An Irishman's Diary

I’M not sure if he was among those commemorated at Islandbridge yesterday, because among other things – officially at least – he was a survivor of the conflict. But the very first man to enlist for the British forces in the first World War was an Irishman, John T Durkin, from Tubbercurry in Co Sligo.

He lived in England by then, where he was a policeman, although no ordinary one. A detective sergeant at Scotland Yard, he served as a bodyguard to both the prime minister and King George V, grandfather of the current monarch. Thus, his profession exempted him from serving in the army.

Yet he signed up anyway, and according to a contemporary newspaper report, he did it with an alacrity nobody else in the UK could match. Britain declared war at 7pm on August 4th. Ten hours later, early the following morning, Durkin enlisted. He was in France by August 12th, serving with the Royal Fusiliers, and took part in the first big engagement of the war, the Battle of Mons.

Where else he fought, his descendants are still trying to piece together. But they know that, thanks to his training and a flair for languages – he reportedly spoke seven, including Irish and English – he was attached to the Intelligence Corps. And that his war ended in 1917, when the combined effects of gas and shrapnel wounds sent him back to England.

Despite his haste to join it, he had somehow survived the bloody conflict, where hundreds of thousands who had been in less of a hurry did not. It cost his life eventually, however. Having returned to police work, he died in 1923 aged 47, apparently from his injuries.

Buried in a cemetery in Kent, Durkin was a military hero, and his widow would have been well looked after in post-war England. Despite which, she decided to return home and raise her two sons in Ireland. She also Gaelicised their surname – or at least made the anglicised version more sympathetic to the Irish alphabet – as “Durcan”.

And so, with the passing decades, the story of Det Sgt JT Durkin, including the exact whereabouts of his grave, became somewhat forgotten. In a way, his fate was just a variation on that of the 49,400 Irishmen in whose honour President and Queen laid wreaths yesterday. Their monument was also neglected for decades, through accident or design, and its rehabilitation continues.

But whatever about his grave, Durkin’s military genes were never lost. Growing up in an independent Ireland, his son and namesake John Jnr became an officer in the Army reserve, and although he couldn’t be a combatant, he got as near as was possible to the second World War, being one of the first to reach Dublin’s North Strand in 1941 when the German bombs dropped and spending a week there dealing with the aftermath.

By the time he died a few years ago, the military tradition had also extended to another generation, via his son Martin, a captain in the Defence Force Reserve (who, very unusually, has just transferred to the Naval Reserve). And it was his father’s death that finally prompted Martin Durcan to trace the grave in Kent of the man whose story had long fascinated him.

It wasn’t easy to find, but clearly the Durcan family have also inherited detective genes too. First, other family members tracked down the location of the cemetery. Then Martin travelled there in person, last month, to discover crushingly that it was little more than a field, with no gravestones visible.

But eventually he and his accomplices found markers and, based on their location, worked out where his grandfather’s resting place should be. An English friend haphazardly probed the ground with a stick, which suggested that there was indeed a stone there, beaten down over the years and grown over. So Martin ran to a nearby supermarket, bought a breadknife, and cut away a sod. Whereupon, in a thrilling moment, he saw the letters “OHN”.

Further excavation revealed the full name. And before they were done, the visitors had restored the stone to its upright position, buried photos and other mementoes in the plot, and placed flowers on it. Martin concedes that such unauthorised rearrangement of a grave may have infringed by-laws. But then again, an impetuous streak could also be part of his heritage and, anyway, it was a good cause.

This week’s events have had special resonance for the Durcans, whose history – like that of many Irish families – is a politically tangled one. While still serving the crown in 1917, for example, JT Durkin married in Sligo and had a republican activist as his best man.

Another ancestor was among the crowd in Croke Park on Bloody Sunday.

So Martin Durcan is better qualified than most to say that we should “embrace our history, learn from it, not forget it, and move on.” His restoration of the grave was part of this process. And although they were not represented at Islandbridge yesterday, the Durcans have been given a place of honour in this week’s events. Martin’s brother Jack was invited to the State dinner last night, and their grandfather’s medals went with him.