Ireland and World War I

During World War I (1914–1918), Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which entered the war in August 1914 as one of the Entente Powers, along with France and Russia. In part as an effect of chain ganging, the UK decided due to geopolitical power issues to declare war on the Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.

Occurring during

In 1916, Irish republicans took the opportunity of the ongoing war to proclaim an independent Irish Republic and launch an armed rebellion against British rule in Dublin, which Germany attempted to aid. In addition, Britain's intention to impose conscription in Ireland in 1918 provoked widespread resistance and, as a result, remained unimplemented.

After the end of the Great War, Irish republicans won the Irish general election of 1918 and declared Irish independence. This led to the Irish War of Independence (1919–1922), fought between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and British forces. Ex-servicemen fought for both sides. During the War of Independence, the British government partitioned Ireland. This phase of conflict ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty which split Sinn Féin and the IRA, leading to the Irish Civil War (1922–1923) between pro-treaty and anti-treaty forces. The pro-treaty forces were victorious, with most of the island becoming the Irish Free State.

The remarks attributed to National Volunteer and poet, Francis Ledwidge, who was to die in preparation of the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917, perhaps best exemplifies the changing Irish nationalist sentiment towards enlisting, the War, and to the Germans and British.^[3][4]

"I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions".

After the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising – including his friend and literary mentor Thomas MacDonagh – were executed during his military leave, he said:

"If someone were to tell me now that the Germans were coming in over our back wall, I wouldn't lift a finger to stop them. They could come!"

Prelude to the Great War

Political climate in Ireland

The First World War was immediately preceded in Ireland by a major political crisis over

The Government of Ireland Act 1914 received royal assent on 18 September 1914. However, the operation of this Act was suspended for the duration of the war. Moreover, it was resisted fiercely by Unionists, concentrated in Ulster. In 1913, they had formed an armed militia, the Ulster Volunteers, to resist the implementation of Home Rule or to exclude Ulster itself from the settlement. Nationalists in response formed a rival militia the Irish Volunteers, to "defend the constitutional rights of the Irish people",^[5] and to put pressure on Britain to keep its promise of Home Rule.^[6] Conflict between the two armed groups looked possible in the early months of 1914. The outbreak of war temporarily defused this crisis.

Nationalist response

On 3 August 1914,

The interests of Ireland—of the whole of Ireland—are at stake in this war. This war is undertaken in the defence of the highest principles of religion and morality and right, and it would be a disgrace for ever to our country and a reproach to her manhood and a denial of the lessons of her history if young Ireland confined their efforts to remaining at home to defend the shores of Ireland from an unlikely invasion, and to shrinking from the duty of proving on the field of battle that gallantry and courage which has distinguished our race all through its history. I say to you, therefore, your duty is twofold. I am glad to see such magnificent material for soldiers around me, and I say to you: "Go on drilling and make yourself efficient for the Work, and then account yourselves as men, not only for Ireland itself, but wherever the fighting line extends, in defence of right, of freedom, and religion in this war . It would be a disgrace forever to our country otherwise

— [9]

Redmond's call came at a time of heightened emotions as the swift German advance

The 180,000 Irish Volunteers were divided by Redmond's support for the British war effort. A large majority followed him, forming the National Volunteers. About 25,000 of these went on to serve in Irish regiments of the New British Army during the war. The remaining 10,000 Volunteers under Eoin MacNeill declared they would keep their organisation together and in Ireland until Home Rule was passed. A further 100,000 or more men, who were not members of the National Volunteers, enlisted from around Ireland in the New Army divisions for the duration of the war.

However, the more radical fringe of Irish nationalism, the remaining Irish Volunteers, and the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood, rejected Irish participation in the war on Britain's side. They actively opposed enlistment and in secret, elements of them prepared an armed insurrection against British rule in Ireland which would later be known as the 1916 Easter Rising.

Redmond gave a speech in opposition to the Easter Rising in which he described it as a 'German intrigue'.^{[further explanation needed]} His pleas, and Dillon's, that the rebels be treated leniently were ignored by the Irish public, and would later cost his party in the election following the War, as well as being of consequence to subsequent events such as the British military actions under martial law following the Easter Rising and the Conscription Crisis of 1918.^[9] Sinn Féin won the majority of seats (73 out of 105 seats) in the Irish general election of 1918 while the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Unionist Party won 6 and 22 seats respectively.

