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)
Joyce is born on April 24, 1906, in Brooklyn, New York, 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 per cent 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 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)
The 1710 Spanish campaign opens on May 15 when the Spanish Bourbon army commanded by Philip V in person and Francisco Castillo Fajardo, Marquis of Villadarias, advance on the town of Balaguer. Guido Starhemberg, commander of the Allied forces in Catalonia, halts this attempt by preventing the Spanish from fording the Segre River, a success in which the officers of the British contingent have a leading role.
Having received reinforcements, in June Philip makes another attempt upon Balaguer with 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry but is defeated at Almenar on July 27. The allied troops take up a strong defensive position and repel the Spanish attacks until the British commander, James Stanhope, leading their vanguard, breaks the Spanish lines. Philip is forced to withdraw to Zaragoza, capital of Aragon, while Villadarias is replaced by the French general Alexandre Maître, Marquis de Bay.
On August 9, the Spanish army reaches Zaragoza and de Bay positions his troops with the river Ebro on his left and the Torrero heights to the right. On August 15, an Allied cavalry attack is repulsed, followed by five days of minor skirmishes before the Allies cross the Ebro in force on August 19 and are allowed to deploy during the night.
The two forces are roughly equal in strength, the allies having thirty-seven battalions of infantry and forty-three squadrons opposed to the Spanish-Bourbon army of thirty-eight battalions and fifty-four squadrons. The Allied left, composed of Catalonian and Dutch troops, is led by Pedro Manuel de Ataíde, 5th Count of Atalaia, the right by Stanhope, made up of British, Portuguese and Austrian cavalry, with Starhemberg in charge of the centre, mainly German, Austrian and Spanish infantry.
On August 20 at 8:00 a.m., an artillery-duel starts which lasts four hours before Stanhope charges the Bourbon-Spanish left. At first the Spanish and Walloon troops of the Bourbon army seem to gain the advantage, having defeated a body of eight Portuguese squadrons, which they chased from the field. This opens a gap in the Bourbon lines, which opens a gap for Stanhope who scatters the disorganized Spanish soldiers, while at the centre and the right their attacks are repulsed.
The battle follows the same pattern as at Almenar, with the allies repulsing fierce Bourbon cavalry charges before counter-attacked with their infantry and pushing the Spanish back. In less than three hours, the Allies army wins a comprehensive victory, capturing the Bourbon artillery along with 73 standards. Between 5,000 and 6,000 Spanish soldiers are killed or wounded, and another 7,000 captured, with Allied losses estimated as 1,500 men dead or wounded.
Archduke Charles enters Zaragoza the next day. The defeat of the army of Philip V of Spain is severe, the way to Madrid is open. Philip V abandons Madrid on September 9 and goes to Valladolid. Archduke Charles enters a very hostile and almost empty Madrid on September 28. Charles comments, “This city is a desert!” In the winter of 1710, Archduke Charles and the allied troops have to abandon Madrid, due to the great opposition of the people of Madrid and the dangerous strategic situation. After this, the British army suffers a defeat at the Battle of Brihuega, and the rest of the allied army is defeated at the Battle of Villaviciosa.
On June 1, 1866, a group of Fenian soldiers cross the border from the United States into Canadian territory. The events of the so-called Fenian invasion of Canada leave the organisation utterly discredited and cause much dismay among Irish American communities.
The roots of the invasion go back to 1865 when the Fenians in the United States break into two factions, one headed by William Roberts and the other by John O’Mahony, a founding member of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States. It is the Roberts wing which proposes a Fenian invasion of Canada. A number of facts are put forward by Roberts and others in support of this plan. In 1865 there are tens of thousands of battle-hardened Irish veterans of the American Civil War, as well as many officers from both the Union and Confederate armies. It is initially proposed to utilise these soldiers for an incursion into Canada that would be timed to coincide with a revolution in Ireland, thus causing Great Britain to be engaged in two widely separated theatres of war.
When it becomes apparent that the hoped-for rising in Ireland is not going to take place, the goal of the invasion is changed. The Fenians now hope that they can engineer a border incident that will entangle British forces in a war with the United States.
At the time the U.S. Government has a fractious relationship with their British counterparts, a remnant of the British Empire‘s partiality towards the Confederacy during the American Civil War. During the war the British Government comes close to granting diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy and British shipyards provide raiding vessels such as the notorious USS Alabama to the South. While this ill-feeling is unlikely to lead to full-scale conflict, the U.S. Government is in no mood to provide any aid to the British in Canada. PresidentAndrew Johnson is aware of the Fenian’s plans but does little to hinder them.
