In 2012, while completing a genealogy project, I discovered my maternal great-grandfather, Terence Rooney, died on March 21st, 1918, in France while serving with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.
Living very close to my maternal grandfather, Mickey Rooney from Garavogue Villas in Sligo, and visiting him frequently, I could not understand why he had never mentioned his father. Unfortunately, I had never asked him why when I had the chance.
The wallpaper over the fireplace had a poppy stuck in it, but it also had an Easter lily. Every November, when Mr Fallon from the British Legion came with the poppy, Granada would not “put his hand in his pocket”; he would go upstairs to get “real money”.
The more I researched Terence’s involvement in the war, the more I realised he was not alone – he was among tens of thousands of Irishmen who were written out of history in the years after independence. Not just Irishmen, but Sligomen.
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During the Great War, men in Ireland volunteered in large numbers to join the British army and went overseas to fight. Many were lost forever, buried in foreign soil – no funerals, no goodbyes.
Many of those who returned also felt lost – disillusioned and detached from society, with physical, emotional, and mental scars in a State that sought to forget, or to abhor its links with empire.
However, the most significant loss to the families of these men over the years is a ‘national amnesia’, the lack of acknowledgment from sections of society who chose to ignore them.
So began my journey to bring the stories of Sligo men such as Terence Rooney “home”. Firstly, their lives would be remembered spiritually through representation on the streets of Sligo.
On November 11th, 2018, local church bells tolled for two minutes to mark the centenary of the end of the conflict. Six hundred and twenty-one people, representing each of the dead then known to have come from Sligo, walking silently through the town’s streets.
Secondly, a memorial would be created to mark the dead. This saw the opening last year of the County Sligo Great War 1914-18 Memorial Garden in the Cleveragh Demesne, with eight upright granite panels listing the names of the fallen.
Finally, their lives would be marked by the publication of Bringing Them Home, Sligo’s War Dead, a book that would list their names, ages, family backgrounds and connections to Sligo.
It would, I hope, fill a void left by their deaths. Although a century has passed, the men are coming home, not as soldiers, but as members of their communities, home to their towns and villages.
Following 10 years of work, this is now complete and launched this week. In 2014, while studying for an MA in Historical & Heritage Studies, I began my dissertation entitled Sligo’s War Dead 1914-18: Social Profile and Motivation.
Every death had to be authenticated, and each had to have been born, or lived in Sligo and died as a direct result of the war. My focus was on the men from Sligo who volunteered to fight while living in Sligo.
However, as I began to delve ever deeper into the records, it became clear that many more Sligo natives had died while fighting for the Allies worldwide. With the MA complete, the research continued.
In 1923, Ireland’s Memorial Records were published giving details of the Irish who died. It lists 390 men giving Sligo as their place of birth. So far, I have found 678 men from Sligo or with Sligo connections who died.
They include 33 sets of brothers, a set of twins, a father and two sons, a father and son, cousins etc. One can but imagine the heartache of losing not one but two or more family members.
But why did the men go? There is no single, or simple explanation.
Each man had his own personal reason, usually now lost to history since few written accounts survive. At the outbreak of war, a sense of duty and loyalty was evident as reservists and former soldiers were the first to enlist.
Politics, too, played its part. The years before the Great War were filled with political and social turmoil in Ireland and political beliefs were closely associated with religious persuasion.
Political allegiance was initially a strong motivator as both nationalists and unionists tried to exploit the war situation to their advantage. The pressure to enlist came from all sections of society.
Public pressure and propaganda successfully used basic primitive emotions to encourage enlistment, with men bombarded with posters, advertisements, incentives and social persuasion.
They were influenced by those in authority, political and church leaders, employers and landlords, and they succumbed to psychological pressure to yield to the expectations of their peers.
Ultimately, motives were complicated: the choice of emigrating for work to escape penury, or joining up, the desire to fight for beliefs versus the fear of death and the unknown, or the desire to join with other young men versus leaving loved ones behind.
Despite any judgment of history, it is reasonable to assume that at the time these men enlisted, it was thought enlistment was morally, politically, religiously, and socially the correct thing to do.
They listened to their leaders, their church, their loved ones and finally, their conscience. There was no conscription it was their choice, their decision. We should not stand in judgment. We have not the right.
Instead, we should acknowledge their existence as fathers, husbands, brothers, friends and members of our community, all equal regardless of military status, religious or political beliefs.
The journey home has ended for the men written about in the pages of Bringing Them Home, but there are other names of Sligo men who fell in the Great War who are still waiting to come “home”.
The journey continues.
