Frank Fitzpatrick wrote a curious letter the other day in reply to my diary about the destruction of the 16th and 36th Divisions on the western front in 1917, in which he seemed surprised that I deplored both the abominable fate which befell them and their treatment by the British high command. It is the sorry truth in Ireland that if you attempt to be fair-minded about anything, you are accused of sympathising with it.
In my column I lamented the fate of the two Irish Divisions, simply because they were Irish. Unlike Frank Fitzpatrick's interpretation, I did not say that they were regarded as more expendable than English troops. A brief study of the appalling battles 80 years ago this summer - see "Passchendaele - the Untold Story", Prior and Wilson (Yale), a splendid but all too-brief account of one of the great tragedies of human history - will assure Frank Fitzpatrick that the cup of suffering was passed in its full and bloody measure to units of all combatant nations, not just the Irish.
Where they did suffer was in the appreciation of the British High Command, and not for the first time. We know the reason for this.
Most of the British generals of the time were culturally and tribally unionist. They found Irish nationalism an incomprehensible disorder, and they profoundly distrusted organised nationalism, of which the 16th Irish Division was an uncomfortable representative. That division was twice squandered by Gough, in 1917 and 1918, but that did not make it unique. Gough was used to squandering men. What was unique for the 16th was that in return for being squandered, it was disbanded, amid much ignominy, after the German offensive in 1918.
Mutiny in Irish regiments
There is a body of evidence, collected by the historian Julian Putkowski, that some Irish regiments mutinied when they heard of the disbandment of their division. The mutiny was hushed up, and a large number of Irish soldiers sentenced to death. Executions on such a scale could not be kept silent, and would probably have triggered widespread mutinies not merely amongst hundreds of thousands of Irish soldiers on the front, but also amongst British, Australian and Canadian units too. The "mutineers" were instead imprisoned, and in time quietly released.
Nothing has been written about this episode. Julian's evidence was uncovered in recently opened courts martial verdicts. Actual records of the trials were destroyed in the Blitz, and anecdotal evidence about the mutiny and its repression is curiously non-existent, much as public memory of the men who followed Redmond's advice in 1914 became curiously non-existent. (I would be happy to hear anything about this episode from any readers, incidentally).
That people such as Gough might have cavalierly dismissed the courage and the sacrifice of Irish soldiers of the time is one thing: it came naturally to one of his caste to dismiss the bearers of Irish nationalism. My point has always been that the neglect was not just by the British high command, but also by Irish nationalism.
And worse than neglect. At least 200 ex-soldiers were dragged from their homes and murdered by the IRA between 1919-1922. Murder was followed by amnesia, so that generations of schoolchildren were raised to a narrow and ungenerous and profoundly inaccurate picture of the real Ireland of the time.
John Hume's father
And that is why I cited John Hume in my diary. John Hume's father served with the Royal Irish Rifles, and not in the 16th Irish Division, as Frank Fitzpatrick averred, but I believe in the 36th Ulster Division. Each November, when unionists have selectively remembered the unionist war dead - though less selectively in recent years, I am happy to acknowledge - John Hume could have chosen to record the truths about his family.
He chose not to do so. The agreed history of unionism-nationalism on this island depends on a consensus over falsehood. Nationalist Ireland preferred to believe that its stout men stayed at home and kept their powder dry for the real war and that is very much the Fianna Fail position to this day; unionist Ireland preferred to believe that it send forth its gallant legions, whilst fenians skulked at home and plotted treachery. There was enough commonality for the two myths to subsist side by side, reinforcing one another, while the vast truth lay unseen beside the competing fictions, a Gulliver slumbering while sashed Lillputians strutted.
Necessary neutrality
Frank Fitzpatrick seems to think that with my low opinion of the British high command of 1917 that I am close to approving of Irish neutrality during the second World War. Frankly I am sick of saying this, but I will repeat what I have said many times: neutrality during the second World War was the only realistic option, politically, morally, militarily.
You can fine-tune that neutrality whatever way you like - and I do think that more concern should have been shown to allied convoys on the south-western approaches - but the essential truth is a country without a proper army, navy or air force does not sensibly seek to come to conclusions with the Third Reich. Only an immoral and fatuous high-mindedness would have prompted Ireland to enter a war of ferocious giants, in which the destruction of our cities would have been the work of an idle afternoon. And that said, I can now look forward to letters yet again denouncing me for my condemnation of Irish neutrality.