An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir July / August 2024 www.military.ie/magazine 22 | This article will be the first in a series exploring the controversial topic of Irish Defence Forces soldiers who deserted the organisation to join the British Army during WWII. I n January 2020, I was reading local newspaper articles of the Emergency era in search of stories of Sligo soldiers when I happened upon a man by the name of 'Mr Gorman' of Sligo town who had been brought into court for a misdemeanour on Sligo's main thoroughfare - O'Connell Street post-WWII. It transpired that Mr Gorman had been a member of the Irish Defence Forces, an organisation he deserted before the outbreak of the Second World War to join the British Army. He would go on to fight at Dunkirk and in North Africa against Rommel's Afrika Corps, only to seemingly desert from the British Army too and return to his native Sligo. After the hearing of his misdemeanour offence was processed in court, Mr. Gorman was handed over to Irish military authorities to receive judgment from a military court for his act of desertion. After randomly coming upon this short article, I next happened upon a man named 'Mr Dolan' of Sligo town, who rebuked the district judge upon being handed back to the Military Police to be judged before a military court for the act of desertion in 1943. He would exclaim threateningly upon being led away from court: "Wait till Hitler comes over". My interest was piqued, and as I started to search for "Irish Army deserter" and other similar terms of reference through various newspaper databases and archives, I was astounded by the sheer quantity of material. There were thousands of entries in local and national newspapers dealing with the details of a court session wherein a deserter had been brought before a district judge for this military crime. My initial reaction: could that many have deserted from the Irish Army during a time of national peril? The topic of this discussion is understandably sensitive. It is sensitive to family members of the deserters who feel the state, wider society, and even, at times, their very own neighbours were overly harsh in their treatment of their ancestors for the controversial decision they made to firstly desert and secondly join the British Army. Without fear of creating a false sense of equivalency, the subjects covered in this book were and remain sensitive (albeit in a politically passionate form rather than a personally emotive form) to those who hold the opinion that Irishmen should never join British Army Regiments - most particularly so soon after independence had been achieved - put to one side the fact that the soldiers first deserted from the state's new national army. The passage of time has helped alleviate some of the bitterness and rawness of the subject for the groups mentioned above, but a discussion such as this can still stir the passions. We need to look no further than recently attempted and abandoned RIC commemorations in 2019-20 for evidence of this. Éire seceded from the United Kingdom in 1922 and simultaneously established its own National Army (known as the Free State Army, later known as the Irish Defence Forces). Regardless of this historic national step, the centuries-long tradition of Irishmen joining the British military did not cease. Instead, the custom continued, and during the Second World War, despite Éire's official neutral stance, tens of thousands of Irishmen joined the British military. Within this number is a unique sub- group of soldiers who took a more significant risk by enlisting – those that deserted from the Irish National Army. As a form of repercussion for deserting the Irish Defence Forces, the Fianna Fáil government, led by Eamonn de Valera as Taoiseach, summarily dismissed them from their military service in 1945 1 . Furthermore, their names were published in a controversial document titled: "List of personnel of the Defence Forces dismissed for desertion in time of National Emergency pursuant to the terms of Emergency Powers (No 362) Order 1945 (S.R. & O. 1945 No 198) or Section 13 of the Defence Forces (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1946 (No 7/1946)." This document (or "blacklist" as it was to become known) was subsequently circulated to all civil service departments and state-run services, e.g., post offices, health services, state-owned bus, rail, air, and shipping companies). This was intended to bar those listed from any form of government employment. Moreover, all these men lost their entitlements to gratuities, allowances and pensions for services rendered, dated from the day they were recorded to have gone AWOL from the Irish Defence Forces. The total number on the list is 4,983 soldiers. During the Second World War, it is estimated that some 60-70,000 citizens of Éire joined the British Army. Interestingly, the number exceeded that of Loyalist Northern Ireland. The total known number to desert the Irish Defence Forces was more than 7,000 (with an estimated slight majority of this number joining the British Army), meaning that some 10% of Irish citizens who joined the British military during WWII were, in fact, deserters from the Irish Defence Forces. The Irish Defence Forces had approximately 42,000 permanent serving personnel within its various services throughout the war 2 . The Irish Defence Forces was suffering from a retention crisis during a time in which the continuity of the state was under immense pressure and in receipt of covert (and at times overt) threats to its sovereignty. Of the 7,000 plus estimated to have deserted, slightly fewer than 2,500 personnel returned to their units or were apprehended (some were tried by a military tribunal, and others were locked up in military jails). IRISH DESERTERS OF THE IRISH DEFENCE FORCES DURING WWII AN INTRODUCTION ARTICLE BY CAPT CÍAN HARTE PHOTOS PROVIDED BY CAPT CÍAN HARTE Figure 1. Con Murphy in military attire. Picture from Irish Independent Article (07/05/2013). Con Murphy remarked bluntly how "I was browned off with the Army and cutting turf – it wasn't soldiering at all" (Widders, Robert. Spitting On A Soldier's Grave: Court-Martialled After Death, The Story of The Forgotten Irish And British Soldiers [Poland, 2017], p. 46). Con Murphy was referencing the 'Turf-Cutting Campaigns' the Defence Forces were utilised for throughout the Emergency period, a campaign of such a non-military nature that it would drive hundreds from the force to pursue soldierly passions elsewhere.

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