A Bloody Dawn: The Irish At D-Day
by Dan Harvey (Merrion Press, €14.95)
Joe Carrol
The author, a retired army officer, has done extensive research to establish the role played by Irish participants (from the North as well as the South) in the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944.
He has also included the Irish contribution to the preparations for Operation Overlord and its aftermath up to the end of the fighting in Europe in May 1945.
Irish chaplains are also included and many will still remember Fr Patrick Crean who returned from the war with a decoration for bravery and went on to serve in the more peaceful confines of Donnybrook parish.
As the number of Catholic Irish in the armed forces increased, Cardinal McRory of Armagh had to send out a call for more Irish chaplains. The religious orders responded immediately and those who ministered in the RAF were given the rank of squadron leader!
Irish contribution
Tracking down the Irish contribution to D-Day and the lead up to it was a daunting task in itself. At times Lt-Col Harvey throws his Irish net very wide indeed when he includes Henry Ford, General de Gaulle and Sam Beckett who while not fighting on the beaches did contribute in their own way to the struggle against the Nazi tyranny.
But the emphasis is on the role played out on the beaches, at sea and in the air by Irish combatants, many of whom gave their lives in the effort.
The author estimates that from D-Day to end of the hostilities 11 months later, some 850 Irish died fighting across France and Germany, and that about 400 of these were from southern Ireland.
In the Italian campaign, of the 650 killed about 300 were from the south and in Malaya/Burma, 300, all from the south, were killed.
The author touches briefly on how many of the Irish combatants may have deserted from the ranks of those at home defending Irish neutrality.
Northerners and southerners were proud to fight side by side on the beaches”
Irish soldiers who had become bored with manoeuvres on the Curragh and decided to join the struggle to preserve democracy.
The precise figure may never be known although the author states confidently that out of the 42,000 who served in the Defence Forces during the Emergency “4,983 deserted to join the Allied armies fighting Germany and Japan”.
In June 2012 the Irish Government decided “to grant a pardon and amnesty to those who absented themselves from the Irish Defence Forces without leave or permission to fight on the Allied side”.
In any case, “deserters” were only a fraction of the estimated 60,000 southern Irish who volunteered to fight against fascism. Less than 40,000 volunteered in Northern Ireland which was officially at war with the Axis powers, but did not have conscription.
There was some embarrassment for Northern politicians when the full extent of the southern contribution and list of decorations for bravery were published after the war.
But as this book makes clear, northerners and southerners were proud to fight side by side on the beaches whether they were in the Irish Guards or the Inniskilling Fusiliers.
Some Irish women in France also showed great bravery when they joined the Resistance. Many Irish women also served as nurses in dangerous frontline casualty stations.
We can be proud of those Irish who fought to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny and this book shows why.
