Sir, - Brian Maye (An Irishman's Diary, November 19th), writing on Eoin O'Duffy and the Spanish Civil War, seemed deeply confused. He complains about the neglect of O'Duffy's grave in contrast to the nearby grave of Frank Ryan who led 200 Irishmen, including my father, in the International Brigades fighting against Franco's fascism.
Maye has tried to give the impression that O'Duffy's brigades were not fascists, yet The Irish Times, in its intelligence, shows a photograph of O'Duffy with the Nazi salute in front of hundreds of his followers. Maye claims that they were not fascists; I cannot think of any other way of describing a group who went to fight in a kind of Catholic crusade in support of a rebel general who set out to usurp a democratically elected government in Spain.
Remember, Franco was supported by Hitler, who ordered the early Luftwaffe to mercilessly bomb Guernica. Hitler sent highly-trained infantry to fight alongside Franco's troops against the many heroic volunteers in the International Brigades from America, Britain, Ireland and elsewhere.
Hitler's and Franco's victory in Spain laid the foundations for the rapid rise of Nazism and hence the second World War. It is well documented that my father and the other brave people in the International Brigades predicted this outcome.
It is quite amazing, therefore, that Maye goes out of his way to claim that O'Duffy's confused volunteers somehow miraculously joined the British army because "Catholic peoples like those of Poland and Belgium deserved defending against German barbarism".
Erecting a memorial to O'Duffy and his Spanish crusade would be the equivalent of erecting a memorial to Hitler in Dublin. Yours, etc.,
Michael O'Brien, The O'Brien Press Ltd., Rathgar, Dublin 6.