Humbert crosses the River Shannon at Ballintra Bridge on September 7, destroying it behind them, and continues to Drumshanbo where they spend the night – halfway between his landing-point and Dublin. News reaches him of the defeat of the Westmeath and Longford rebels at Wilson’s Hospital School at Multyfarmham and Granard from the trickle of rebels who have survived the slaughter and reached his camp. With Cornwallis’ huge force blocking the road to Dublin, facing constant harassment of his rearguard and the pending arrival of General Gerard Lake‘s command, Humbert decides to make a stand the next day at the townland of Ballinamuck on the Longford/Leitrim county border.
Humbert faces over 12,000 Irishmen and English forces. General Lake is close behind with 14,000 men, and Cornwallis is on his right at Carrick-on-Shannon with 15,000. The battle begins with a short artillery duel followed by a dragoon charge on exposed Irish rebels. There is a brief struggle when French lines are breached which only ceases when Humbert signals his intention to surrender and his officers order their men to lay down their muskets. The battle lasts little more than an hour.
While the French surrender is being taken, the 1,000 or so Irish allies of the French under Colonel Bartholomew Teeling, an Irish officer in the French army, hold onto their arms without signaling the intention to surrender or being offered terms. An attack by infantry followed by a dragoon charge breaks and scatters the Irish who are pursued into a bog where they are either bayoneted or drowned.
A total of 96 French officers and 746 men are taken prisoner. British losses are initially reported as 3 killed and 16 wounded or missing, but the number of killed alone is later reported as twelve. Approximately 500 French and Irish lay dead on the field. Two hundred Irish prisoners are taken in the mopping-up operations, almost all of whom are later hanged, including Matthew Tone, brother of Wolfe Tone. The prisoners are moved to the Carrick-on-Shannon Gaol. The French are given prisoner or war status however the Irish are not and some are hanged and buried in St. Johnstown, today known as Ballinalee, where most are executed in a field that is known locally as Bully’s Acre.
Humbert and his men are transported by canal to Dublin and exchanged for British prisoners of war. Government forces subsequently slowly spread out into the rebel-held “Irish Republic,” engaging in numerous skirmishes with rebel holdouts. These sweeps reach their climax on September 23 when Killala is captured by government forces. During these sweeps, suspected rebels are frequently summarily executed while many houses thought to be housing rebels are burned. French prisoners of war are swiftly repatriated, while United Irishmen rebels are executed. Numerous rebels take to the countryside and continue guerrilla operations, which take government forces some months to suppress. The defeat at Ballinamuck leaves a strong imprint on Irish social memory and features strongly in local folklore. Numerous oral traditions are later collected about the battle, principally in the 1930’s by historian Richard Hayes and the Irish Folklore Commission.
(Pictured: Watercolour plan by an I. Hardy of the Battle of Ballinamuck in County Longford on September 8, 1798, showing position of the English & French Armies previous to the surrender of the latter at Balinamuck)
Foley’s most recent work includes Cold Courage, a TV series thriller for Lionsgate, Viaplay and Luminoir shot in Europe in 2019 and The Man Who Died, a series for Elisa-Viaplay.
Foley writes, produces and directs The Riddle in 2006, starring Jones, Sir Derek Jacobi and Vanessa Redgrave. In September 2007, The Riddle becomes the world’s first feature film to be released as a DVD premiere by a national newspaper. The UK’s The Mail on Sunday buys UK DVD rights and distributes 2.6 million copies, making the film one of the most widely watched independent films in the UK.
During 2006–07, Foley writes and directs Assault of Darkness, a satirical horror film set in rural Ireland, starring Jones, Jason Barry and Nora-Jane Noone. It is released by Lionsgate in the United States on DVD in 2009. He co-creates and is a writer on Shelldon, a children’s environmental animated TV series on NBC (2010–12) and Byrdland (five seasons of animated TV series in Asia with GMM Grammy).
In 2015, Foley starts developing a new TV detective series for BBC Television, Farmoor (makers of The Fall) and Northern Ireland Screen (UK home of Game of Thrones) and, in 2016, he develops Tunnel Kings, a mini-series on World War IIPOW “escape-artists” for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Dream Street, Canada. He completes pilot scripts for SOS, a new eco-thriller series by Finnish producers Luminoir, and Kvenland, set in the Dark Ages. Previously he writes the pilot for drama Dr. Feelgood for Monday TV (Denmark).
Cold Courage, described as a Nordic noir series involving Finnish characters in present-day London made by Finnish producers Luminoir for Lionsgate and Viaplay, shot in London, Dublin, Belgium and Finland in 2019. Actor John Simm tells Variety that he is attracted to the series by the quality of the writing and the fact that it is a pan-European thriller.
