Hitler's Irishmen E-Book

Terence O'Reilly

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Seitenzahl: 517

Beschreibung

During the Second World War, two young Irishmen served in the armed forces of Nazi Germany, swearing the oath of the Waffen-SS and wearing the organisation's uniform and even its distinctive blood group tattoo.Ironically these young men had originally joined an Irish regiment of the British army, and but for a twist of fate would have ended up fighting against the Germans. Instead, the pair were recruited to the German special forces after they were captured on the island of Jersey.Under the command of Otto Skorzeny, the man who rescued Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from a mountain top prison, they were involved in some of the most ferocious fighting of the war in the last days of the Third Reich.This account, which also covers some of the other Irishmen who sided with Nazi Germany, draws heavily on their own accounts and on state papers which have been released in recent years.

Leseprobe

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© Terence O'Reilly, 2008

Epub ISBN: 9781856357265

Mobi ISBN: 9781856357630

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifcally permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Prologue

By September 1946, the euphoria that had swept Britain in the wake of the victory over Germany was a fading memory. Strict rationing was still in force. Most of Britain’s merchant fleet, once the largest in the world, had been lost to German U-boats during the war. Many of the ‘demobbed’ servicemen returning from the battlefields had no homes to return to – more than half a million British homes had been destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs and V-1 and V-2 missiles. Britain’s first postwar parliament, held in July 1945, had to be held in the smaller House of Lords, the House of Commons itself having suffered bomb damage. Just two months after Winston Churchill’s triumphant victory speech as Britain’s wartime prime minister, he had been banished to the opposition benches in the wake of the Labour party’s general election victory. The British working class, after so many years of sacrifice, had higher expectations of what the postwar years should bring, as indeed had many subjects of Britain’s severely weakened empire. In the face of Russia and the United States’ opposition to colonialism, the disintegration of the British empire was already beginning in India and the Middle East. Clement Attlee’s new government quickly instituted sweeping reforms, nationalising vital industries and creating new social programmes, including the National Health Service. With these new measures came higher taxes. By 1947, Britain was approaching bankruptcy.

Already the first serious strains in the alliance between Soviet Russia and her western allies were becoming apparent. In 1946, Joseph Stalin was consolidating his gains in eastern Europe and had ordered the communist parties of the western nations onto the offensive. Already civil war was raging in Greece between American and British-backed government forces and communist guerrillas. The United States in turn initiated a policy of ‘containment’ of communism worldwide. In March 1946, in Missouri, Churchill made his famous speech in which he declared that an ‘iron curtain’ had descended across the continent of Europe.

By 1946, the flow of liberated prisoners-of-war returning to Britain from Europe, and subsequently Asia, had all but ceased. During the war, most of those who had made the difficult ‘home run’ from a POW camp in occupied Europe back to Britain had been directed to the Great Central Hotel in Marylebone, London. This building, commandeered by the British War Office after the outbreak of war, was designated the ‘London transit camp’ where former POWs were debriefed on the second floor by MI-9, the secret service which was set up early in the war to aid escape attempts from German POW camps. Many intriguing stories came to light in the hotel’s once luxurious surroundings, but few were as strange as the one that emerged on the morning of 24 September 1946, when a tall young Irishman who had been flown in from occupied Germany three days earlier was escorted to one of the hotel rooms where he was met by two men in civilian dress sitting behind a trestle table. These were not members of MI-9, however – that organisation had been disbanded at the end of the war. They were in fact members of a special unit set up after the outbreak of the war to investigate serious crimes committed by members of the British Army.

One spoke: ‘I am a Sergeant in the Special Investigation Branch, Corps of Military Police. I am making enquiries with regard to your activities whilst a prisoner-of-war in Germany.’

The addressee nodded. ‘I’ve been expecting this.’ A little later, he was asked to display a tattoo under his left armpit. It was a small, simple marking, consisting of no more than the letter ‘A’, but its import was far more serious. The practice of tattooing a blood group in this manner was generally associated with membership of the SS.

At 10.45 a.m., with Sergeant Cash dictating, the Irishman began a lengthy statement.

