Sir, - In reply to M. M. Ireland (March 27th): At 4.30 a.m. on March 21st, 1918, the Kaiser's generals made their last pitch of the dice at the Allied lines in Flanders. In four hours the Germans had launched approximately 1,000,000 shells of high explosives, gas and trench mortars. It was the opening act of the Battle of the Somme 1918, otherwise known as the March Offensive. Within four days the German army advanced 14 miles and took 90,000 Allied prisoners.
On the morning of the 21st, the combined strength of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers was 51 officers and 1,288 other ranks. Between the 21st and 25th of March, the casualties suffered by the Dublin Fusiliers was 49 officers and 1,240 other ranks. In other words, a complete wipe-out of two battalions of men, who were either blown to bits, crippled, blinded, suffocated or driven mad and went missing.
Among the dead was a Dublin postman named Andrew Kinsella who came from Arbour Place. Andrew was a member of the 1st Battalion; he was 36 when he was killed somewhere near the French village of Epehy. He was typical of the thousands of Irish lads who lost their lives in the many bloody battles that made up the Great War, and have for so long, been forgotten, or lately labelled as not real Irishmen.
What right has any of us alive today to condemn the lives and memories of these people who showed courage in their convictions to die for whatever principles or reasons that drove them into that terrible madness of the Great War? Andrew was an Irishman, a Dubliner, and not a Black and Tan.
So, why this letter to The Irish Times, why the statistics about the Dublin Fusiliers, why the story of a Dublin postman, why a museum in Tipperary or anywhere else to remember these people? No special reason - except that I believe such statistics and stories told in an Irish museum are a symbol of our maturity and openness in analysing and presenting all and not some of our history. Anyway, just to show we are human beings, before you go to sleep tonight, spare a thought or even a prayer for Andrew and his Irish comrades who were killed between the March 21st and 25th 80 years ago. - Yours, etc., Tom Burke,
Ayrfield Road,
Dublin 13.