‘Robbed of dignity’: Free State’s Civil War dead remembered, but Government stays away

More than 700 soldiers of the National Army died in defence of the new Irish State, but no national commemoration to remember them all has been held until now.

On Friday, a group of army veterans and relatives organised the first commemoration at Glasnevin Cemetery. A full century has passed since these men died, but the Cumann na nGaedheal Government decided not to honour them in the aftermath of the Civil War and that practice has continued.

There was no Government politician present and no representative from the Irish army either. The event was organised by the Respect and Loyalty to the Forgotten committee set up by nine Irish Army veterans to remember the National Army dead. A flag party was requested from the Department of Defence for the event, but it was refused.

The mood of the organisers was encapsulated by a quote from the Trinity College Dublin historian Dr Anne Dolan which was attached to the lectern for the speakers. “Nothing has robbed the Free State soldier of his dignity more than his government’s treatment of his memory.”

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The speeches and wreathlaying ceremony took place beside Michael Collins’ grave, which is surrounded by the memorial to Irish army soldiers who died on duty, but there is no reference on it to the National Army.

Compère retired Lieutenant Colonel Mary Carroll said it was “remarkable” that it had taken so long to remember the men involved. They had been “forgotten or airbrushed out of our history by most except their families”.

In saving the State at its inception, they deserved a “full and wholesome commemoration”, she suggested.

The former Minister for Justice Michael McDowell noted the Government saw fit now to remember the Irish first World War dead and those who died during the Troubles, “but strangely no State commemoration of those who died in the defence of the newly independent Irish state”.

Mr McDowell said he had attended a ceremony in Sligo to remember his uncle Brian MacNeill on Ben Bulben who was shot by the pro-Treaty side in the Civil War, though his father Eoin MacNeill was a Government minister at the time. He contrasted how the “noble six”, as they are called, have all been commemorated and memorialised, but the 22 National Army soldiers from the county who were killed in the Civil War have been forgotten about.

Mr McDowell added that the reluctance to commemorate the National Army dead previously may be part of the residual guilt arising from the executions carried out by the state during the Civil War, but sufficient time had passed for that to no longer be a consideration.

He accused the Government of “tiptoeing around the Civil War in pursuit of an anodyne policy of offering the minimum of offence and the maximum of bland analysis and consensus”.

Historian James Langton, who chronicled the National Army dead in his 2019 book, Forgotten Fallen, said he had visited many families in the course of compiling his book and they all had the “similar sad reflection. How their loved ones had been forgotten by a Government they died trying to defend and whose Government today wouldn’t exist without the sacrifices that these men made.”

He estimates that 488 National Army soldiers were killed in combat, a further 207 in accidents and 69 of natural causes in the 11 months of the Civil War.

Many relatives attended the event. They included three granddaughters and a great-grandfather of Gerald O’Connor who was one of the first National Army fatalities of the Civil War. O’Connor was shot in the head when his convoy was ambushed by the anti-Treaty IRA near Gort in Co Galway on July 8th, 1922. He left a widow with three young children.

“It was really important. He was never acknowledged over the years,” said his granddaughter Geraldine Kelly. Her daughter Barbara Kelly said the grief that affected his wife and children “has trickled down the generations. It has been something that has affected every generation since”. It was also a factor in her deciding to become a psychotherapist.

Edward Gethings was shot dead in September 1922 in Co Tipperary. His great-nephew Frank Gethings said there had always been a portrait of “Uncle Ned” in his house. “These soldiers are the forgotten fallen. Everything was kept hush-hush. The National Army soldiers haven’t got any recognition until today.”