Foley has written books for U.S. and UK publishers. Under The Wire, a World War II POW escape drama, which he writes along with its subject, pilot William Ash, is published by Random House, London and St. Martin’s Press, New York, in 2005 and 2006. It becomes a best-seller, reaching number one on Amazon UK‘s history and biography charts. In 2018/19, a related TV series is developed as a future miniseries by CBC in Canada and Northern Ireland Screen.
Foley’s next book, Archerfield, a novel, published in 2015, covers 16,000 years of history in one square mile of Scotland.
Gifford is the youngest of twelve children of Frederick and Isabella Gifford. Isabella Gifford (née Burton), is a niece of the artist Frederic William Burton, and is raised with her siblings in his household after the death of her father, Robert Nathaniel Burton, a rector, during the Great Famine.
Gifford’s parents—her father is Catholic and her mother Anglican—are married in St. George’s Church, a Church of Ireland church on the north side of Dublin, on April 27, 1872. She grows up in Rathmines and is raised as a Protestant, as are her siblings.
Gifford is educated in Alexandra College in Earlsfort Terrace. After leaving school she studies music at the Leinster House School of Music. It is her music teacher, in her teens, who first gives her her first Irish national newspaper, The Leader. She begins reading this secretly and then starts reading Arthur Griffith’s newspaper, Sinn Féin.
Gifford is a member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a women’s political organisation active from the 1900s. It is founded by Maud Gonne and a group of working-class and middle-class women to promote Irish culture and help to alleviate the shocking poverty of Dublin and other cities at a time when Dublin’s slums are unfavourably compared with Calcutta‘s. Gifford, who is already writing under the name “John Brennan” for Sinn Féin, is asked to write for its newspaper Bean na h-Éireann. Her articles vary from those highlighting poor treatment of women in the workplace to fashion and gardening columns, some written under the pseudonym Sorcha Ní hAnlúan.
She also works, along with her sisters, in Maud Gonne’s and Constance Markievicz‘s dinner system in St. Audoen’s Church, providing good solid dinners for children in three Dublin schools – poor Dublin schoolchildren often arrive at school without breakfast, go without a meal for the day, and if their father has been given his dinner when they arrive home, might not eat or might only have a crust of bread that night.
In 1911, Gifford is elected (as John Brennan) to the executive of the political group Sinn Féin.
Gifford is a member of Cumann na mBan (The Irish Women’s Council) from its foundation in Dublin on April 2, 1914. Its members learn first aid, drilling and signalling and rifle shooting, and serve as an unofficial messenger and backup service for the Irish Volunteers. During the fight for Irish Independence the women carry messages, store and deliver guns and run safe houses where men on the run can eat, sleep and pick up supplies.
In 1914, Gifford moves to the United States to work as a journalist. Through her connection with Padraic Colum and Mary Colum, whom she had met through her brother-in-law Thomas MacDonagh, she meets influential Irish Americans such as Thomas Addis Emmet and Irish exiles like John Devoy, and marries a Hungarian lawyer, Arpad Czira, a former prisoner of war who is said to have escaped and fled to America. Their son, Finian, is born in 1922.
Czira writes both for traditional American newspapers and for Devoy’s newspaper, TheGaelic American. She and her sister Nellie found the American branch of Cumann na mBan, and she acts as its secretary. Both sisters tour and speak about the Easter Rising and those involved. She is an active campaigner for Irish independence and against the United States joining the war against Germany, seen as a war for profit and expansion of the British Empire, and so to the disadvantage of the work for Irish independence. She helps Nora Connolly O’Brien to contact German diplomats in the United States.
In 1922, Czira returns to Ireland with her son. As a member of the Women’s Prisoners’ Defence League, she is an activist against the ill-treatment of Republican prisoners during the Irish Civil War. She continues to work as a journalist, though she is stymied in her work, as are the women of her family and many of those who had taken the anti-Free State side. In the 1950s her memoirs are published in The Irish Times, and she moves into work as a broadcaster and produces a series of historical programmes.
Joyce is the eldest of three sons of Michael Joyce, an Irish Catholic from a family of tenant farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, and his wife, Gertrude (née Brooke), who although born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, is from a well-off AnglicanAnglo-Irish family of physicians associated with County Roscommon. The Joyces return to Ireland in 1909. William, a precocious child, attends Coláiste Iognáid SJ, a Jesuit school in County Galway, from 1915 to 1921. At the age of fourteen, he abandons Catholicism for Anglicanism, apparently after being told that all non-Catholics, including his mother, would be damned. In adult life he is nominally anglican, though his adherence to Christianity is tenuous.
