titled ‘Remembrance: The World War 1 Dead of Co. Kildare’. Compiled by Karel Kiely, James Durney and Mario Corrigan it lists the 753 men and 1 woman from the County of Kildare who served and died during World War I. The research for this book has uncovered 9 Athy men not previously identified who died during the war. Three of them were from Offaly Street, two brothers James and Thomas Connell and Joseph Breen. As a young lad growing up in Offaly Street I remember the brothers Mick and Johnny Connell lived in Crampton House opposite what is now the Credit Union in Offaly Street, while another brother Lar lived in Stanhope Street. They were the brothers of the two World War 1 soldiers, James who died on 17th April 1915 and Thomas who died on 9th September 1916. Further up Offaly Street during my youth lived Tom Breen and his family, whose daughter Nan died within the last year or two while she was still living in the family home. Tom’s brother Joseph, a soldier in the Royal Army Service Corps, died aged 32 years, less than two weeks before the end of the war. He was born in Janeville and his younger brother Tom at the time of his brother’s death was living with his grandmother Julia Bradley in Offaly Street. Two other soldiers of whom I was not previously aware are identified as William Dooley of Castlemitchell and his namesake whose brother James Dooley lived at Rathstewart Cottage, Athy. Other Athy soldiers who died in the war but whom I was unaware of until they were included in the new book were 22-year-old Christopher Doran of St. John’s Lane, 33-year-old Michael Davis of Kelly’s Lane and later Chapel Hill, Patrick O’Mara of Chapel Hill, and the Vigors brothers, Arthur and Charles, whose father Charles Vigors was a shopkeeper in Market Square in the 1890s and later. The book lists the deaths of 120 men born in Athy, by far the highest number of any town in the county, the next highest being the Curragh with 67 and Naas with 64. An additional 19 names must be added to Athy’s World War I casualty list, representing men not born in the town but who lived there either when they enlisted or sometime earlier. For many years it was believed that they were on the wrong side of history, that is until Kevin Myers, John MacKenna and later Clem Roche and others wrote of Athy’s men’s sacrifices with pride and gratitude. Here in Athy we arranged the first Armistice Day Sunday Service nearly 30 years ago as part of a weekend of remembrance which featured a seminar in the Town Hall, with lectures by Con Costello, Pat Casey, Kevin Myers, Josephine Cashman and Jane Leonard, followed by a performance of ‘The Fallen’, a voice play of the Great War by John MacKenna. This was the first awakening of an important part of our town’s story and one which now finds another retelling of part of that story in the new book ‘Remembrance: The World War I Dead of Co. Kildare’. Congratulations to Karel Kiely and her colleagues James Durney and Mario Corrigan for a magnificent new publication on Kildare’s World War I dead.

Remembering Athy's World War I Dead - 'Still and Distant Voices'

The Great War of 1914-1918 had a profound and lasting impact on the town of Athy and its hinterland.  Research indicates that upwards of 213 men from Athy and outlying districts died in what was supposed to be ‘the war to end all wars’. It is difficult to determine the actual number of Athy men who served in the war as many joined up in England, Scotland and some as far away as Australia and Canada.  In June 1915 the Leinster Leader reported that 1600 men from Athy and its environs had enlisted and that number had increased, by how much we don’t know, before the war ended in November 1918. 

According to the 1911 census figures, the population of Athy was just over three and a half thousand people, so it is reasonable to speculate that during the 52 months of the war almost every family in the town had a son, father, relative or neighbour who was at the war front. 

William Whelan of Castledermot was the first man from South Kildare to be killed in action.  He died on the 28^th August 1914 and four days later William Corcoran of Offaly Street became the first Athy man to die in battle.  Irish Guardsman Patrick Heydon of Churchtown died on the 4^th of September and was buried in Villers Cotterets Wood along with 98 other officers and men of the 4^th (Guards) Brigade who fought to cover the retreat of their comrades following the defeat at Mons.

Athy men fought and died in every major battle in France and Flanders and they are buried in cemeteries or remembered on monuments which are to be found all along the 400 miles of the Western Front.  Nineteen sons of South Kildare are remembered on the Menin Gate in Ypres.  Seventeen men who died at the Somme are remembered at the Thiepval Memorial, along with 70,000 others who died there between July 1915 and March 1918 and have no known grave.

Eight men are named at Tyne Cot, where those who died in the battle of Passchendaele are remembered. Five more at Loos, four at Cambrai, and two Athy men, Christopher Flynn and Andrew Pender, lie in Artillery Wood in the same cemetery as the Meath poet Francis Ledwidge.

Local man David Walsh is probably best known as a director of plays with Athy Musical and Dramatic Society and Athy Drama Group, but he also has a keen interest in the Athy men who fought in the Great War.  Over the past ten years he has visited and photographed the graves of almost all of the Athy and South Kildare casualties who lie in France or Flanders.  I’m told that at each grave or monument David left  Irish and Kildare flags with some clay from ‘the Crickeen’ in Old St. Michaels cemetery, along with a drop of Irish whiskey to remember and honour the sacrifice of these brave young men, who in the words of Tom Kettle ‘Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,- But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed, And for the secret Scripture of the poor.’

It is therefore no surprise that David brings his two passions together for a performance in the Athy Community Arts Centre on Woodstock Street, with the staging of ‘Still and Distant Voices, an oratorio for the Men of Athy’ who fell in the Great War. Written by John MacKenna, with music by Mairead O’Flynn, the oratorio was first staged in Athy’s Presbyterian Church in 1990 and now on the centenary of the start of the war it is to be revived.

For this production David has drawn on the experience of the people he has worked with in the past, as well as some new faces; Chris Fingleton, Tony Cardiff, Noel Kavanagh, Eileen Doyle and Amanda Barry from Athy Musical and Dramatic Society, Damien Walsh and Deirdre Walsh from ONE4The Road Theatre Company, Gerard O’Shea of the Moat Theatre in Naas, as well as newcomers Brian Kelly from Kilmead and Susan Walsh who recently starred in the movie ‘All About Eva’. 

The production is a poignant and moving story of the Great War as seen through the eyes of a young couple from South Kildare, a servant girl and her soldier boyfriend in the late summer of 1914.  It is a tender and beautiful story told against the backdrop of  death and destruction which one hundred years ago marked the daily lives of soldiers in that small part of a foreign land we now know as Passchendaele. 

There are just three performances, Thursday 6th, Friday 7^th and Saturday 8^th November at 8.00 p.m. sharp in the Arts Centre on Woodstock Street. Tickets are available from the Gem and Winkles.

If you do nothing else on remembrance weekend, go and see this show in Athy’s Art Centre.  I highly recommend it.