Unionist response

Unionist leader Edward Carson promised immediate Unionist support for the war effort. He was motivated in this by two main factors, one being genuine identification with the British Empire, another being a desire to demonstrate the loyalty of Unionists to the British government, despite having formed an armed militia in defiance of it over Home Rule.^[12]

At this time,

Redmond requested the War Office to allow the formation of a separate Irish Brigade as had been done for the Ulster Volunteers. The British Government, however, was suspicious of Redmond after he declared to the Volunteers that they would return as an armed and trained Irish Army by the end of 1915 to resist Ulster's opposition to Home Rule. Eventually he was granted the gesture of the 16th (Irish) Division. However, with the exception of its Irish General William Hickie and unlike the 36th (Ulster) Division, the 16th was led by English officers. Most Irish recruits lacked military training to act as officers.^[14]

According to David Lloyd George, Nationalist women had embroidered a green flag depicting the Celtic harp for the Irish division, and Unionist women had embroidered for the Ulster Division a flag emblazoned with the Red Hand of Ulster. Kitchener ordered the green flag with the harp to be taken away but he allowed the Ulster Division to keep their flag: "Ireland was deeply hurt. Her pride was cut to the quick, her sense of fair play was outraged, her sympathy with the Holy War against the military dictatorship of Europe was killed, and John Redmond's heart was broken".^[15] Lloyd George argued that thereafter, "the effort of Irish Nationalism to reconcile England and Ireland by uniting the two peoples in a common effort for the oppressed of another land failed, and Lord Kitchener's sinister order constituted the first word in a new chapter of Irish history".^[15]

In the judgement of one historian, "Both political camps [nationalist and unionist] expected the gratitude of the British administration for their willingness to sacrifice themselves and the rank and file of their parties. Neither foresaw that in the First World War, all special interests would be expendable".^[16]

Recruitment

A total of 206,000 Irishmen served in the British forces during the war.^[17] Of these,

• 58,000 were already enlisted in the British Regular Army or Navy before the war broke out, including:
  • 21,000 serving regular soldiers, 18,000 reservists, 12,000 in the Special Reserve, 5,000 Naval ratings and 2,000 officers.^[18]
• 130,000 were service volunteers recruited from Ireland for the duration of the war, including:
  • 24,000 from the National Volunteers.
  • 26,000 from the Ulster Volunteers.
  • 80,000 with no experience in either of the paramilitary groups.^[19]

Of the wartime recruits, 137,000 went to the British Army, 6,000 to the Royal Navy, and 4,000 to the Royal Air Force.^[20]

According to historian David Fitzpatrick, "The proportion of eligible men who volunteered was well below that in Britain [...] even so, the participation of 200,000 Irishmen was proportionately the greatest deployment of armed manpower in the history of Irish militarism".^[21] The recruitment rate in Ulster matched that of Britain itself, Leinster and Munster were about two-thirds of the British rate of recruitment, and Connacht lagged behind them.^[22] Overall, Protestants volunteered in higher proportions than Catholics,^[23] although in Ulster Catholics volunteered just as often as Protestants.^[24]

The voluntary recruitment figures were: 44,000 Irishmen enlisted in 1914 and 45,000 followed in 1915, but this dropped to 19,000 in 1916 and 14,000 in 1917.^[25] The 1918 figure has been given as between 11,000^[25] and 15,655;^[26] between August and November 1918 alone 9,845 were recruited.^[27]

Decline in recruitment

Several factors contributed to the decline in recruitment after 1916. One was the heavy casualties suffered by Irish units in the war. The 10th Irish Division suffered very heavy losses during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, while the 16th and 36th Divisions were shattered at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.^[28]

A second important factor was the Catholic Church's condemnation of the war in July 1915. Pope Benedict XV issued an encyclical calling on all powers to end the war and come to an agreement. As a result, the Irish Catholic Bishops publicly called on Redmond to withdraw Irish support for the war.^[29]

Thirdly, Irish troops in the British Army appear to have been treated with particular harshness even by the standards of the time. They constituted just two per cent of the membership of the force, yet they were the recipients of eight per cent (271) of all death sentences imposed by its courts-martial.

Unlike the rest of the United Kingdom, conscription was never imposed on Ireland, a position it held with the British dominion of Australia in WWI. In the British dominion of Canada after conscription began there was a conscription crisis, in 1917, following this, when Irish conscription was proposed in the spring of 1918 (following the huge German spring offensive), it led to the Conscription Crisis of 1918, a mass assembly of civil disobedience and the proposal was dropped in May after the American entry into the War had helped stem the German advance.