The Joyces are unionists and teach their children fervent imperialism. During the Irish War of Independence, Joyce openly associates with the Black and Tans and acts as a scout for them. An acquaintance claims that his views are so extreme even loyalists dislike him. On December 9, 1921, he flees to England to join the Worcestershire Regiment and is followed to England in 1923 by the rest of the family. When he enlists, he claims to be eighteen, but after he contracts rheumatic fever, his age is discovered, and he is discharged in March 1922. For a time, he studies mathematics and chemistry at Battersea Polytechnic Institute as a pre-medical student (1922–23), but he leaves of his own accord, with a reputation for laziness and violent political views. His studies in English and history at Birkbeck College are more successful. He is a brilliant linguist and mathematician and graduates BA with first-class honours in 1927. He publishes an academic article on philology and considers progressing to an MA. He later falsely claims that his research had been plagiarised by a Jewish academic. In 1932, he enrolls at King’s College, London, for a Ph.D. in educational psychology.
Joyce is disturbed by the difference between depressed post-war Britain and the imperial ideal that he had imbibed in Galway and is mocked for his outspoken patriotism and obvious Irishness. He identifies strongly with Thomas Carlyle, an earlier angry anti-liberal from the provinces. His life is marked by repeated episodes of hero worship, followed by disillusion and bitter denunciation. In 1923, he joins the British Fascists, an organisation that has a significant Irish loyalist membership, and in 1924 he allies himself with a militant splinter group, the National Fascists. Most British fascists see themselves as Tory auxiliaries, and they often provide a security presence at conservative meetings. On October 22, 1924, while stewarding a meeting addressed by a Jewish conservative candidate, he has his face slashed and is left with a prominent scar across his right cheek. He joins the Conservative Party in 1928 and is active in the Chelsea constituency until 1930, when he is forced out because of his eccentricities and sexual misbehaviour. On April 30, 1927, he marries Hazel Kathleen Barr. They have two daughters but separate in 1935, largely because of his infidelities, heavy drinking, and temper. The marriage is dissolved in 1937.
In November 1933, Joyce abandons his Ph.D. studies to work for Sir Oswald Mosley‘s British Union of Fascists (BUF). By early 1934 he has become its paid publicity director, traveling throughout Britain to organise meetings. He is a powerful, rabble-rousing speaker, driven by an instinctive awareness that vitriolic verbal abuse gives speaker and audience a sense of power and solidarity. MI5 sees him as a compelling, though deranged, personality. On February 8, 1937, he marries Margaret Cairns White, a BUF activist from Lancashire, with whom he had cohabited since 1936.
Joyce leads a BUF faction that favours a recruitment strategy based on uncompromising ideological assertion. This is challenged by populists who prioritise marches and displays and hold that indoctrination should follow membership. In February 1937, he is BUF candidate for the London County Council in Shoreditch. The party wins 14 percent of the vote. In March 1937, he, along with many full-time BUF staff, are sacked when the BUF cuts expenses. But his dismissal also reflects Mosley’s awareness that his obsessive rhetoric repels “respectable” recruits and that he is no longer a biddable, slavish admirer of “the Leader.” He later falsely claims near-exclusive credit for the BUF’s escalating antisemitism, a view that Mosley eventually finds it convenient to adopt in order to evade his own responsibility.
In April 1937, Joyce founds the National Socialist League, helped by a wealthy patron. He supports himself as a private tutor, refusing to take Jewish pupils. He is active in various antisemitic and pro-Nazi groups such as the Right Club and engages in “peace” campaigns based on the view that British interests lay with Germany against Russia. Political marginalisation intensifies his admiration for Nazi Germany and hero worship of Adolf Hitler. By the time of the Munich crisis in 1938, he has decided that if war comes, he will go to Germany, though he also considers moving to Ireland. He renews his British passport for one-year terms in August 1938 and August 1939.
On August 26, 1939, Joyce and his wife leave London for Berlin. He is allegedly tipped off about his impending arrest and internment by an MI5 officer, to whom he had supplied information on communists. His siblings, whom he recruited into his fascist organisations, are variously penalised for his activities. At a loose end in Berlin, he is persuaded by a British associate to become a radio announcer with the English-language service of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG). He makes his first broadcast on September 6, 1939, and receives a contract in October. He finds in radio an outlet for his forceful style and delight in saying the unsayable, and in the early years of the war takes an exultant pride in recounting Nazi victories. His performances are admired by Joseph Goebbels, whom Joyce, to his regret, never meets. On September 26, 1940, he acquires German citizenship.
