Sir, - The first Garda pilgrimage to Lourdes took place in 1930 - not, as Father Pat Carroll records (Rite and Reason, August 10th) "in the 1920s". In 1928, Commissioner Eoin O'Duffy led the pilgrimage to Rome.
The Lourdes pilgrimage, organised by the former RIC Letterkenny DI, Assistant Commissioner Patrick Walsh, was again led by O'Duffy, with Father Austin Tierney CP, Mount Argus, as principal chaplain. Close on 350 gardai from all ranks took part. Unlike in Rome two years earlier, the men wore civilian clothes, to the great disappointment of the civil and religious authorities in Lourdes.
The political overtones in 1928, when the Garda Siochana paraded the national flag on the Continent, and the - perhaps, in the circumstances of the times, necessary - spit and polish the pilgrims had to live with, soured the experience for the rank and file especially.
The Garda Siochana returned to Lourdes in 1984, and again in the Marian Year, 1988, when the pilgrims wore their uniforms, led respectively by Commissioner Laurence Wren and Commissioner Eamon Doherty.
The parade flag, embroidered by the Dun Emir Guild in 1926, and carried in Rome in 1928 and 1982, and in Lourdes in 1930, 1984 and 1988, was recently restored on the initiative of the Garda archivist, Inspector John Duffy. It is now laid up in the Officer's Mess at Garda Headquarters. - Yours, etc.,
Gregory Allen, Upper Kilmacud Road, Blackrock, Co Dublin.