An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir March / April 2023 www.military.ie/magazine 16 | 'GINGER' O'CONNELL AND THE MILITARY ARCHIVES BY COMDT DANIEL AYIOTIS PHOTOS PROVIDED BY COMDT DANIEL AYIOTIS T he stor y of the Militar y Archives is the stor y of the people who made it what it is. It is a stor y that goes back one hundred years, featuring some ver y well-known historical names. The seeds of the Militar y Archives were planted in 1923 when Commandant General Piaras Béaslaí, who had been the IR A and National Army Director of Publicit y, requested that the Chief of Staf f permit the temporar y establishment of a ' War Records Of f ice' in order to collect and collate f iles that he and Captain J J Burke had gathered in connection with Béaslaí's government-appointment as biographer of the recently deceased Michael Collins. These records, he said, 'would be of great value for reference as a complete histor y of the Irish Volunteers, IR A, and the star ting of the Regular Army, as well as the Anglo-Irish and Irregular Wars.' The request was denied due to the large scale post- Civil War demobilisation that was going on at the time. However, there remained a requirement for an archival ser vice within the Army, and the Militar y Archives was established as a sub-section of the Intelligence Branch in 1924 by its director, revolutionar y veteran Colonel M.J. Costello. This was necessitated largely by the requirement to manage records, par ticularly for the purpose of verif ying the pre-Truce ser vice by claimants under the 1923 Army Pensions and 1924 Militar y Ser vice Pensions Acts. The day-to-day running was the task of Capt 'Fonsie' Blake and Mr Thomas Galvin, a civilian clerk, whose work, by its nature, also documented for posterit y the histor y of Óglaigh na hÉireann and the independence struggle. When Blake and Burke lef t the Army in 1926, the Archives were generally neglected until 1932, when a new Director of Intelligence, Colonel E.V. O'Carroll, rejuvenated the archives as the 'historical' sub-section and in 1933, initiated the Anglo-Irish Conf lict Project. This attempt to collect testimony of revolutionar y veterans had the suppor t of both the Chief of Staf f (Michael Brennan) and the President of the Executive Council, Éamon de Valera. While its success was ver y limited, it was a precursor to the much more successful Bureau of Militar y Histor y, established in the 1940s and which collected 1,773 witness statements that are accessible on the Militar y Archives website. It was in 1935 that the f irst Of f icer-in-Charge of the Militar y Archives was formally appointed - Colonel J.J. 'Ginger ' O'Connell. O'Connell had well established revolutionar y credentials, having been a senior member of the Irish Volunteers and later IR A, mainly known for his role as Director of Training. As Deput y Chief of Staf f of the National Army, his kidnapping by anti-Treat y IR A in the Four Cour ts in June 1922, had triggered the decision to deploy 18 pounder guns to dislodge the occupying troops. O'Connell also ser ved as GOC of the Curragh Camp, and was famously pictured raising the tricolour over the Water Tower at its handover by the British. Demoted to the rank of Colonel during the post-Civil War demobilisation, a necessit y he accepted, he was never promoted again above the rank of Colonel. While he was understandably resentful of this, it did not af fect his absolute industriousness and zeal for the job as the Archives' f irst director. O'Connell's 9-year tenure represented the zenith of the Militar y Archives' for tunes during its f irst phase of existence. O'Connell was appointed on 4th June 1935, and immediately set about establishing precisely what duties this new position entailed, and equally impor tant, where exactly those duties were to be per formed. On Saturday 8th June, O'Connell inspected the of f ice accommodation at the Red House – Intelligence headquar ters at Inf irmar y Road, Dublin – as a potential location. Although the Archives would be based there at a later stage, Grif f ith Barracks was identif ied and chosen as a more suitable location. O'Connell spent a lot of time and energ y during the f irst year engaged in internal wrangling to put the Militar y Archives in the best position possible to carr y out its mission. His appointment had come about without any specif ic direction as to what exactly it entailed. Resources, both personnel and f inancial, were thin – in this regard O'Connell had to f ight to secure par t-time access to a single t ypewriter and was regularly incurring f ines from the librar y of the Royal Dublin Societ y (RDS) for overdue books, as he was borrowing titles on his personal membership for the purpose of the work of the Militar y Archives. Colonel M.J. Costello, the Director of Intelligence who established the Military Archives as a sub-section of Army Intelligence in 1924. Colonel J.J. 'Ginger' O'Connell, one time member of IRA GHQ and Deputy Chief of Staff of the National Army. 'Ginger' was demoted to Colonel as part of the demobilisation and restructuring of the Army post Civil War. In 1935 he was the first to hold the new appointment of Officer-in- Charge of the Military Archives.

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