The novel experience of hearing the enemy in one’s own living room attracts wide audiences in Britain. Joyce’s practice of naming newly captured prisoners of war in his broadcasts is also a compelling motive for listening. In fact, he tries to recruit British prisoners of war as collaborators. The name “Lord Haw-Haw,” invented by the Daily Express radio critic in September 1939, initially applies to several English-language broadcasters but in time becomes associated with Joyce. He is initially a figure of fun, imitated by comedians, but there are sinister undercurrents of terrifying omnipotence, intensified by his sneering, gloating delivery and his delighted deployment of the “big lie” technique. It is widely believed that British-based fifth columnists supply him with information, that he predicts air raids, and shows minute local knowledge. In time, fear and his growing notoriety feed popular hatred of him in Britain, though his anti-British taunts allegedly win appreciative Irish audiences. He exults that he is daily committing treason and rendering himself liable to the death penalty.
In 1940, Joyce publishes a commissioned self-justifying propaganda work, Twilight over England. His representation of himself echoes that of Hitler in Mein Kampf – the provincial patriot, whose martial sacrifices are betrayed by corrupt elites, learning through poverty the hollowness of bourgeois patriotism and the need to synthesise socialism with nationalism. He shares with his hero a paranoid belief in his own ability to create an alternative reality through language and obstinacy. He dreams of becoming the English Führer.
In Berlin, the Joyces’ marriage comes under increasing strain, marked by drunken rows, domestic violence, and infidelity on both sides, though they retain a fierce mutual fascination. They divorce on August 12, 1941, but remarry on February 11, 1942, while continuing their previous behaviour. As the Axis powers begin to fail, his broadcasts become more defensive, focusing on the Soviet threat. On October 14, 1944, he is awarded the German War Merit Cross, first class. On October 22, he is sworn into the Volkssturm (territorial army) and begins drilling. The Joyces are evacuated from Berlin in March 1945, initially to Apen near the Dutch border and then to Hamburg, where he makes a last, drunken, defiant broadcast on April 30, 1945, the day of Hitler’s death. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Sweden, the Joyces hide at Flensburg near the Danish border. On May 28, 1945, he is shot and captured while gathering firewood.
Joyce is brought back to Britain on June 16 after Parliament passed legislation simplifying treason trial procedures. At his September 17-20 trial, he proves his American citizenship, but the court holds that his illegally acquired British passport incurred duties of allegiance. His appeals are rejected by the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. His fate is influenced by British public opinion, and possibly by a desire to avoid antagonising the Soviet Union. In his death cell he blames the defeat of national socialism on German limitations. He also fantasises that he could have saved Hitler from his incompetent subordinates.
Joyce is hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Wandsworth Prison on January 3, 1946. Unlike most of his fellow Nazis, he proclaims to the end his allegiance to national socialism and hatred of Jews. He corresponds cheerfully with Margaret, joking evasively about the death camps and expressing a belief that his spirit will survive, watch over her, and continue his work. To neo-Nazis he becomes a martyr. Even among those to whom his activities had been repellent, a significant body of opinion holds he should not have been condemned on a questionable and innovative technicality. The historian A. J. P. Taylor maintains that Joyce was executed for making a false declaration to obtain a passport, a misdemeanour that normally incurs a £2 fine.
In 1976, Joyce is reinterred in Galway as it is feared that a grave in England might become a fascist shrine. Thomas Kilroy‘s play Double Cross (1986) juxtaposes Joyce and Brendan Bracken as Irishmen who reinvented themselves through fantasies of Britishness. The BBC Sound Archive has recordings of some of Joyce’s broadcasts and transcripts of others, collected during the war as evidence for a future treason trial.
(From: “Joyce, William Brooke (‘Lord Haw-Haw’)” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Barry is the fourth of seven children born to Thomas Barry, dairyman, and Mary Barry (née Dowling), both originally from northeast County Carlow. His father dies of heart disease on February 8, 1908, at the age of 56. His mother then moves the family to the family’s farm at Tombeagh, Hacketstown, County Carlow, while retaining the family’s townhouse on Fleet Street. As a child he goes to the National School in Rathvilly. In 1915, he is sent to live in Dublin and attends the O’Connell Schools for three months, before enrolling in the Preparatory Grade at St. Mary’s College, Rathmines, in September 1915. He remains at that school until May 31, 1916, when it is closed by its clerical sponsors. With the closure of St. Mary’s College, he transfers to Belvedere College, a Jesuit school in Dublin. He joins the Irish Volunteers, the forerunner of the IRA, while still at Belvedere College, and enters University College Dublin (UCD) in 1919 to study medicine.