‘Start at the beginning,’ Cash instructed. ‘Where were you born?’

‘My name is James Brady. I was born on 20 May 1920, Co. Roscommon, Ireland of Irish-born parents.’1

Of the handful of Irishmen who worked for Nazi Germany during the Second World War, only a few are known to have served the notorious SS, and of these only two are known to have worn the uniform of the organisation’s military wing, the Waffen-SS. These two men, James Brady and his friend, Frank Stringer, are unique in a few respects, not least the fact that only a very few Irishmen have served any military force of Germany or its predecessors. Irish soldiers served in their thousands and with distinction in the Irish legions of France, Spain and Austria, and eventually in the Irish regiments of the British Army, to mention only the largest contingents. Many armies have boasted Irish units; on occasion these Irishmen having fought on opposite sides, as for example during the American Civil War and the Boer War. One Irishman, Marshal Peter de Lacey, commanded the Russian Army of Catherine the Great, while individual Irishmen made a significant contribution to the independence movement in South America in the early nineteenth century. But there was hardly any tradition of Irish service in the Germanic armies; while the Irish served the Catholic kingdoms of Europe in their thousands, examples of Irishmen who have opted to serve the post-Reformation German states or the post-1870 unified Germany have been few and far between. Germany and Ireland are heirs to proud military heritages, which have remained largely separated. The Germanic reputation for military excellence was firmly established in ad 9 with the annihilation of three Roman legions in the Teutonburger Wald. It was particularly enhanced by Frederick William I, who ruled Prussia as the ‘soldier’s king’ from 1713 to 1740, establishing a country with a population of just two million as a major military power in Europe. The fierce disciplinary code of his 80,000-strong army, in which floggings and executions were commonplace, combined with such technical innovations as an iron musket ramrod which considerably increased infantry firepower, resulted in the most formidable force on a European battlefield.

Despite the introduction of new tactics, such as bringing three lines of fast-firing infantry against the enemy, bayonet charges still remained important, and tall grenadiers were considered the most effective in this type of fighting. From this, Frederick William is said to have developed the obsession with the battalion of freakishly tall grenadiers that became the only ceremonial unit in his army. The king sent agents all over Europe to find recruits for this unit, no expense spared; given the exceedingly harsh regime of the Prussian army, volunteers were unsurprisingly rare, and most enlistees were, quite literally, kidnap victims. This was the only endeavour on which the normally miserly Frederick William was willing to spend money freely, although he did not spend state revenue, instead establishing a special fund to which anyone seeking favour might contribute.

One of the few concessions to the welfare of these ‘Potsdam Grenadiers’ was the appointment of a chaplain, Fr Raymond Bruns of the Dominican order, to administer to the Catholics among them. Fr Bruns’ account of his service in Potsdam mentions at least two Irishmen, James Kirkland and Grenadier ‘Macdoll’ (probably MacDowell). The former had been inveigled, at the age of twenty, into the service of Herr von Borcke, a Prussian envoy in London, ostensibly as a footman, following which he had been sent to Hamburg on an ‘errand’. He soon found himself on the barrack square at Potsdam, learning the straight-legged goosestep and 180 different rifle exercises, any mistakes being swiftly ‘corrected’ by the sticks of the Prussian drill sergeants. Due to his height of 6’8” he was appointed file-leader and served thus from 1734 to 1739.

Grenadier ‘Macdoll’ apparently came into Frederick William’s good graces. Fr Bruns tells a tale in which the king, out riding, met a pretty girl and, deciding that she would make a good wife for the Irishman, ordered her to deliver a message to the commander at Potsdam, which detailed him to marry ‘the bearer’ to ‘Macdoll’ without delay! The girl, however, astutely passed the message to an old woman, resulting in a ‘stormy’ marriage ceremony which was annulled by the king the following day, Fr Bruns evidently not having been consulted on either occasion. This might not be entirely far-fetched: in later years the Potsdam Grenadiers became the king’s personal bodyguard, and the tale is certainly in keeping with the king’s personality.2