The two competing Fenian factions launch separate operations. In April 1866, the O’Mahony wing attempts to seize Campobello Island near New Brunswick but the Fenian attackers are easily dispersed by U.S. naval forces. The Roberts wing launches its attack on Canada under the command of a civil war veteran, General John Charles O’Neill, on June 1, 1866.
General O’Neill leads a force of over one thousand men into Canadian territory near Fort Erie, Ontario. His invading army has some initial success, winning two engagements including the so-called Battle of Ridgeway with around ten fatalities (with a similar number on the Canadian side). O’Neill’s troops keep their discipline and local civilians are respected, as are Canadian prisoners of war. One soldier, Lance Corporal William Ellis, later writes, “the Fenians treatment of myself and the other prisoners was kind and considerate in the extreme.”
Yet, O’Neill is aware that far larger Canadian forces are approaching and on June 3 feels it prudent to take his army back to American territory, while they await reinforcements. However, the U.S. government is now fearful that events are spiralling out of control. Once back across the border, O’Neill’s army is met by American troops who intervene to prevent the Fenians from making any further attacks. Over the following days the Fenian army is broken up by American forces. O’Neill is arrested by U.S. Marshals and temporarily incarcerated. A second, smaller, incursion into Canada follows on June 6 but this, too, makes little headway. This second Fenian army is also broken up by U.S. forces when back on American soil. By June 8 the Fenian invasion of Canada is over.
The whole invasion demonstrates the futility of the Fenian strategy. It proves that the Canadians would fight to preserve their territory and that they could mobilise thousands of their population to do so. There is little hope that the Fenians could muster the required number of troops necessary to seize and then to hold Canadian territory. Most importantly, there could be no doubt now that the U.S. Government would not, despite its tempestuous relationship with the British Empire, offer any support to a Fenian invasion. Nor would the U.S. Government allow itself to be embroiled in a border war with British or Canadian forces. Nevertheless, these lessons are ignored by some Fenians for whom the idea of attacking Canada is a worthwhile objective over the following few years.
In 1870 another convention takes place amid more internal wrangling within the Brotherhood. There, a decision is made to launch a new attack on Canada. Once again John O’Neill commands the Fenians, among whose army is John Boyle O’Reilly, a young journalist. O’Reilly makes detailed reports on the invasion, an event that proves disastrous for Fenianism in the United States.
Lawless, a Catholic, is the confidant of Lord Edward FitzGerald, and Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin. Closely connected with John Sheares in the direction of affairs in the spring of 1798, a warrant for his arrest is issued on May 20 with a reward of £300. Timely notice is, however, given him of the fact by Mr. Stewart, the Surgeon-General, and he escapes to France, where his abilities and spirit recommend him to the special favour of Napoleon. While in Paris, he spends time with other United Irishmen in exile, including Myles Byrne and William James MacNeven.
Lawless is placed on half-pay in 1800, but in 1803 is appointed captain of the Irish Legion, and in July 1806 is ordered to Vlissingen, then besieged by the English, to command the Irish battalion. To reach his post he has to pass in a small open boat through the English fleet. He is dangerously wounded in a sortie, and when General Monet capitulates without stipulating for the treatment of the Irish as prisoners of war, Lawless escapes from the town with the eagle of his regiment, conceals himself for two months in a doctor’s house, and at length finds an opportunity of getting to Antwerp by night in a fishing boat. MarshallJean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte welcomes him, extols him in general orders, and reports his exploits to Napoleon, who summons him to Paris, decorates him with the Legion of Honour, and promotes him to be lieutenant-colonel. In 1812 he gains a colonelcy, and on August 21, 1813, he loses a leg at the Battle of Dresden. He retires to his country house in Tours.
After the restoration of the Bourbons, Lawless is returned, in October 1814, to half-pay with the rank of brigadier general. He dies in Paris at the age of 52 on December 25, 1824. His remains are buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. He is one of the best officers of the last large French unit of The Wild Geese. Thomas Moore describes him as “a person of that mild and quiet exterior which is usually found to accompany the most determined spirit.”
