Appendix: Building a Database of Irish Officers in the British Forces

Appendix: Building a Database of Irish Officers in the British Forces This book began life as a PhD thesis researched and written at UCD from 2008 to 2012. At a very early stage in the project I decided that the best way to study Irish officers was to identify as many officers as possible and collate information about them in a database. However, since Irish officers in this period had never previously been studied, I encountered significant challenges in carrying this out. Indeed, the successful completion of the project required much detective work. First of all, before commencing the PhD I had read Richard Doherty’s monographs on Irish participation in the Second World War, a local history of Kildare soldiers in the war and a history of Irishmen in the 1st Airborne Division. These sources provided a small sample of 43 officers. Therefore, the immediate challenge upon starting the PhD degree was to establish that Irish officers were, in fact, a significant phenomenon measuring in the thousands rather than a minor anomaly affecting only 40-odd individuals. In spite of the lack of official and personal sources relating to this tradition, it was possible to augment this modest sample to 700 officers after eight months of research, and over a thou- sand after 12 months. How this was achieved will be detailed below, but first it is necessary to outline the parameters of the project. For the purpose of this research, southern Irish officers were defined as anyone who obtained a commission in the British army, navy or air force from 1922–45, and who was born in the 26 counties that became the Irish Free State, or alter- natively an officer who was born overseas but to Irish parents and subsequently spent the majority of his formative years until adulthood in the Free State. Importantly, attendance at a boarding school in the UK did not disqualify an officer from the sample and 13 per cent of the southern Irish officers came from that background. Among the Anglo-Irish elite it was customary for their sons to be educated at home by a governess till the age of 10 or 11, after which they would be sent to an English public school, and return to Ireland during the holidays. Therefore, it can be observed that such officers had a substantial Irish connection, spending most of their childhood in the Free State where they would be exposed to the same influences as those living in the country full-time. Indeed, two officers from Anglo-Irish backgrounds, Peter Ross and Brian Inglis, asserted that their sojourn in English public schools made them more, not less, conscious of their Irish identity. Secondly, in parallel to the collection of a southern Irish officer sample, it was also decided to collect a smaller sample of officers from Northern Ireland, which eventually reached 104 officers and enabled frequent comparisons to be made in the book. It should be noted that reference is sometimes made in the book to the experiences or views of southern Irish warrant officers, non-commissioned officers and men in the enlisted ranks. This is to illustrate similarities or differences, and does not mean that the individual forms part of the sample from which data on commissioned officers was derived. Building a sample was not a straightforward process. According to a War Office report from 1944, there were 4,300 southern Irish officers in the British army, 189 190 Appendix but their service records, along with all other British officers who served after 1922, are still held by the UK Ministry of Defence and remain closed to research- ers. However, alternative routes to identifying officers and collecting a sample were found. The first involved using the regimental histories of the southern Irish regiments (disbanded in 1922), the Northern Irish regiments and the Irish Guards. Some of these histories contained appendices listing all their current and past regimental officers. Unfortunately they gave little background information being concerned only with career details. They omitted place of birth, an important point since many of the officers in these regiments were actually English. Checking their names in several extensive online catalogues such as the National Register of Archives (NRA) and the British Library catalogue was a time- consuming process and led to few sources. The second and more productive method was to search the NRA catalogue for particular key words and dates. This led to a number of Dominion Office files from the 1939–45 period archived at Kew, dealing with Irish recruitment into the armed forces, the formation of an Irish brigade and other facets of British policy towards Irish servicemen and women. In terms of the sample the most rewarding discovery was a Dominion Office pamphlet that listed ‘Volunteers from Eire who have won distinctions serving with the British forces’ (see TNA, DO 35/1211). This pamphlet was produced as part of an effort by the British government to give recognition to the number of citizens from neutral Ireland who were serving in the British forces, as their relatives in Ireland complained about the lack of information due to censorship. It was also regarded as useful propaganda for encouraging more Irish to enlist. As an unofficial document the 10,000 copies of the pamphlet were printed without the imprimatur of His Majesty’s Stationery Office and informally distributed in Ireland by the various branches of the British Legion. A total of 216 officers were identified from this document, which gave place of birth, unit, award and citation. For some officers, notably in the RAF, their date of birth and education were also detailed. This pamphlet significantly strengthened the sample. Although it was a form of propaganda, it was compiled from service records and with the aid of correspondence from family relations of Irish volunteers and much of the information can be corroborated. Another useful starting point for building a sufficient sample of officers was the records of those killed in action. The War Office’s official record, Army Roll of Honour 1939–45, is now available on CD-ROM and unlike the database of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), it recorded nationality. A more expansive record is the printed volume Ireland’s Roll of Honour – World War Two compiled by Yvonne McEwen, which also includes volunteers to the navy and air force and is available in Trinity College Library. Both these sources gave basic details about Irish officer casualties such as name, rank, unit and age at death. For the sample it was decided to take all the officer casualties from the Irish regiments and an equal number from other regiments and corps. A selection of officers was also taken from the lists of the navy and air force. The emergence of fully digitised and searchable databases has made this kind of historical research much easier, and with the use of several electronic research tools it was possible to gather additional details about many of these officers and build up a social picture. Thus, by cross-referencing the names of officers killed in action with the CWGC database, the officers’ next-of-kin (usually their parents) were identified. The names of the officers and their parents could then Appendix 191 be checked on the 1911 census and two extensive Irish newspaper databases, which often provided place of birth, religion, father’s occupation and schooling. Career details such as when the officer was commissioned, promoted and retired could be gathered in a majority of cases by searching the digital catalogue of the London Gazette. Similar information plus obituaries could often be found from the catalogues of niche publications such as the British Medical Journal and Flight Global, for military medical officers and RAF officers respectively. Similarly, the Irish Newspaper Archive is a digitised collection of several national and regional newspapers. When a key word search was conducted, a series of articles was discovered relating to a debate in local councils about recruitment for the British forces. This led to further research in the extensive newspaper microfilm collection at the National Library, Dublin and visits to several town council archives in Wicklow, Wexford and Cork. The resulting material helped to provide a new perspective on Irish attitudes towards the British military, counterbalancing the official narrative as derived from parliamentary and government sources. This research is encapsulated in the sixth chapter. An accessible though time-consuming resource was biographical dictionaries. The Biographical Dictionary of Tipperary lists many officers among its profiles and is testament to that county’s strong tradition of military service. Nick Smart’s Biographical Dictionary of British Generals of the Second World War provided the sample with Irish officers who filled senior positions during that conflict, though it gives little detail of their family background other than their Irish origin and education. The online editions of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Dictionary of Irish Biography provided thorough information on several distinguished Irish officers, whom I was able to locate using a key word and date search of their catalogue. A trip to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, provided much detail about Irish officers. Their archive has the ‘gentlemen cadet’ records of the now defunct Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where artillery and engineering officers were trained. These records were considered important because they recorded nationality. Unfortunately the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, where line infantry, guards, cavalry and Indian army officers were trained did not record nationality or even an address and therefore it was not possible to identify Irish officers from its cadet register.

Load more