As a member of 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, he takes part in a successful raid for arms on the military post in King’s Inns, Dublin, on June 1, 1920. Within only six minutes the raiders secure rifles, light machine guns, and large quantities of ammunition, and depart the site with no casualties. He also takes part in an abortive attempt to burn Aughavanagh House, Aughrim, County Wicklow in July 1920, and an attack on a British ration party in Church Street, Dublin, on September 20, with the aim of seizing arms. The final operation fails. Gunfire breaks out, three soldiers of around Barry’s own age are killed or fatally wounded, and he becomes the first Volunteer to be captured in an armed attack since 1916.
During interrogation, Barry is threatened with a bayonet and is mistreated. A general court-martial on October 20, which he refuses to recognise, condemns him to death for murdering the three soldiers, although one of the bullets taken from Private Marshall Whitehead’s body is a .45 calibre, while all witnesses state that Barry was armed with a .38 Mauser Parabellum. Despite widespread appeals on grounds of both clemency and expediency, the cabinet in London and officials in Dublin decide separately against a reprieve, probably because of its likely effect on the morale of soldiers and police.
On October 28, the Irish Bulletin, the official propaganda newspaper produced by Dáil Éireann‘s Department of Publicity, publishes Barry’s statement alleging torture. The headline reads English Military Government Torture a Prisoner of War and are about to Hang him. The Irish Bulletin declares Barry to be a prisoner of war, suggesting a conflict of principles is at the heart of the conflict. The British do not recognise a war and treat all killings by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as murder. The public learns on this day that the date of execution has been fixed for November 1.
He was hanged in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, on November 1, after hearing two Masses in his cell. The timing of the execution, only seven days after the death by hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, the republican Lord Mayor of Cork, brings public opinion to a fever-pitch. He is buried in unconsecrated ground on the jail property. His comrade and fellow student Frank Flood is buried alongside him four months later. A plain cross marks their graves and those of Patrick Moran, Thomas Whelan, Thomas Traynor, Patrick Doyle, Thomas Bryan, Bernard Ryan, Edmond Foley and Patrick Maher who are hanged in the same prison before the Anglo-Irish Treaty of July 1921 which ends hostilities between Irish republicans and the British. The graves go unidentified until 1934. They become known as the Forgotten Ten by republicans campaigning for the bodies to be reburied with honour and proper rites. On October 14, 2001, the remains of the ten men are given a state funeral and moved from Mountjoy Prison to be re-interred at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.
Barry is the first person to be tried and executed for a capital offence under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920, passed twelve weeks earlier. Together with his youth, this makes him a republican martyr celebrated in many ballads and verses. The best-known, set to a tune popular with British servicemen, is recorded by the American singer Paul Robeson, among others. A memorial stained-glass window by Richard King of the Harry Clarke Studio is later installed in the former UCD council chamber (afterward called the Kevin Barry Room), Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin.
Quinlan goes to school in nearby Loher. He and his wife Carmel have a son, Leo, who is sixteen when his father serves in the Congo, and later becomes a commandant, the same rank his father held when in Katanga, although the father retires with the higher rank of colonel.
“A” Company, 35th Battalion (UN service) of the Irish Army United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) contingent, commanded by Quinlan, is attacked by Katangese Gendarmerie troops loyal to President Moïse Tshombe and the State of Katanga. Quinlan’s lightly armed company is besieged in Jadotville, and resists Katangese assaults for six days. A relief force of Irish, Indian and Swedish troops is unsuccessful in their attempts to reach Quinlan’s position.
Quinlan’s company suffers five wounded in action during the six-day siege. On the other hand, up to 300 Katangese troops are killed, including thirty mercenaries, and an indeterminate number are wounded, with figures ranging from 300 to 1,000. Quinlan, however, has no access to resupply and reinforcements and, with his transport destroyed by Katanga’s Fouga Magister jet, a breakout is virtually impossible. In the end, with his position untenable, without any clear orders or promise of assistance, having run out of ammunition and food and low on water, he accepts a second offer to surrender to the Katangese.
Although suffering no loss of life, Quinlan’s company are held as prisoners of war and hostages for approximately one month. The Katangese barter the Irish soldiers for prisoners in the custody of the Congolese government. After being released, “A” Company are returned to their base in Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi). Some weeks later, Quinlan finds himself involved in active combat again, this time with his company in support of Swedish UN troops. Eventually they are reinforced with fresh troops from Ireland. After weeks of fighting and their six-month tour of duty now complete, “A” Company is rotated home to Ireland that December.