(Pictured: Gravesite of General William Lawless in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France)
The Maze Prison escape, known to Irish republicans as the Great Escape, takes place on September 25, 1983, in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. HM Prison Maze, also known as Long Kesh, is a maximum-security prison considered to be one of the most escape-proof prisons in Europe, and holds prisoners suspected of taking part in armed paramilitary campaigns during the Troubles. In the biggest prison escape in UK history, 38 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoners escaped from H-Block 7 (H7) of the prison. One prison officer dies of a heart attack during the escape and twenty others are injured, including two who are shot with guns that had been smuggled into the prison. The escape is a propaganda coup for the IRA, and a British government minister faces calls to resign. The official inquiry into the escape places most of the blame onto prison staff, who in turn blame the escape on political interference in the running of the prison.
IRA volunteers regard themselves as prisoners of war with a duty to escape. During the Troubles, Irish republican prisoners escape from custody en masse on several occasions between 1971 and 1981.
Prisoners had been planning the 1983 escape for several months. Bobby Storey and Gerry Kelly start working as orderlies in H7, which allows them to identify weaknesses in the security systems. Six handguns are also smuggled into the prison. Shortly after 2:30 PM on September 25, prisoners seize control of H7 by simultaneously taking the prison officers hostage at gunpoint in order to prevent them from triggering an alarm. One officer is stabbed with a craft knife, and another is knocked down by a blow to the back of the head. One officer who attempts to prevent the escape is shot in the head by Gerry Kelly but survives. By 2:50 PM the prisoners are in control of H7 without an alarm being raised. A dozen prisoners also take uniforms from the officers, and the officers are forced to hand over their car keys and details of where their cars are, for possible later use during the escape. A rearguard is left behind to watch over hostages and keep the alarm from being raised until they believe the escapees are clear of the prison, at which time they return to their cells. At 3:25 PM, a lorry delivering food supplies arrives at the entrance to H7, whereupon Brendan McFarlane and other prisoners take the occupants hostage at gunpoint and move them inside H7. The lorry driver is told the lorry is being used in the escape, and he is instructed what route to take and how to react if challenged.
At 3:50 PM the prisoners leave H7, and the driver and a prison orderly are taken back to the lorry. Thirty-seven prisoners climb into the back of the lorry, while Gerry Kelly lay on the floor of the cab with a gun pointed at the driver, who is also told the cab has been booby trapped with a hand grenade. At nearly 4:00 PM the lorry drives toward the main gate of the prison, where the prisoners intend to take over the gatehouse. Ten prisoners dressed in guards’ uniforms and armed with guns and chisels dismount from the lorry and enter the gatehouse, where they take the officers hostage.
At 4:05 PM the officers begin to resist, and an officer presses an alarm button. When other staff respond via an intercom, a senior officer says while being held at gunpoint that the alarm had been triggered accidentally. By this time the prisoners are struggling to maintain control in the gatehouse due to the number of hostages. Officers arriving for work are entering the gatehouse from outside the prison, and each is ordered at gunpoint to join the other hostages. Officer James Ferris runs from the gatehouse toward the pedestrian gate attempting to raise the alarm, pursued by Dermot Finucane. Ferris had already been stabbed three times in the chest, and before he can raise the alarm he collapses.
Finucane continues to the pedestrian gate where he stabs the officer controlling the gate, and two officers who had just entered the prison. This incident is seen by a soldier on duty in a watchtower, who reports to the British Army operations room that he has seen prison officers fighting. The operations room telephones the prison’s Emergency Control Room (ECR), which replies that everything is all right and that an alarm had been accidentally triggered earlier.
At 4:12 PM the alarm is raised when an officer in the gatehouse pushes the prisoner holding him hostage out of the room and telephones the ECR. However, this is not done soon enough to prevent the escape. After several attempts the prisoners open the main gate and are waiting for the prisoners still in the gatehouse to rejoin them in the lorry. At this time two prison officers block the exit with their cars, forcing the prisoners to abandon the lorry and make their way to the outer fence which is 25 yards away.
Four prisoners attack one of the officers and hijack his car, which they drive toward the external gate. They crash into another car near the gate and abandon the car. Two escape through the gate, one is captured exiting the car, and another is captured after being chased by a soldier. At the main gate, a prison officer is shot in the leg while chasing the only two prisoners who have not yet reached the outer fence. The prisoner who fires the shot is captured after being shot and wounded by a soldier in a watch tower, and the other prisoner is captured after falling. The other prisoners escape over the fence, and by 4:18 PM the main gate is closed and the prison secured, after 35 prisoners had breached the prison perimeter. The escape is the biggest in British history, and the biggest in Europe since World War II.
