An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir March 2019 www.dfmagazine.ie 10 | THE BRITISH ARMY AT WAR BY JOHN MCGUIGGAN O n the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the Brit- ish Army suffered 57,400 casualties, while they lost only 177 men in the three years of the Irish War of Independence. This of course is a reflection that the principal war against the British was fought between the IRA and the Royal Irish Con- stabulary, which lost some 500 officers. For the British army then, many thought it hardly a war at all. Bernard Montgomery, who served during the War of Independence as a brigade major in Cork, thought it was all "an in- valuable training exercise", rather than a war, and "magnificent training for the men." Many of the soldiers were veterans of the Great War, who had witnessed killing on a massive scale; many wore medal ribbons not just from World War One, but from campaigns on the Indian Frontier, the Boer War, Meso- potamia, and Palestine, with a healthy sprinkling of gallantry medals and the oak leaves of those mentioned in despatches. True, there were also new soldiers, post-war recruits, un- tempered in war, but the core of the army were veterans and for most of them service in Ireland was more remembered as frustrating, tedious, even boring; an endless series of guard duties, sweeps and searches, most of which found nothing, escorts, cordons, curfews, poor accommodation, poor food, and rain. They were unaccompanied by families and the old days of visiting towns, drinking in the pubs, going to the races and dances, and meeting local girls, were invariably replaced by stultifying confinement to barracks, meeting no one and engaging with nobody but their fellow soldiers. They were not the teeth of the war; that was the RIC. When the police began to falter and faced being overwhelmed then it was the armed and ferocious Auxiliaries and the 'Tans, com- missioned as policemen, who took the fight to the IRA. The army remained, almost throughout, a backup force, an insur- ance policy, a support force. The army did not like the 'Tans and the Auxies; they thought them undisciplined and were wary of their reputation for hard drinking, retaliation, murder and mayhem. Army barracks were not attacked, for fairly obvious reasons. In a typical attack on an RIC barracks 20 or more IRA men would open fire on the police. Fire might be returned by as few as six police officers, and such a gunfight might last several uninterrupted hours, with little hope of relief. You could not do that to a military barracks, where a hundred or more rifles would return fire, with perhaps two or three machine guns and even grenades and mortar fire. No, the army lost their men in ambushes, while they went to church, while drinking in pubs, or caught in isolated places, kidnapped while fishing, and a dozen other un-military situations. It was guerrilla warfare and the British were attacked at their weakest points; hence the high RIC casualties and the relatively low army casualties. This form of fighting almost naturally induced anger and hatred against the Irish, as it was intended to do so. There were retaliations and revenge. The A proclamation offering a reward of £1,000 for information leading to the capture of those involved in the Soloheadbeg ambush Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, John French inspecting British troops in Ireland. Military carrying out official reprisal following an ambush in Meelin, Co. Cork. (Most likely 5th January 1921). Photo: National Library of Ireland/W. D. Hogan/NLI Ref _HOG156

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