Tom Johnstone lists old soldiers, young men ‘from all classes’, rugby football players, and ‘a company of tough Dublin dockers’ among the recruits.35 Philip Orr, chronicling the history of the 10th (Irish) Division under the command of General Bryan Mahon, records that ‘Frank Browning, President of the Irish Rugby Football Union, sent a circular to his players, just a few days after war was declared. Within a short space of time, he had established a 300-strong “Volunteer Corps”, which drilled at the Lansdowne Road rugby ground for several evenings each week. During these sessions Browning would encourage his men to enlist.’36 Browning’s volunteers were members of the loyalist Protestant professional class who lived in Dublin while training for careers elsewhere. The players would form the core of the famous D Company of the 7th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who would be almost completely wiped out at Suvla Bay in Gallipoli on 6 August 1915.
Regular and New Armies
In 1914, Ireland was home to nine regular regiments of infantry, which were subsequently attached to the British Expeditionary Force. These included the Irish Guards, the Royal Irish Regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Rifles, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Connaught Rangers, the Leinster Regiment, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. In addition, Ireland’s military included four regular regiments of cavalry. These included the Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, the Inniskilling Dragoons, the Royal Irish Lancers, and the King’s Royal Irish Hussars.37
On 11 August 1914, the War Office in London established thirty New Army divisions, which came to be known as Kitchener’s Army or the Pals. Pals divisions were designed to aid recruiting by promising ordinary working men the opportunity to train, travel, and fight side by side with family, friends, and co-workers.38 By November 1914, three new divisions were established in Ireland: the 10th (Irish) Division, the 16th (Irish) Division, and the 36th (Ulster) Division. The 10th (Irish) was the first division that could be called ‘Irish’, a term that John Redmond argued would instil pride and aid recruiting. As Captain Stephen Gwynn later claimed to potential recruits, ‘Each battalion in each Irish Brigade bears the name of an Irish regiment long established in the British service, and this high inheritance must be upheld.’39 Thus, the nine regular regiments became reorganized as battalions within the 10th (Irish) Division and 16th (Irish) Division.
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