German support to separatists

In a similar fashion to the nascent Indian Independence Movement, the Irish rebels collaborated with their Indian counterparts and mutually sought help from Germany during the War.^[36] The Germans sent a shipment of over 20,000 captured Mosin–Nagant Russian rifles, 10 machine guns and 4 million rounds of ammunition to aid the Irish Easter Rising. However the shipment was lost when the ship, the SS Libau, posing as the SS Aud was intercepted and scuttled by her captain off Fenit, County Kerry. After the Rising, they were in communication to send another, much larger weapons cache to Ireland in 1917, but the plan never came together. Roger Casement tried to recruit a rebel unit from Irish prisoners of war in German captivity. The "Irish Brigade" drew only 55 recruits, however.^[37]

Irish Divisions

Of the Irish men who enlisted in the first year of the War, half were from what is now the Republic of Ireland; the other half were from what is now Northern Ireland. They joined new battalions of the eight regiments existing in Ireland.

These battalions were assigned to brigades of the 10th (Irish) Division, the 16th (Irish) Division, and the 36th (Ulster) Division of Kitchener's New Service Army, as well as to brigades of other United Kingdom Divisions during the course of the war.

A proportion of the Irish National Volunteers (INV) enlisted with regiments of both the 10th and 16th Divisions, but were predominantly in the 16th division, members of the

In spite of these criticisms, the 16th division gained a reputation as first-class shock troops during engagements in 1916.^[39][40]

The Irish regiments of the three divisions and the BEF as a whole appear to have suffered from few serious disciplinary or morale problems during March to November 1918.^[41]

10th Division

The 10th (Irish) Division, was one of

16th Division

The 16th (Irish) Division was a K2 Army Group division of

Major General William Hickie took over from Lt. General Sir Lawrence Parsons in December 1915. Hickie was, in public, much more diplomatic and tactful than his predecessors and spoke of the pride which his new command gave him.^[46]

At

The 16th Division held an exposed position since early 1918 at Ronssoy where they suffered heavy losses during the German March Spring Offensive and in the retreat which followed, being practically wiped out when they helped to finally halt the German attack prior to the Battle of Hamel. The decision was then made to break up the division, the three surviving Service battalions posted to other formations.^[50] In June the division was "reconstituted" in England. The "16th Division" which returned to France on 27 July contained 5 English Battalions, 2 Scottish Battalions and 1 Welsh Battalion. The only original Battalion left was the 5th Royal Irish Fusiliers.

The dispersion of the Irish battalions throughout the BEF in 1918, despite its practical considerations, does appear to suggest that the Irish units were increasingly distrusted by the military authorities.^[51]

36th Division

The 36th (Ulster) Division was a K6 Army Group division of Lord Kitchener's

The 36th (Ulster) Division, on the other hand, had a variable performance and after it was badly cut-up and collapsed during the March 1918 Spring Offensive, the division in this case was reorganised and its battalions brought up to strength.[53]

Both the 16th and 36th Divisions had also lost much of their original character by the end of the war. According to David Fitzpatrick, "Eventually heavy casualties and insufficient recruitment ensured that all three Irish Divisions were restocked with British recruits and effectively dismembered".^[54]

Irish regiments

The Childers Reforms linked regiments to recruiting districts – in the case of Ireland to eight regimental recruiting areas, see end, also.^[26] Militarily, the whole of Ireland was administered as a separate command with Command Headquarters in the old Royal Military Infirmary building at Parkgate (Phoenix Park) Dublin, directly under the War Office in London.^[55]

After the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 the regimental garrisons raised additional new service battalions in Ireland for voluntary enlistment in the three New Irish Divisions of Kitchener's New Service Army In March 1918 after the 10th and 16th Irish Divisions were broken up due to heavy casualties, their remaining New Service Battalions were dispersed throughout the above United Kingdom Divisions.

Irishmen also enlisted in other Irish regiments of the regular British army based elsewhere in England, Scotland and Wales (some Irish in name only). These included four

The first United Kingdom engagement in Europe of the War was made by the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards on 22 August 1914. They encountered several German cavalrymen on patrol near Mons, when Corporal Edward Thomas had the distinction of firing the first British army shot in Europe in the War,^[56] during which some of the Germans were killed and others captured.