In its immediate aftermath, the Irish state does not give much recognition to the Battle of Jadotville, and no Irish soldier receives any decoration for actions at Jadotville. This may have been because of a perceived shame that “A” Company had surrendered and an unwillingness to highlight political or strategic errors at higher levels by the UN mission. Quinlan, however, recommends a number of his men for the Military Medal for Gallantry (MMG), Ireland’s highest award for military valour, for their actions during the battle.
Quinlan never serves overseas again and retires as a full colonel after forty years with the Irish Army.
Quinlan dies on August 27, 1997, unaware that his reputation will be restored nine years after his death. His wife does not live to see his official rehabilitation either, dying two years after her husband.
The veterans of Jadotville are dissatisfied with the Irish Defence Forces‘ refusal to acknowledge the battle and the implied black mark on the reputation of their commander. Following a long campaign for recognition, in 2004 the then Minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea, agrees to hold a review of the battle. An inquiry by the Defence Forces clears Quinlan and “A” Company of allegations of soldierly misconduct. A commemorative stone recognising the soldiers of “A” Company is erected on the grounds of Custume Barracks in Athlone in 2005. A commissioned portrait of Quinlan is installed in the Congo Room of the Irish Defence Forces’ UN School.
In 2016, the Irish government awards a Presidential Unit Citation to “A” Company, the first in the State’s history. In October 2017, a plaque commemorating Quinlan is unveiled by former TaoiseachEnda Kenny at Coomakista Pass, County Kerry.
In November 2020, an Independent Review Group commissioned by Irish Defence Minister Simon Coveney recommends that Quinlan receive the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM).
Quinlan’s tactics at Jadotville influence subsequent training programmes, and are, according to RTÉ, “cited in military textbooks worldwide as the best example of the use of the so-called perimeter defence.”
Quinlan is played by Jamie Dornan in the film The Siege of Jadotville (2016), which is adapted from Declan Power‘s book, The Siege at Jadotville: The Irish Army’s Forgotten Battle (2005). His wife Carmel is played by Fiona Glascott. Colonel Quinlan’s son, Commandant Leo Quinlan, says that Dornan bears an uncanny resemblance to his father, and gets everything about him right except his County Kerry accent, which is so strong that “if he had done my father’s accent, you’d need subtitles.” Quinlan’s grandson Conor is a member of the film’s cast.
McNamee is arrested on August 16, 1986, at his home in Crossmaglen by the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), then flown to London and charged with conspiracy to cause explosions. At his trial at the Old Bailey, he denies even having sympathy for the IRA, and no evidence is ever presented that he has any paramilitary links. Additionally, the IRA itself states that he is not a member, and never claimed him as a “prisoner of war.” However, his fingerprint is found on electronic circuits in an arms cache that is linked to the Hyde Park bombing. At his trial, he explains that he may have handled the circuits when working for a previous employer, whom he did not know had IRA connections. After five hours of deliberation by the jury, he is found guilty on all charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In September 1994, McNamee and Paul Magee are among six prisoners who escape from Whitemoor Prison, shooting and wounding a prison officer as they do so, before being captured two hours later.
In 1997, McNamee’s case is examined by Channel 4‘s Trial and Error programme. He is later to be the first case referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), and his conviction is overturned on December 17, 1998, because of other, much more prominent, fingerprints on the same circuits, belonging to known IRA bomb-maker Dessie Ellis, which were not disclosed at McNamee’s original trial. Despite quashing McNamee’s conviction, the appeal judges state, “The Crown makes a strong case that the appellant [McNamee] was guilty of a conspiracy to cause explosions.” Supporters of the campaign to clear his name include the comedianJeremy Hardy.
In February 1999, McNamee reads the IRA Roll of Honour at the Burns and Moley commemoration and the following month he sits with the Caraher family during the trial of Michael Caraher and other members of the Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigadesniper team.
Nimy Bridge is being defended by a single company of the 4th Royal Fusiliers and a machine gun section with Dease in command. The gunfire is intense and the casualties very heavy, but the lieutenant continues to fire in spite of his wounds, until he is hit for the fifth time and is carried away.
Dease wins the first Victoria Cross to be awarded in the Great War and he receives it on the first day of the first significant British encounter in that war.
When Lieutenant Dease has been mortally wounded, Private Sidney Godley offers to defend the Railway Bridge while the rest of the section retreats and is also awarded the Victoria Cross. He is taken prisoner of war.
