An Cosantóir

| 17 www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE Despite this, O'Connell remained undeterred and set about expanding the Archives' collections from various sources both within and outside of the Army. He expanded on O'Carroll's work, collecting and compiling historical sources and dossiers on a wide range of organisations including Fianna Éireann, the UVF and British Army. While O'Connell's success was greatly due to his ver y signif icant organisational and intellectual aptitudes, his personalit y also contributed to both his individual success and to that of the Militar y Archives under his leadership. It is widely noted in various histor y books that O'Connell's popularit y was par tly the reason why he was kidnapped by the anti-Treat y IR A at the beginning of the Civil War. He never lost this popularit y either - on 4th July of 1939, he was invited to give a radio talk on George Washing ton during a special Independence Day broadcast, and on the 12th, he gave one on the Battle of the Boyne. Archiving is a uniquely human practice, and the human factor is critical to the successful management of an archive. In modern professional archival practice, understanding the archival profession is inextricably linked to the practicalities of archival management and the understanding that it is a profession characterised by several uniquely human and interdisciplinar y facets. Decades before archival academics were publishing ar ticles on this, O'Connell understood it intrinsically. Following O'Connell's sudden death in 194 4 the Militar y Archives endured neglect and were eventually removed from the establishment of the Defence Forces in 1959. O'Connell's passionate enthusiasm would only be matched again during the tenure of Commandant Peter Young, whose advocac y over several years resulted in the Archives being re-established in 1982. Following his untimely death in 1999, Young 's deput y, Commandant Victor Laing, succeeded him as Of f icer-in-Charge. Laing brought the Militar y Archives to the cusp of the Decade of Centenaries, poised to achieve its mission in a manner O'Connell could only have dreamed about, but about which he would no doubt have been immensely proud. Commandant Daniel Ayiotis is the author of the recently published The Militar y Archives: A Histor y (Dublin: Eastwood, 2022), available from all good bookshops or directly from the publisher at wordwellbooks.com www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE | 17 Commandant Peter Young (left) and Capt Victor Laing (right) working at the Military Archives. Laing would take over as Officer-in-Charge following Young's death in 1999 and remain so until his retirement in 2012. Laing guided the Archives into the twenty-first century and the important national centenaries that began in 2012. In 2016 he was awarded a well-deserved honorary doctorate from UCD for his significant contribution to public life in the context of the Decade of Centenaries. The new Military Archives building opened in 2016. One of the state's 'permanent reminders' – capital projects funded by government to mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Regarded as The Father of the Military Archives, Commandant Peter Young campaigned to have the Military Archives re-established in 1982, it having been removed from the establishment of the Intelligence Branch in 1959. Commandant General Piaras Béaslaí, the National Army's Director of Publicity and official biographer of Michael Collins, who initiated the collection of Civil War records with the assistance of Captain J.J. Burke. Béaslaí proposed the establishment of a temporary War Records Office in 1923 but his request was refused as untenable given the large-scale demobilisation and reduction of the Army that was taking place in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The Military Archives: A History, by Commandant Daniel Ayiotis, recently published by Eastwood.

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