Outside the prison the IRA has planned a logistical support operation involving 100 armed members, but due to a miscalculation of five minutes, the prisoners find no transport waiting for them and are forced to flee across fields or hijack vehicles. The British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary immediately activate a contingency plan and by 4:25 PM a cordon of vehicle checkpoints are in place around the prison, and others are later in place in strategic positions across Northern Ireland, resulting in the recapture of one prisoner at 11:00 PM. Twenty prison officers are injured during the escape, thirteen are kicked and beaten, four stabbed, and two shot. One prison officer, James Ferris, who had been stabbed, dies after suffering a heart attack during the escape.
The escape is a propaganda coup and morale boost for the IRA, with Irish republicans dubbing it the “Great Escape.” Leading unionist politician Ian Paisley calls on Nicholas Scott, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, to resign. The British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher makes a statement in Ottawa during a visit to Canada, saying “It is the gravest [breakout] in our present history, and there must be a very deep inquiry.” The day after the escape, Secretary of State for Northern IrelandJames Prior announces an inquiry to be headed by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, James Hennessy. The Hennessy Report is published on January 26, 1984, placing most of the blame for the escape on prison staff, and making a series of recommendations to improve security at the prison. The report also places blame with the designers of the prison, the Northern Ireland Office and successive prison governors who had failed to improve security. Prior announces that the prison’s governor has resigned, and that there will be no ministerial resignations as a result of the report’s findings. Four days after the Hennessy Report is published, the Minister for Prisons Nicholas Scott dismisses allegations from the Prison Governors Association and the Prison Officers Association that the escape is due to political interference in the running of the prison.
Fifteen escapees are captured on the day, including four who are discovered hiding underwater in a river near the prison using reeds to breathe. Four more escapees are captured over the next two days, including Hugh Corey and Patrick McIntyre who are captured following a two-hour siege at an isolated farmhouse. Out of the remaining 19 escapees, 18 end up in the republican stronghold of South Armagh where two members of the IRA’s South Armagh Brigade are in charge of transporting them to safehouses and given the option of either returning to active service in the IRA’s armed campaign or a job and new identity in the United States.
On October 25, 1984, nineteen prisoners appear in court on charges relating to the death of prison officer James Ferris, sixteen charged with his murder. A pathologist determines that the stab wounds Ferris suffered would not have killed a healthy man. The judge acquits all sixteen as he cannot correlate the stabbing to the heart attack.
Lord enlists in the Royal Air Force on August 6, 1936. After reaching the rank of corporal in August 1938, he applies to undertake pilot training, which he begins in October 1938. Successfully gaining his pilot’s wings, he becomes a sergeant pilot in April 1939, and is posted to No. 31 Squadron RAF, based in Lahore, India. He later flies the Vickers Type 264 Valentia biplane transport. In 1941, No. 31 Squadron is the first unit to receive the Douglas DC-2 which is followed by both the Douglas DC-3 and Dakota C-47 Skytrain transports. That year he is promoted to flight sergeant and then warrant officer. He flies in North Africa, supporting troops in Libya and Egypt for four months, before being posted back to India. Commissioned as a pilot officer in May 1942, he flies supply missions over Burma, for which he is mentioned in despatches.
The Battle of Arnhem is part of Operation Market Garden, an attempt to secure a string of bridges through the Netherlands. At Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne Division and Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade are tasked with securing bridges across the Lower Rhine, the final objectives of the operation. However, the airborne forces that drop on September 17 are not aware that the 9th SS and 10th SS Panzer divisions are also near Arnhem for rest and refit. Their presence adds a substantial number of Panzergrenadiers, tanks and self-propelled guns to the German defences and the Allies suffer heavily in the ensuing battle. Only a small force manages to hold one end of the Arnhem road bridge before being overrun on September 21. The rest of the division becomes trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge and has to be evacuated on September 25. The Allies fail to cross the Rhine, which remains under German control until Allied offensives in March 1945.
Lord is 30 years old, and a flight lieutenant serving with No. 271 Squadron, Royal Air Force during World War II when he is awarded the Victoria Cross. On September 19, 1944, during the Battle of Arnhem in the Netherlands, the British 1st Airborne Division is in desperate need of supplies. His Dakota III “KG374” encounters intense enemy anti-aircraft fire and is hit twice, with one engine burning. He manages to drop his supplies, but at the end of the run finds that there are two containers remaining. Although he knows that one of his wings might collapse at any moment, he nevertheless makes a second run to drop the last supplies, then orders his crew to bail out. A few seconds later, the Dakota crashes in flames with its pilot and six crew members.
