An Cosantóir

www.military.ie the defence forces magazine | 23 later recalled how for weeks the mail-carts had brought letters to the khaki-uniformed men telling them of events in Ireland. Issues specific to the regiment also helped to fuel the protest. These included strained rela- tions between officers and men, poor discipline, boredom and inactivity and, in the case of the soldiers at Jullundur, the sweltering summer heat of the Punjab plains. While James Daly had expressed the hope during the mutiny that 'similar action would be taken simultaneously by every Irish Regiment in the Army,' the mutiny failed to spread beyond Solon and Jullundur: a third Connaught Rangers Company, at Jutogh, remained loyal, as did the soldiers of other Irish regiments stationed in India. While some soldiers might have harboured nationalist sympathies, few were moved to take action on behalf of the republican cause. The government of India reported, for example, that most of the Irishmen in the 8th (King's Royal Irish) Hussars had 'enlisted to escape from Sinn Féin.' In October 1920 the Connaught Rangers took over gar- rison duty on India's Northwest Frontier. There was to be no repeat of the events at Solon and Jullundur, and the regimental history recorded that 'the men were again in excellent order.' By mid-1921 the mutineers had been transferred to British prisons to serve out the remainder of their sentences, which ranged from one year to penal servitude for life. In August of the following year, 28 of the mutineers unsuccessfully petitioned the British government to be released from prison so that they could enlist in the new Irish Free State Army. By this time, however, outside appeals to release the prisoners were growing, and came not only from Irish nationalists but also from a group of officers who had served in the Connaught Rangers. Following negotiations between the British and Irish governments, and the Dáil's passage of an act granting amnesty to those who had acted on behalf of the British during the War of Independence, the mutineers were released in January 1923. While the former soldiers received a warm reception at the port in Dun Laoghaire, where a welcoming committee met them, and in their hometowns, for most of the men their transition to life in indepen- dent Ireland was a difficult one. A number joined the National Army, although few remained soldiers for long. Others were more successful in forging careers in the Civic Guards, but in the 1930s a number of the former mutineers were living in poverty. Those convicted of participation in the mutiny had forfeited their British Army pensions, and in the mid-1920s the former Connaught Rangers had begun to lobby the Irish government for an official pension in recognition of their service to the independence struggle. With the support of the Fianna Fáil government, the Connaught Rangers (Pensions) Act was passed in 1936. The pensions issue was discussed and debated in both the Dáil and the Brit- ish and Irish press, which brought the mutineers to a prominence they had not enjoyed in a decade-and-a-half. Valentine Delaney of Mayo, one of the Jullundur mutineers, who had emigrated to the United States, served as grand marshal of the 1937 St Patrick's Day parade in Newark, New Jersey. The status of the Connaught Rangers mutineers as republican heroes was further solidified in 1949, when a cenotaph in their honour was unveiled in the Republican Plot at Glasnevin Cemetery. The memorial honoured the members of 1 Battalion, Connaught Rangers, 'who gave their lives during the mutiny and subsequently for Irish freedom'. The cenotaph became the focus of annual commemorations, not only of the mutiny but of James Daly's execution on November 2nd. In the following decades, the mutineers, supported by the National Graves As- sociation, lobbied for the return of Daly's remains from India. The re-interment of Roger Casement's body at Glasnevin in 1965 renewed calls for the return of what one newspaper called 'Ireland's Loneliest Martyr' from his grave in Dags- hai Cemetery. In October 1970, Daly's body was reinterred in Tyrrellspass before a crowd of 6,000. The flag that covered Daly's coffin had previously adorned that of Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike in October 1920, and the contemporary Northern Ireland conflict was also a prominent presence in the day's events. The republican pageantry of the ceremony was strongly martial; speakers invoked Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and the goal of a 32-county re- public. Following the graveside ceremony, a detachment of masked IRA men fired a volley in Daly's honour. The death of James Joseph Daly had been intertwined with one Anglo-Irish conflict; the commemoration that accompanied his return to Ireland ensured that his legacy would be linked with another. Pte James Daly's last letter to his mother. Photo of Pte James Daly in India prior to mutiny. Connaught Rangers Peninsula battle flag with honours. Connaught Rangers mutineers' memorial, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

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