The Wild Geese and other fighters

IRISH MILITARY HISTORY: The Fighting Irish: The Story of the Extraordinary Irish Soldier By Tim Newark Constable, 274pp. £14.99

FOR A NEUTRAL COUNTRY, Ireland claims a remarkable military tradition. Although British recruiters were never reluctant to mythologise Celtic valour over the centuries, the reasons were more economic than romantic: the British Empire’s insatiable demand for soldiers and Ireland’s history of mass migration. Irish enlistment peaked in the Victorian era, following the relaxation of Penal Law restrictions on Catholic recruitment, when more than 40 per cent of the British army was composed of Irish-born recruits.

The Irish were also well represented in foreign armies, whether by the Wild Geese of the continental Catholic powers between the 16th and 18th centuries or by post-Famine emigrants to the US. During the American Civil War, 89 Irish soldiers won the Medal of Honour, the largest group of foreign-born servicemen to earn the decoration; 188 Irish soldiers in British uniform – a less celebrated body of men – have won the Victoria Cross since 1856.

In The Fighting Irish, Tim Newark tells the story of these men in their own words, drawing on soldiers’ memoirs, letters, diaries, interviews and blogs. The breadth of the study is ambitious, encompassing soldiers in “Irish” units in European, British and American armies, and Irish army units in the service of the United Nations, as well as mercenaries, chancers and ideologically driven republicans.

The narrative is conventional enough, beginning with the departure from Ireland of Sarsfield’s Jacobites after the Battle of the Boyne and proceeding, at a rapid clip, to Wellington’s peninsular army, Napoleon’s Irish legion and later 19th-century formations in Latin America, the US and the British Empire. Major set pieces, such as the 36th (Ulster) Division’s heroics at the Somme, are present and correct, along with more quixotic campaigns, such as the Fenians’ farcical Canadian invasions.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries there were few major conflicts at which Irishmen were not present; and not infrequently, as in the Boer War, they were to be found on both sides.

Newark’s method of navigating through this morass is to write short, pacy, chapters that draw heavily on first-hand accounts. We follow, for example, Myles Keogh from the Italian Papal War to the Battle of Fredericksburg, in the American Civil War, and on to his eventual demise, alongside Gen Custer, at Little Bighorn.

This approach works well in providing colour and first-hand perspective but is undermined by the author’s tendency to mine these accounts without evaluating their reliability or significance. Little effort is made to analyse recurring themes such as the disillusionment of Irish soldiers in foreign armies, stereotypes of Irish combatants (brave but ill disciplined), the prevalence of religious, ideological and geopolitical factors across the centuries, changing attitudes to British army service, and the visibility of the Irish in British uniform. During the Fenian era, for example, the presence of the Irish in the British army was played down as a potential enemy within, while during periods of greater imperial need their contribution was consciously promoted.

Instead, the focus is on the military: details of arms used, tactics deployed and the unfolding of battles are recounted at length, leaving little room for consideration of the social or political context in which fighting occurred. Coupled with the tendency to highlight deeds of “derring-do”, this leads to something of a Boy’s Own approach, and an occasionally overwhelming succession of military engagements.

These shortcomings are evident in the chapters on the Spanish Civil War and the second World War. The account of the Irish in Spain is based on two unreliable sources: the self-serving memoirs of Gen Eoin O’Duffy, the blueshirt leader whose account of the ill-fated Irish Brigade verges on the fictional, and Thomas “Red” Cushing’s picaresque ghost-written memoirs, which provide much colour but few insights into Irish experiences in the International Brigades.

The chapter on Irish republican involvement with Nazi Germany draws heavily on British military intelligence files without differentiating the occasional factual nugget from the rumours and gossip that comprise most of what is recorded by contemporaneous intelligence sources. Frank Ryan, for example, was not, as described here, a Tipperary journalist, a machine-gun officer, a fervent communist or a Nazi prisoner, and it’s highly unlikely that he met Hitler in August 1941.

The treatment of more recent history is also unconvincing. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq is attributed to Saddam Hussein’s role as “a leader of Islamic opposition to American foreign policy” and his past atrocities rather than to his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction, the casus belli offered at the time. The approach to what is described as the War on Terror is uncritical. The commander of the Irish-American 69th Infantry Regiment, who oversaw the evacuation of Ground Zero after 9/11, is described, in approving terms, as “ready for payback time” in Iraq, notwithstanding Newark’s earlier (qualified) observation that Hussein had no “direct links” to al-Qaeda. The grief of the parents of US soldiers who died in Iraq is noted, but there is no reference to Iraqi fatalities – described as “the terrorists” – or the ineptitude of the occupation. The deployment of the Irish Guards is accompanied by a quote from a senior British officer: “The people of Basra are getting their first real glimpse of the courage, tenacity and professionalism of our armed force.”

Perhaps they were, but other, more objective opinions are available. The book ends on an unconvincing note – “Together, American-Irish, British-Irish and Irish from the Republic of Ireland continue to fight for freedom around the world” – which rather ignores the more complex (and often less lofty) motives for enlistment in Irish and foreign armies.

Fearghal McGarry teaches history at Queen’s University Belfast. His latest book, Rebels: Voices from the Easter Rising, is published by Penguin Ireland