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Harry Clarke’s War. Marguerite Helmers
Читать онлайн.Название Harry Clarke’s War
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isbn 9780716533092
Автор произведения Marguerite Helmers
Издательство Ingram
Recruitment and enlistment were heaviest in the industrial areas of Dublin and Belfast. Agricultural labourers were needed at home, resulting in lower enlistment from rural areas. Given the specific geographical character of the new Irish divisions, their outlook on the question of Home Rule carried into the predisposition of the membership. The 36th (Ulster) Division was made up of 90,000 members of the Ulster Volunteers, with the addition of recruits from Scotland and northern cities in England.40 The nationalist Irish Volunteers were divided in their support of the war effort. Over 170,000 supported Redmond and enlisted in the new divisions, changing their name to the National Volunteers. A cadre of 11,000 members of the Irish Volunteers did not enlist; a core group of these Volunteers would form the rebel force that led the Easter Rising in April 1916.41
Drafts were not always placed with Irish regiments. If battalions at the front were in need of replacements, Irishmen might be sent to units that required them. Johnstone lists Irish recruits being sent to the Black Watch, the 13th Middlesex, and the Scots Guards.42 Furthermore, ‘since Napoleonic times, English Roman Catholics were usually sent to Irish regiments’.43 As a result, between the regular and new armies of the British Expeditionary Force, Irish-born Irishmen could be found in almost all regiments, whether these were designated Irish or non-Irish.44
While this book addresses the artistic achievement of Ireland’s Memorial Records, some attention has to be given to the ongoing question of the 49,435 names in the eight volumes, including a discussion of the number of enlisted men and the numbers of dead. Historians and military enthusiasts alike acknowledge that the names listed were neither complete nor accurate. In fact, the 1923 preface to Ireland’s Memorial Records duly notes their incompleteness:
The sub-committee regret profoundly that they have not been able to obtain a complete list of the names of the fallen Irishmen in the Navy, Air Force, and Colonial Regiments, but these volumes contain names of such Irishmen in these Services as have been available from private sources and through the Press. The compiling of these records was given great publicity, and every effort was made to procure complete and accurate information, and accordingly if any names have been omitted, or any particulars are incorrect, the Committee cannot accept whole responsibility.
Eva Barnard, secretary to the Dublin-based Irish National War Memorial Committee, undertook the work of collecting the names that would be printed in the eight volumes. To do so, she sent letters asking for information and looked at the lists of dead in the newspapers. Her work was completed independently of Harry Clarke. Clarke was responsible only for the artistic vision and production of the decorative borders surrounding the names. The borders and the roll of names were even printed independently of one another.
As definitive military records of Irishmen who died in the First World War, Ireland’s Memorial Records contain many inconsistencies and discrepancies. To begin, they purport to contain the names of 49,435 Irish casualties of the war, dating from 1914 to 1918. Yet Casey asserts that a significant number of these names, about 19,000 in fact, ‘were not Irish’.45 Cross-referencing the names in Ireland’s Memorial Records with the soldiers listed in the 1921 publication Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914–1919, Casey identified only 30,216 known casualties of Irish birth.
Furthermore, as Fergus D’Arcy has demonstrated, hundreds of soldiers who fought in the First World War died of wounds or illness in Ireland and were buried on Irish soil. While Ireland’s Memorial Records include soldiers who died between 1914 and 1918, due to official Imperial War Graves Commission policy, the soldiers could be considered ‘war dead’ until 31 August 1921, regardless of their cause of death. For example, in Dublin, the private burial ground at Glasnevin Cemetery contains the graves of 168 soldiers who were entitled to receive a headstone from the Imperial War Graves Commission; these same names are listed on the two monument stones now located near the chapel. Grangegorman Military Cemetery, adjacent to the northeast corner of Phoenix Park, contains 613 war dead from the First World War.46 The last grave to receive an IWGC headstone is that of Private M. Scully of Dublin, who died on 30 August 1921, leaving an 18 year-old widow.
It is worth pointing out that further inconsistencies related to the criteria for inclusion in the volumes arise from regimental insignia designs. Clarke wove badges of seventeen regiments within his engravings, which the index to the volumes list as:
1.Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards
2.Royal Irish Rifles
3.Royal Field Artillery
4.Tank Corps
5.8th (Royal Irish) Hussars
6.Royal Dublin Fusiliers
7.Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
8.Royal Irish Dragoon Guards
9.5th (Royal Irish) Lancers
10.Royal Munster Fusiliers
11.Royal Irish Regiment
12.15th Hussars
13.Irish Guards
14.Connaught Rangers
15.Royal Berkshire Regiment
16.Leinster Regiment
17.Royal Irish Fusiliers
In addition, Clarke included a kangaroo to honour the contributions of the Australian and New Zealand Allies, and a maple leaf for the Canadians. However, badges of the North Irish Horse and South Irish Horse are not included, nor are the colours of the Royal Engineers, the Royal Army Medical Corps, or the Labour Corps, all of which contributed several hundred Irish casualties to the war effort. There is no record of why certain regiments were included in the Records or why others are absent. Two regiments are decidedly non-Irish: the 15th (King’s) Hussars and Royal Berkshire Regiment. Inclusion of the 15th (King’s) Hussars can be explained because they served at Suvla Bay with the Royal Irish Fusiliers and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
However, the inclusion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment is a minor mystery. According to Casey, the Royal Berkshire Regiment contributed twenty-eight casualties to the total of Irish-born Irish dead in the war, while the 15th Hussars contributed four.47 The 3rd (Special) Battalion of the Berkshires trained recruits at Portobello Barracks in Dublin from 1917 to 1918, which may have resulted in a connection with Irish families; however, ironically, the 2nd Battalion was sent to Dublin in 1919 to fight against the IRA.48
This brief survey does not do justice to the complications that arise from trying to identify a definitive set of names that could or could not be included in Ireland’s Memorial Records; however, we can make some conclusions. For one, while the method of gathering names of the committee was perhaps not ‘haphazard’ as Casey purports, it was definitely imperfect. Second, the regimental badges represented in Clarke’s borders are incomplete; many Irishmen were killed while serving with non-Irish regiments. For example, the 11th Hampshires trained with the 10th (Irish) Division at the Curragh and ultimately lost sixty-three Irishmen enlisted with their regiment.49 In addition, there were hundreds of Irish born who served with Scottish and Northern English regiments, such as the Northumberland Fusiliers famous 103rd (Tyneside Irish) Brigade, which suffered heavily at the Battle of the Somme. While these regiments are not artistically rendered in the decorative borders, the names of the soldiers themselves are listed in Ireland’s Memorial Records.
Ultimately, these are questions for the military historians to winnow and sift. I have chosen to consider the eight volumes of Ireland’s Memorial Records as a complete artefact of their time and place. While the numbers and names can be contested, and their value as military records falters today, the history of their publication and the neglected history of Harry Clarke’s accomplishment are important to the legacy of Ireland’s artistic achievements in the twentieth century.
Significant Conflicts in 1915 and 1916
Irish people were involved in all aspects of the military campaigns from 1914–18, filling medical, combat, and labour roles. In each major battle, Irish soldiers served and died, whether fighting