As part of the larger Congo Crisis (1960–1964), the siege of Jadotville begins on September 13, 1961, lasting for five days. While serving under the United Nations Operation in the Congo (Opération des Nations Unies au Congo, ONUC), a small contingent of the Irish Army‘s 35th Battalion, designated “A” Company, are besieged at the UN base near the mining town of Jadotville (modern-day Likasi) by Katangese forces loyal to the secessionist State of Katanga. The siege takes place during the seven-day escalation of hostilities between ONUC and Katangese forces during Operation Morthor. Although the contingent of 156 Irish soldiers repels attacks by a 3,000-strong Katangese force, they are eventually forced to surrender after running out of ammunition and water. “A” Company is subsequently held as prisoners of war for approximately one month, before being released on October 15 as part of a prisoner exchange. The Irish forces inflict approximately 1,300 casualties (including up to 300 killed) on the Katangan force, with no deaths amongst “A” Company.
On the morning of Wednesday, September 13, 1961, the soldiers stationed at Jadotville are informed of Operation Morthor by UN Headquarters at Elisabethville. At 07:40 twenty Katangese troops attack while many of the UN Irish troops of A Company are attending an open-air Mass. Expecting to take the men off-guard, the first attackers move in rapidly. However, they are spotted by an Irish sentry, and a warning shot by Private Billy Ready alerts the company to the threat. Ready is wounded in a later exchange of fire.
The paramilitary Katangese Gendarmerie, which is a combined force of mercenaries, Belgian settlers and local tribesmen, attack the Irish company. The attackers have a strength of 3,000–5,000 men – consisting of mostly Katangese and settlers, but with many Belgian, French and Rhodesian mercenaries armed with a mix of weapons. Additionally, these forces have limited air support from a Fouga CM.170 Magister trainer-light ground attack jet fitted with a pair of underwing bombs and twin 7.5 mm machine guns, which repeatedly attacks the UN position. The Irish soldiers are armed with personal weapons, several water-cooled Vickers machine guns, 60 mm mortars and two Irish-built Ford Mark VI armoured cars under the command of Lieutenant Kevin Knightly.
The Katangese attack in waves of 600 or so, preceded by bombardment from 81 mm mortars and a French 75mm field gun. The Irish Support Platoon of “A” Company knocks out most of the Katangese mortar and artillery positions, including the 75mm gun, with counter-battery fire from 60mm mortars. The fire from the UN Irish positions proves accurate and effective. Mercenary officers are reportedly observed shooting native gendarmes to stem the rout caused in Katangese lines.
The 500 Irish and Swedish UN troops based in Kamina, and Indian army Gurkhas make several attempts to relieve the besieged Irish soldiers. The supporting force of mercenaries beat back these efforts. They have been brought in by Moïse Tshombe, Katanga’s premier, whose secessionist government has been supported by Belgium.
Attempting to reach the besieged “A” Company, the relief column, named “Force Kane” after its commander Commandant John Kane, is stymied in a series of battles at a pinch point called the Lufira Bridge. It carries the Jadotville-to-Elisabethville Highway across the Lufira River. The Katangese forces dig in here and bring heavy and sustained ground and air fire onto the relief column, killing three Indian UN troops, injuring a number of Irish UN troops and ultimately forcing the column off the bridge. Additionally, during the effort to reach the trapped company, the Katanga forces set off charges on the railway bridge to impede potential relief efforts.
On September 14, the Katangan Fouga jet flies passes over the battlefield, dropping bombs that rendered the Company’s vehicles inert and cause injuries to Privates Tahaney and Gormley.
During the siege, the Irish radio to their headquarters: “We will hold out until our last bullet is spent. Could do with some whiskey.”
On September 16, a second attempt to reach the Irish Company is made but fails with another three Indian troops being killed and a further eight soldiers suffering injuries. The Katangese ask Commandant Pat Quinlan for a ceasefire, as their own forces have been seriously diminished. By this time their effective strength may have been reduced to 2,000 men. Later that same day, a ceasefire agreement is reached between Commandant Quinlan and the Burgomaster of the Katangan forces, enabling the Irish troops to re-supply with water. The Gendarmerie retreat from their positions surrounding the UN.
Quinlan lacks any clear direction or communication from his superiors, and the Katangese gradually infringe on the ceasefire agreement to undermine “A” Company’s position. With his position untenable, without any clear orders or promise of assistance, having run out of ammunition and food and being low on water, Quinlan accepts their second offer to surrender. On September 17, Quinlan meets with Katanga Minister Munongo, in which a formal written ceasefire and surrender agreement is made, which contains the proviso that the Irish Company will keep their weapons and be unharmed.