Mons, Givenchy, 1914

The Germans were pushing their advance through Belgium to encircle Paris within three weeks (Schlieffen Plan), when on 27 August the 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers was chosen for the arduous task of forming the rearguard to cover the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force during the Battle of Mons. The Munsters were only to retreat if ordered. They made an epic stand losing 9 officers and 87 other ranks holding out in a famous action at the village of Étreux,^[57] many others surrounded and taken prisoner. They stemmed the Germans who were five or six times their strength for over a day, allowing their 1st Division to escape.

When the scattered battalion reassembled on 29 August it was down to a disastrous 5 officers and 196 others. These were withdrawn and by November recruits from home brought its strength up to over 800 men. The battalion was moved south to the Festubert sector in France on 22 November to fill a gap by taking two lines of trenches. There were 200 casualties in the first 10 minutes of heavy fire. On 25 January, the Kaiser's birthday, the Germans tried unsuccessfully to break through with terrific shellfire. There then followed three months of rebuilding and training the battalion.

The Irish Guards also suffered heavily in battle of Mons, like the Munsters, having to fight a rearguard action while withdrawing from Bois de l'Haut. They took over 300 casualties but managed to retreat intact.^[58]

The Munsters' and Irish Guards' experience was typical of the decimation of the highly trained pre-war British Army in the campaigns of 1914 in France and Belgium. By the end of 1914, those regiments deployed in the original British Expeditionary Force had been shattered by very heavy casualties. On average, in each battalion of 1,000 men, only one officer and 30 men remained unscathed.^[59] For this reason, it was necessary to deploy, first reservists to replace casualties, and then the wartime volunteers of Kitchener's New Army (including the 10th, 16th and 36th Irish Divisions), in order to fight a war of an unprecedented scale.

St Julien, 1915

While the

At the end of 1915 the 16th (Irish) Division entered the trenches on the Western Front under the command of Irish Major-General William Hickie.

Dublin, 1916

As the number of Irish war casualties increased with little prospect of early victory, the Irish Volunteers continued to train and resisted any attempt to disarm them. They organised an Easter Rising in Dublin for 24 April. Roughly 1,200 Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army members took over the city centre. About 5,000 troops in the Dublin area were deployed to suppress the rebellion. An additional 1,000 were immediately sent from Belfast and further thousands were dispatched from Athlone, The Curragh and England. The 4th, 5th and 10th Royal Dublin Fusiliers took part, as did a number of officers and soldiers who were on leave in Dublin at the time.^[26] By the end of the week, 16,000 British troops had been deployed to Dublin.^[60] Casualties were 62 rebels killed, 132 British Army and Police dead and 368 wounded. Another 270 civilians were killed and over 2,000 wounded.^[61] In all, just 16 police and 22 of the British soldiers killed were Irishmen.^[62] Another 16 rebels, the rebel leaders - the seven signatories of the Proclamation of Irish Independence, Padraig Pearse, James Connolly, Éamonn Ceannt, Thomas James Clarke, Seán MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, and Joseph Mary Plunkett as well as nine others - were executed by the British Army, without trial, after the Rising.^[63]

It was generally accepted that the Irish Volunteers fought bravely and honourably. Prime Minister Asquith told the House of Commons that "they fought bravely and did not resort to outrage." The series of executions helped to swing Nationalist support away from the Parliamentary Party and behind Sinn Féin.^[64]

Hulluch, 1916

A German gas attack on 27 April in the

The 16th (Irish) Division and the 36th (Ulster) Division were almost completely wiped out due to Gough's insufficient defence preparations for the expected great German spring offensive towards Amiens in March 1918. One third of the total personnel were killed—over 6,400 in the 16th and over 6,100 in the 36th, which also resulted in the April conscription crisis. Irish manpower was reallocated to other Divisions when following the American campaigns they took part in the final Hundred Days Offensive which by October drove the Germans back from territory gained in the previous four years, to end the war.

Middle East Fronts

Gallipoli, 1915

A stalemate on the Western Front prompted an alternative approach to beating Germany by opening a second front in the east for which Russia needed urgent aid from the Mediterranean, to launch an assault to tie down the German army. However, as the Ottoman Empire controlled the Bosporus sea passage, the Royal Navy tried to sail up the Dardanelles in March but several ships were lost. As a result, Irish, British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops were formed into the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and transported from Britain to Gallipoli for a land invasion.

In the

Another attempt was made in August but this too failed. Winston Churchill who had proposed the venture resigned from Government.