After Frederick William’s death and succession by his son, Frederick the Great in 1741, a new royal bodyguard was formed in the shape of the Lieb-Husaren regiment, which adopted the Totenkopf (death’s head) motif along with a black uniform. Frederick also acquired some Irishmen for his army; after the Battle of Pirna in 1756, the commander of the Prussian Infantry Regiment No. 19 ‘persuaded’ several Irish prisoners who had been fighting for the Saxons to join his force.3

German troops, in service with the British Army, were deployed in Ireland during the 1798 rebellion, when the 5th Battalion of the 60th Foot (Hesse-Darmstadt Legion) under the command of Major von Verna was deployed in the Wicklow area, taking part in the British General Moore’s operation in the Glen of Imaal area in mid-July of that year. As in the American War of Independence, these Hessian soldiers quickly gained a reputation for brutality, no mean feat given the standards of that conflict. Already disgusted by the ‘dreadful’ conduct of the Germans, and perturbed by the fear which they inspired among the local populace, General Moore expressed no sympathy when several Hessians on a pillaging expedition were ambushed and massacred by locals and took the opportunity to tighten control over them.4

Even within the British Army of the time, there was an obvious animosity between Irishmen and Germans. When an infantry battalion and a Hussar squadron of the King’s German Legion were based in the Irish town of Tullamore in 1806, they were involved in a bloody clash with Irish militiamen, in which firearms, bayonets and cavalry sabres were used freely. Although the causes of the clash owed more to rivalry for the attentions of local females rather than politics, ‘years later it was yet evident that the Irish and Germans in King George’s service were far from friends’.5

Following the crushing of the 1798 rebellion, the Prussian Army expressed an interest in finding recruits among the many Irish rebels who were now being held prisoner. In March 1799, Lord Castlereagh, the British chief secretary in Ireland, received a letter from Captain Schouler of the Struckwitz Infantry Regiment proposing the general terms for the recruitment of such prisoners. Subsequently, Captain Schouler selected 318 prospective recruits from the rebel prisoners being held at New Geneva Barracks in Waterford, and in September 1799 they were transported to Emden. The Prussian Army apparently distributed them among several regiments rather than forming any ‘Irish Brigade’, and in peacetime they were used as slave workers in the mines. In 1806, Napoleon’s armies inflicted a heavy defeat on the Prussian Army at Jena, and thousands of Prussian soldiers were taken prisoner. When Napoleon’s Irish Legion arrived in Mainz, they were greatly surprised to encounter Irishmen among the Prussian prisoners there, many of whom quickly joined their countrymen in the French Army. Captain Miles Byrne of the Irish Legion was delighted to welcome several fellow Wexfordmen whom he had fought alongside in the 1798 rebellion. Another former rebel and Prussian conscript named Molony subsequently became a sergeant-major in Napoleon’s Irish Legion, and afterward a captain in an Irish regiment of the Spanish Army. Few of the conscripts from New Geneva Barracks ever saw Ireland again.6

The Prussian Army’s rank list of 1873 includes a ‘Second Lieutenant O’Grady’, holder of the Iron Cross second class, probably awarded during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. This same officer, as a colonel, served in the First World War, responsible for emplacements on the eastern front. A Lieutenant O’Grady is recorded as having served with the German field artillery before 1914. Oberst and Leutnant O’Grady, however, are thought to have been Irish by descent rather than birth.7

The outbreak of the First World War seemed to present Irish republicans with an opportunity to further their cause, and to this end, Sir Roger Casement, noted human rights activist, was sent to Germany to elicit aid. In November 1914 he claimed to the German foreign ministry that he could convince significant numbers of Irishmen, members of the British Army being held in POW camps in Germany, to defect to a German-organised Irish brigade. An agreement was drawn up which stated: ‘With a view to securing the national freedom of Ireland, with the moral and material assistance of the Imperial German Government, an Irish Brigade shall be formed from among the Irish soldiers or other natives of Ireland now prisoners of war in Germany.’ Germany would supply arms and equipment ‘as a free gift to aid the cause of Irish independence’. The Irish brigade, however, was not to be ‘employed or directed to any German end’. It was also to have its own distinctive uniform.