Only the navigator, Flying Officer Harold King, survives, becoming a prisoner of war. It is only on his release in mid-1945, as well as the release of several paratroops from the 10th Parachute Battalion, that the story of Lord’s action becomes known. He is awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
Several aircraft have carried tributes to Lord. Between 1993 and 1998, the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight‘s Dakota, serial “ZA947”, is painted in the colours of Lord’s aircraft during the Arnhem battle and bears the same code letters: YS-DM. Between 1973 and 2005, the Dakota displayed at RAF Museum Cosford is similarly painted and coded to represent Lord’s aircraft. From 1966 until its disbandment in 2005, No. 10 Squadron RAF is equipped with Vickers VC-10s, each of which is named after a Royal Air Force or Royal Flying Corps VC recipient. Aircraft serial number ‘XR810’ is named David Lord VC.
Lord’s Victoria Cross is presented to his parents at Buckingham Palace in December 1945. In 1997, his Victoria Cross, along with his other decorations and medals, are sold at auction by Spinks to Lord Ashcroft. As of 2014, the medal group is on display at the Imperial War Museum.
Sands is the oldest of four children born to John and Rosaleen Sands, and the couple’s first son. Sands grows up in Belfast under the cloud of nationalist and loyalist divisions. At an early age, Sands’s life is affected by the sharp divisions that shape Northern Ireland. At the age of ten, he is forced to move with his family out of their neighborhood due to repeated intimidation by loyalists.
“I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto,” Sands later writes about his childhood. “But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.” Loyalist intimidation proves to be a theme throughout Sands’ life. At the age of 18, he is forced out of his job as an apprentice car builder. Not long afterwards, he and his family have to move again, as a result of political trouble.
The steady number of conflicts pushes Sands to join the republican movement in 1972. His ties to the movement soon capture the attention of the authorities, and later that year, he is arrested and charged with possessing firearms in his house. He spends the next three years of his life in prison. Upon his release, Sands immediately returns to the Republican Movement. He signs on as a community activist in Belfast’s rough Twinbrook area, quickly becoming a popular go-to person for a range of issues affecting the neighborhood.
In late 1976, authorities arrest Sands again, this time in connection with the bombing of Balmoral Furniture Company and an ensuing gun battle. After weathering a brutal interrogation and then a court proceeding that offers up questionable evidence connecting Sands and three others to the attack, a judge sentences Sands to 14 years in prison at the Long Kesh Detention Centre, a facility used to house Republican prisoners from 1971 until 2000, located just outside of Belfast.
As a prisoner, Sands’s stature only grows. He pushes hard for prison reforms, confronting authorities, and for his outspoken ways he is frequently given solitary confinement sentences. Sands contention is that he and others like him, who are serving prison sentences, are actually prisoners of war, not criminals as the British government insists.
Beginning on March 1, 1981, Sands leads nine other Republican prisoners in the H-Block section of the Maze prison on a hunger strike that lasts until death. Their demands range from allowing prisoners to wear their own clothes to permitting visits and mail, all of which are central in improving the inmates’ way of life.
Unable to move authorities to give in to his requests, and unwilling himself to end his hunger strike, Sands’s health begins to deteriorate. During the first seventeen days of the strike alone, he loses 16 pounds. A hero among his fellow nationalists, Sands is elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone while in prison. Sands becomes the youngest MP at the time. However, he dies less than one month later without ever having taken his seat in the House of Commons.
Only days after slipping into a coma, on the morning of May 5, 1981, Sands dies from malnutrition due to starvation. He is 27 years old and has refused to eat for 66 days. He becomes so fragile over his final weeks that he spends his final days on a waterbed to protect his deteriorating and fragile body. At time of his death, Sands is married to Geraldine Noade, with whom he has one son, Gerard.
The announcement of Sands’s death prompts several days of rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. Over 100,000 people line the route of Sands’s funeral. He is buried in the ‘New Republican Plot’ alongside 76 others. Their graves are maintained by the National Graves Association, Belfast.
While loyalists dismiss Sands’s death, others are quick to recognize its significance. Over the next seven months, nine other IRA supporters die on hunger strike. Eventually, the British government gives proper political recognition to the prisoners, many of them earning their release under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
seamus dubhghaill 