Serbia, 1915

With the

In December, still wearing summer uniforms, the severe snow and frost caused many casualties. The 10th Division, which included Connaught Rangers, together with the Anglo-French forces having failed to prevent the fall of Serbia after the Bulgarian forces made intensive progress, were ordered to retreat. They remained at Salonika, where during 1916 they were built up to strength again.

Greece, 1916

The Bulgarians, with German support, crossed the Greek frontier on 26 May 1916. The 10th Division was first sent into action in August along the

The number of Irish deaths in the British Army recorded by the registrar general was 27,405, a casualty rate of 14 percent, roughly in line with the rest of the British forces.[54] By contrast, the National War Memorial at Islandbridge, Dublin is dedicated "to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914–1918".^[70] This figure appears to be inaccurate however.^[71] The figure of 49,400, refers to all the fatalities in the Irish Divisions, whether Irish born or not. In fact, only 71 percent of the casualties in these Divisions were natives of Ireland.^[28] A study published in 2017 found 29,450 men who were either born, lived in or had next of kin in the 26 counties that became the Irish Free State killed in the war in British and Commonwealth forces, including the Australian and Canadian armies as well as the British Army.^[71] Another study counts the Northern Ireland war deaths (that is of soldiers who were born in the counties would go on to from Northern Ireland) as 10,300, which would put the confirmed all-Ireland death toll at about 40,000.^[72]

Around another 1,000 Irish-born men lost their lives serving with the United States Army in the conflict.^[73]

The dead were buried close to the battlefield, but some of the seriously injured were sent to convalesce in Ireland. Those who died of their wounds in Ireland were buried in the Grangegorman Military Cemetery, if their bodies were not claimed by their families. The majority of those buried in Grangegorman are from the Great War.^[74][75]

Demobilisation and post war experience

The War ended with the

When the Irish Divisions raised for the war were demobilised, roughly 100,000 war veterans returned to Ireland. This indicates that in the region of 70–80,000 decided to live elsewhere.^[76] Several reasons may explain this, one being high unemployment in Ireland and another being the rise of militant nationalism in the country, which in many cases was hostile to those who had served in the British forces.

In 1919 the

With the outbreak of the guerrilla conflict, the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), in which the Irish Republican Army attacked the police and British military, ex-servicemen were in a divisive situation. For veterans who became involved, some like Tom Barry who had served in the British Army in WWI along with Emmet Dalton joined the IRA sometime after Armistice Day. While many joined paramilitary police forces, the Black and Tans and Auxiliary Division, charged with putting down the guerrillas. In County Clare, for example, 15 locals joined the Auxiliaries, all of whom were war veterans, while 46 joined the Black and Tans, of whom 25 had served in the British Army^[79] Similarly in Northern Ireland, many ex-servicemen joined the Ulster Special Constabulary – an armed Auxiliary police force raised for counter-insurgency purposes. Over half of this (mostly Protestant and Unionist) force's 32,000 recruits were veterans of the Great War.^[80]

British veterans, along with numbers of Irish veterans of WWI who served in the British army joined the Black and Tans after the war, approximately 10% of the Black & Tan's recruits and 14% of the Auxiliaries were Irishmen.^[79][81][82] with this organisation then going on to perpetrate a number of atrocities during the Irish War of Independence. For these reasons, many nationalists were reluctant for many years to recognise the part that Irishmen had played in the world war on Britain's side.^[83]

The majority of ex-servicemen, who took no active part in the conflict, were however in some cases subjected to suspicion and intimidation by the IRA due to, amongst other things, having pledged allegiance to the British Empire as a prerequisite before their participation in the British Army.^[84] Some were targeted by the IRA for allegedly giving information to British forces, and for example, a total of 29 ex-servicemen were shot dead in County Cork as suspected informers.^[85]> In total out of around 200 civilians killed by the IRA as informers, 82 were ex-servicemen.^[86]

When most of Ireland left the United Kingdom on the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the five regular, full-time Irish regiments whose recruiting areas were in southern Ireland: the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the Connaught Rangers, the Leinster Regiment and the Royal Irish Regiment, that had suffered so severely in the Great War, were disbanded.^[87] While in some cases renamed or amalgamated, the remaining regular Irish regiments continued in service. These comprised the Irish Guards, the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, the Royal Ulster Rifles and the Royal Irish Fusiliers.