The Irish POWs were concentrated in a camp at Limburg, near Frankfurt. These were all volunteer soldiers, many of whom had served in the Irish regiments of the British Army for some years and who had been captured by the Germans in the first year of war. Casement’s first address to them in December 1914 inspired only shock; his second provoked outright hostility. His early efforts provided only two recruits, a Sergeant Keogh and Corporal Quinlisk. They struck Casement as ‘rogues’, and this estimation would certainly prove correct of the latter.

By April 1916, there were no more than fifty-three members of the ‘brigade’. An Irish officer was added to the establishment when Robert Monteith, a former warrant officer in the British Army, arrived in Germany and was commissioned into the German Army. Despite its modest numbers, the establishment of the ’brigade’ included two senior NCOs (Quinlisk and Keogh), three sergeants and three corporals. The uniform worn by ‘Casement’s brigade’ was the standard German feldgrau worn with a brown leather belt carrying the famous ‘GOTT MIT UNS’ buckle of the German Army. NCOs’ insignia were a combination of British and German; prominent chevrons on the upper arm and distinctive piping on the collar. Some distinctively Irish insignia was also worn, for example a harp on the headgear and shamrock on the buttons.

The ‘brigade’ was not an effective force. Drinking and fighting were rife; when the Irishmen were based in the German Army barracks at Sossen, the commander is ruefully said to have remarked that the fifty Irishmen caused him more trouble than the 17,000 Germans also based there.

Despairing of his efforts, and contemptuous of the German government whose only eventual contribution to the imminent Irish rebellion was the dispatch of a ship covertly carrying weapons, Casement prevailed on the Germans to return him to Ireland by U-boat, in an apparent attempt to call the rebellion off. Two members of his ‘brigade’, Robert Monteith, and Daniel Bailey, the latter travelling under the name ‘Sergeant Beverly’, accompanied him. In April 1916, after a long and difficult submarine voyage to the south-west of Ireland, the three were landed on the Kerry coast. Casement was soon captured by two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, one of them called Constable Reilly. Bailey was apprehended shortly afterwards. The German boat, the Aud, was captured by the Royal Navy and scuttled by the German crew in Cork harbour.8

On Easter Monday 1916, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army seized key posts throughout Dublin and declared an Irish Republic. A proclamation was read which claimed that the rebellion had the support of ‘our gallant allies in Europe’, which the landing of Casement and the capture of the Aud seemed to lend credence to. The British reaction was vicious; reinforcements were rushed in from England and artillery shelled the rebel positions. The lightly armed rebels were soon outnumbered and the rebellion was crushed within the week, devastating central Dublin in the process. Irish public opinion, indifferent to republicanism before the Rising, was strongly influenced by the British Army’s execution of thirteen of the rebel leaders, was further disturbed by the mass internment of Irish people who had no involvement in the rebellion and was finally incensed by the British government’s threat to introduce conscription in Ireland. The 1916 rebels, reviled by Dubliners as they went into British captivity, received a hero’s welcome on their release. In the general election of December 1918, the Sinn Féin republican party, formally moderate nationalists, won seventy-five of 105 seats in Ireland. Refusing to take their seats in Westminster, the Sinn Féin party declared an independent Irish parliament (Dáil Éireann) in January 1919; that month also saw the first shots fired by Sinn Féin’s military wing (the Irish Republican Army) in a guerrilla war known in Ireland as the War of Independence.

It would seem that two of the most famous members of Casement’s ‘brigade’ were loyal to no other cause than their own self-interest. When Casement went on trial for treason, resulting in his eventual conviction and execution, Daniel Bailey gave evidence against him.

