An Cosantóir

www.military.ie the defence forces magazine | 31 commonly referred to as the Auxiliaries or 'Auxies'. The next training officer, Garret Brennan, and the battery commander of No 1 Battery, James McLoughlin, were ex-Royal Garrison Artillery. Major Mulcahy himself was an ex-Royal Engineer, the only ex-British army officer to become Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces. Captain Bertie Thompson had served in the Boer War and with the Canadian artillery in the Great War, while numerous other gunners and NCOs had prior military service. The gunners played an important public relations role and were on hand for the numerous parades and displays that were a part of the Irish Free State in the 1920s, including the St Patrick's Day parade, the annual Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown in July and the Griffth-Collins commemoration in August. The Corps' first shoot was carried out by No 1 Battery on 1 September 1925 in the Glen of Imaal, with the guns under the control of the training officer, Capt Garret Brenan, and Maj Mulcahy firing the first shot on the same gun that fired 375 rounds during the Battle of the Four Courts in June 1922. The ministers of Defence and Finance, the Chief of Staff and the four GOCs all attended the shoot. The day after the shoot No 1 Battery, under the command of Capt McLough- lin, marched to Dublin to participate in a review of 2,500 Eastern Command troops in Phoenix Park. Following the review, the battery, having been on the move since well before dawn, returned to the Glen of Imaal. When the battery was halfway back to Wicklow a rumour started to circulate that the canteen in the Glen had been closed. Speaking of this incident An t- Óglach wrote: 'A joke's a joke, but cruelty is another matter'. The Corps' shoot the following year was filmed by British Pathé News and shown under the title 'In the Wicklow Mountains: President Cosgrave and Mr. Hughes, Minister for Defence, watch Irish Artillery Practice'. The An t-Óglach correspondent at the shoot reported that the film camera caused some excitement among the troops who made 'some rush' to get a look at it. In those days getting the guns from Kildare to the Glen was a major exercise for both horses and men. Part of the route between Dunlavin and the Glen became known as 'Sub-sec- tion Hill' as it was on this point of the journey that the horses pulling the guns were changed over. Despite tests in the 1920s to replace horses with Fordson tractors, the horse remained a central part of the gunner's life until the late 1930s, and the Corps' famous Mounted Escort, or Blue Hussars, was formed for ceremonial duty only in the 1930s. The Corps benefited from the new army's interest in developing a profes- sional force when Capt Charles Trodden was sent with the Military Mission to America in 1926 to attend the Battery Officers' Course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in preparation for the establishment of the Artillery School at Kildare. By the end of the 1920s, the Corps had also established a 4.5-inch howitzer bat- tery and was well placed for the expan- sion that occurred in the 1930s, with anti- aircraft, coastal artillery, and volunteer reserve batteries. The hutted barracks at Kildare was re- placed in the late 1930s by a purpose-built artillery barracks, designed to meet the re- quirements of a modern army and served the Corps well until the last gunners left for the Curragh in September 1998. about the author: Mark McLoughlin lives in Kildare and is the editor of The Curragh: A Lifetime of Memories (1997); The Curragh Revisited (2002); and Kildare Barracks: From the Royal Field Artillery to the Irish Artillery Corps (2014). He has also written many articles on Kildare during the Civil War. Kildare Barracks, No 1 Bty, D Sect, 1929. Moving the guns into position in the Glen of Imaal, 1926. Sport was an integral part of life in Kildare bks. Here is the 1929 No.1 Bty Football Team.

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