Thousands of these ex-servicemen re-enlisted in the emerging Free State's newly formed National Army on the pro-Treaty side after the outbreak in June 1922, of the Irish Civil War, during which multiple atrocities were committed. In July 1922 the Dáil authorised raising a force of 35,000 men; by May 1923 this had grown to 58,000. The National Army lacked the expertise necessary to train a force of that size, such that approximately one fifth of its officers and half of its soldiers were Irish ex-servicemen of the British Army and men like Martin Doyle, Emmet Dalton, W. R. E. Murphy, and Henry Kelly brought considerable combat experience to it.^[88] W.R.E. Murphy rose to second in command in the Free State's National Army in the civil war and after became Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

Commemoration

In the Free State and the Republic of Ireland

Due to the complexity of the Irish experience during the Great War, and the hostility of much nationalist thinking to those who had fought in it on the British side, the Irishmen who fought and died in the war were not officially acknowledged for many years. According to historian Michael Hopkinson, "Large elements of Irish society were effectively excluded from Irish politics; Sinn Féin represented only part of the Irish nation. The virtual ban on the commemoration of the Irish dead of the First World War dramatically illustrates this".^[89]

From 1919–1925, Remembrance Day was marked with a ceremony on

Although the Irish government donated £50,000 in 1927 towards the construction of a Great War Memorial in Dublin, they put it in Islandbridge, outside the city centre, rather than in Merrion Square as originally proposed. Government minister Kevin O'Higgins (whose two brothers had served in the world war) summed up the dilemma of the moderate nationalist Cumann na nGaedheal government,

"I say that any intelligent visitor, not particularly versed in the history of the country, would be entitled to conclude that the origins of this State were connected with...the memorial in that park Merrion Square and the lives lost in the Great War in France, Belgium, Gallipoli and so on. That is not the position. The State has other origins and because it has other origins, I do not wish to see it suggested, in stone or otherwise, that it has that origin".^[92]

The Republican opposition of Fianna Fáil was much more hostile,

"Mr Cosgrave's grant of £50,000 out of the Irish people's money for their English Memorial Park, throws off the mask of Irish nationality under which members of the Free State government have hitherto tried to deceive the Irish people"^[93]

Although the Memorial Park was opened in 1948, it was not until 2006 that the Irish state held an official commemoration there for the Irish dead of the First World War, when President of Ireland Mary McAleese and the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, marked the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July.

Introduced in 1986, the National Day of Commemoration held each July in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham commemorates "all Irish people who died in past wars or United Nations peacekeeping missions". Charles Lysaght commented "it does less than justice to the Irish who went to the First World War to lump them in with all the Irish who died in the service of other countries".^[94]

The unveiling of a Cross of Sacrifice to honour Irish soldiers who died in both world wars, took place at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, on 31 July 2014.^[95] It was unveiled by the President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins together with the President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Duke of Kent, who both laid wreaths. The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys also attended the ceremony, which coincided with the centenary of the outbreak of World War I.

In Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland, where the War was seen by unionists as a mark of British patriotism, has always officially commemorated the dead of both world wars on Armistice Day. For unionists, their contribution to the First World War, in particular, was a potent symbol of their loyalty to Britain. In the words of Keith Jeffrey, "It marks the Union sealed with blood. It stands for the ultimate test of Ulster's loyalty: a Blood Sacrifice to match any by Irish Nationalists".^[96]

For this reason although Northern Catholics had enlisted during the War just as often as Protestants, they were excluded from the War's Commemoration, which became an almost exclusively Unionist event.^[97]

Today

The 16th (Irish) Division was made up of Irish nationalists and thus was predominantly Catholic, and for the best part of the rest of the 20th century it was almost eliminated from the historiography of the Great War, while at the same time the achievements of the 36th (Ulster) Division became part of the culture of Northern Irish Protestants.[99]

Memorials

Memorials commemorating those Irish who served and died in the Great War:

• Irish National War Memorial Gardens
• Island of Ireland Peace Park Messines, Belgium.
• Menin Gate Memorial
  Ypres, Belgium.
• Ulster Tower Memorial
  Thiepval, France.
• Pery Square War Memorial, Limerick

Infantry and Special Reserve regiments raised in Ireland

See also

• Main article: Causes of World War I
• Garden of Remembrance (Dublin), to participants in Irish nationalist rebellions
• Irish World War I recipients of the Victoria Cross
• Ireland rugby internationals killed in action in WWI
• Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme
• Irish neutrality during World War II

References