In 1919, one of Casement’s first recruits, Timothy Quinlisk, introduced himself to Michael Collins, the de facto leader of the newly organised Irish Republican Army (IRA). Believing that Quinlisk’s military experience and knowledge of German could be useful, Collins supplied him with accommodation and money. In November 1919, Quinlisk secretly contacted the British authorities with an offer to provide them with information regarding Collins. Unfortunately for him, Collins’ extensive list of contacts included detectives in the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s ‘G’ (political) division. Quinlisk was manipulated and fed disinformation by the IRA until January 1920, when a price of £10,000 was placed on Collins’ head. Acting on (false) information, Quinlisk sent the Royal Irish Constabulary to a hotel in Cork, to which he travelled with unseemly haste to ensure his bounty. His corpse was found in a ditch shortly afterwards.9

The guerrilla war between the IRA and British forces continued with increasing bitterness and was greatly intensified by the deployment of the notorious ‘Black and Tans’, a force intended to reinforce the beleaguered Royal Irish Constabulary but whose brutality to the civil populace greatly reinforced resentment against the British government. A truce in the summer of 1921 led to negotiations between the two sides, and the signing of an Anglo-Irish Treaty in December of that year established the Irish Free State. Although ratified by Dáil Éireann and a national vote, a large portion of the IRA opposed aspects of the treaty and a civil war erupted in July 1922. The anti-treaty faction faced defeat by May 1923, and many members eventually chose to support a constitutional political party, Fianna Fáil, led by Éamon de Valera.

It was a time of political upheaval throughout Europe. Italy’s participation in the First World War had brought about the postwar collapse of its economy and democratic politics. By 1920 left-wing agitation had reached a point where revolution seemed imminent. War veteran and former socialist Benito Mussolini seized the opportunity to emerge as the champion of the right, organising groups of disgruntled ex-servicemen into squads of black-shirted ‘fasci’ to oppose socialist groups in increasingly bloody clashes. While the word ‘fasci’ meant ‘groups’, the ‘fasces’ also referred to the Roman axe carried as a symbol of unity and authority, hence naming a new political movement: fascism. While Mussolini was able to claim that he had defeated socialism in Italy by mid-1921, in October 1922 he orchestrated an effective coup d ’etat by ordering his Blackshirts to march on Rome, bringing him to power and establishing the first European fascist state.

In Germany, fascism was represented by the Nazi party (NSDAP – Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Abeiterpartei), now led by war veteran Adolf Hitler. Its political muscle was provided by thousands of members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA), who chose a brown shirt as their uniform. Although the famous air ace, Hermann Goering, was officially appointed commander, the driving force behind the organisation remained former army captain, Ernst Roehm. There were many undesirable elements among the ranks of the SA, however, and in March 1923 Hitler ordered the formation of a personal bodyguard, the 100-strong Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler, which adopted a totenkopf (death’s head) as its distinctive symbol. The death’s head motif was originally carried by Frederick the Great’s Lieb-Husaren regiments, and this, along with the black uniform, was subsequently associated with the famous Death’s Head Hussars. The totenkopf was carried by several crack units of the German Army during the First World War and became synonymous with loyalty and self-sacrifice. It was thus eagerly seized upon as a symbol by the Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler in 1923. When the German Army founded an armoured corps (the Panzerwaffe), they too adopted a death’s head motif (worn on the collar) along with a black uniform. Following the liberation of the concentration camps in 1945, and the revelations of the SS engineering of the Holocaust, the SS totenkopf would take on an awful new significance.

On 9 November 1923, Hitler attempted to seize power in Bavaria, in the ‘beerhall putsch’ in Munich. Groups of Brown-shirts seized government buildings in the city, and were besieged by government forces. When Ernst Roehm’s group was trapped in the War Ministry, a relief column of 2,000 Brownshirts led by Hitler (surrounded by his bodyguards) and the famous General Ludendorff marched to their aid. Armed police opened fire on the column, killing sixteen Nazis. The putsch collapsed and Hitler spent a year in Landsburg prison during which he wrote Mein Kampf. After his release, Hitler formed a new bodyguard, originally named the ‘Schutzkommando’, but in November 1925 renamed the ‘Schutzstaffel’ – the SS. This may have been a suggestion by Hermann Goering as an allusion to a fighter escort, or ‘protection squadron’. Unlike the SA, which took any applicant, the SS introduced selective entry criteria. The SS, however, was still subordinate to the SA, and tended to be assigned menial tasks by local Brownshirt commanders. When a bespectacled young agriculturalist by the name of Heinrich Himmler was appointed to the lofty sounding post of ‘Reichsführer der SS’ in January 1929, SS membership stood at less than 300. From such humble beginnings Himmler was eventually to build his new power base into the most powerful organisation in Nazi Germany.