“A” Company, 35th Battalion, suffers five wounded in action during the siege. The Katangese suffered up to 300 killed, including 30 mercenaries and an indeterminate number of wounded, with figures ranging from 300 to 1,000.
The Irish soldiers are held as hostages for approximately one month, in an effort to extort terms of ceasefire that are embarrassing to the United Nations.
After being released, the troops are returned to their base in Elisabethville. Some weeks later, however, “A” Company finds itself in active combat again, this time with the support of Swedish UN troops. Eventually, they are reinforced with fresh troops from Ireland, their replacement being the 36th Battalion. After weeks of fighting and their six-month tour of duty now complete, “A” Company is rotated out of the battle zone and are home in Ireland that December.
In 2016, the Irish government awards a Presidential Unit Citation to “A” Company, the first in the State’s history. In October 2017, a plaque commemorating Quinlan is unveiled in his native County Kerry, by former TaoiseachEnda Kenny. The decision of the State to honour individually the soldiers of Jadotville or their next of kin is one of the last decisions taken by Kenny before he retires as Taoiseach in June 2017. They are presented with newly designed Siege of Jadotville Medals in Athlone on December 2, 2017.
(Pictured: No.3 Platoon, A Company, 35th Battalion, pose in front of a UN relief helicopter, September 17, 1961)
Lucas is commissioned as a second lieutenant into 2nd Battalion, the Royal Berkshire Regiment, on May 7, 1898. He serves with the battalion in South Africa during the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1902, taking part in operations in the Orange Free State from February to July 1900, in Transvaal from July to November 1900, and later in Cape Colony south of the Orange River. He is promoted to lieutenant on August 1, 1900, while in South Africa. After the end of the war in June 1902, he and the rest of the 2nd battalion is sent to Egypt, where they arrive on the SS Dominion in November 1902. He later serves in the Egyptian Army and Sudan Civil Service.
On June 30, 1919, Lucas is appointed a deputy lieutenant of Hertfordshire. He is made Commander of 17th Infantry Brigade in Ireland, and of Fermoy Barracks, on October 30, 1919. On June 26, 1920, during the Irish War of Independence, he is captured by the IRA while he is fishing on the Munster Blackwater near Fermoy along with Colonels Tyrell and Danford. After Danford is wounded during an unsuccessful attempt to escape from a moving car the same day, the volunteers free Tyrell to attend to Danford’s wounds. Both Colonels are subsequently taken to a military hospital at Fermoy.
Lucas is subsequently held in West Limerick and East Clare.
A letter from his wife, announcing the birth of their child, and addressed simply “to the IRA”, is delivered to him and his captors allow a subsequent exchange of letters between the couple. His letters home remain in the possession of his descendants and are shown on an episode of the BBC Television programme Antiques Roadshow.
The IRA moves Lucas to East Limerick from where he escapes four weeks later. It is believed his captors purposely relax the guard to allow him to escape rather than be faced with the possibility of executing him. While being transferred from Pallas Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks to Tipperary military barracks in a routine army patrol they are ambushed, and Lucas receives a slight injury.
Lucas becomes Assistant Adjutant General at Aldershot Command in 1924 and serves with the staff at General Headquarters, British Army of the Rhine from 1927 before he retires to Stevenage in 1932. He dies on April 7, 1956, and is buried in Graveley, Hertfordshire. His wife, Joan Holdsworth, whom he marries in October 1917, dies on September 6, 1979, and is also buried in Graveley, Hertfordshire.
In 2014, Barbara Scully, a granddaughter of George Power, one of the IRA volunteers involved, publishes his recollections to his family of the kidnap in The Irish Times. This brings a friendly reply from Lucas’ granddaughter, Ruth Wheeler, in which she states that Lucas risked a court-martial for stating that during his kidnap and time in captivity he was treated as “a gentleman by gentlemen” and was held by “delightful people.”
Ireland’s Defence Forces have published online Bureau of Military History witness statements by the IRA volunteers involved in the kidnap, as well as those who guarded General Lucas while he was held as a prisoner of war.
In 2020 Lucas’s granddaughter, Ruth Wheeler, and other members of the Lucas family publish online the letters he wrote and received while in captivity. Limerick Councillor Emmett O’Brien and other local people in March 2019 announce an intent to re-enact the capture, imprisonment, and release of Lucas on the anniversary in 2020.
(Pictured: Cuthbert Henry Tindall Lucas, bromide print by Walter Stoneman, 1919, National Portrait Gallery)
seamus dubhghaill 