By the time Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, SS strength stood at 50,000. In March that year, Himmler was appointed police president of Munich, and opened the first SS concentration camp at Dachau. In the same month, Hitler ordered the formation of an SS armed guard for the protection of the Reichschancellory. An elite force, originally 117 strong, was organised and soon took up duties, wearing a distinctive black uniform and setting new standards in ceremonial drill. Prospective recruits to this showpiece force had to satisfy increasingly higher physical standards (even a filled tooth merited disqualification) and had to prove German ancestry back to the year 1800.

One of the most humiliating stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles which had ended the First World War had been the order that all German military academies were to be abolished. This included the Lichterfelde Kaserne at Berlin, Germany’s equivalent to Sandhurst or West Point. On 10 March 1920, the date of the academy’s closure, the last class of cadets staged a defiant parade through Berlin, led by a score of senior officers, former cadets in years past. These included General Ludendorff, who hinted to the cadets that the closure of their school might prove temporary. When the Nazis gained power in 1933, however, the barracks at Lichterfelde was not returned to the German Army, but became the home of Hitler’s SS bodyguards. On 9 November 1933, Hitler granted the new force, now 835 strong, the title of Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.

By June 1934, the increasingly unruly SA were posing a threat to Hitler’s position. On the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ the SS proved its loyalty by killing several Brownshirts and other political opponents of Hitler. A Leibstandarte firing squad carried out several executions in Lichterfelde. The SS was rewarded by being finally removed from SA jurisdiction. The SA, although allowed to continue in existence as an impotent paramilitary force, was reduced in strength from four million to one million. Himmler did some purging of his own, dismissing some 60,000 undesirables from the ranks of the SS in his continuing quest to establish his organisation as a knightly elite. Items such as ceremonial rings and daggers were authorised, and Wewelsburg Castle was established as an SS ‘Camelot’, complete with a round table for Himmler and his twelve most favoured senior SS officers.

The military aspirations of the SS were becoming increasingly apparent, to the concern of the Wehrmacht, the regular German armed forces. Apart from the Leibstandarte, now organised into two motorised battalions, the SS formed the SS-Vergungstruppe (SS-VT), armed ‘internal security’ troops, and the armed SS-Totenkopfverbande, which although originally formed to administer the SS concentration camp system, eventually formed the notorious ‘Totenkopf’ division of the Waffen-SS. The Wehrmacht were undergoing a much-welcomed expansion under Hitler’s rule. An armoured corps and an air force (Luftwaffe) were established and the Heer (army) was growing far greater than 100,000 troops, all of which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. The pre-Nazi German Army (Reichswehr) had kept their officer corps to no greater than 4,000, keeping the ‘one officer to twenty men’ ratio that was the hallmark of many of history’s best fighting forces. Ironically, in view of the Heer’s contempt for the SS (whom they referred to as ‘asphalt soldiers’ in a reference to their parade ground abilities), this very select corps would provide several senior officers for the SS military wing.10

In February 1932, the Fianna Fáil party was elected to power in Ireland, an event which naturally caused some dismay among members of the Irish Free State’s army and police who had, after all, been fighting members of the new government ten years earlier. The only attempt to oppose the new regime, however, was by garda (police) Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy, who had approached garda and army officers before the election to establish support for a proposed coup d ’etat. Although O’Duffy had been confident enough to print several copies of a proclamation to explain to Irish citizens why the democratic process had been abandoned, almost all of these officers reacted angrily against the proposal, the Army’s Chief of Staff threatening to have O’Duffy arrested. After the election of Fianna Fáil, O’Duffy was removed from his post.

In July 1933, O’Duffy accepted the leadership of the Army Comrades Association, founded the previous October, ostensibly as a Free State Army veterans association, but evidently to add some political ‘muscle’ to the opposition parties, who were facing intimidation from the remnants of the IRA. The organisation had already adopted a blue shirt as its uniform, and its manifestly right-wing antecedents naturally led to comparisons with the similarly attired fascist organisations in Italy and Germany. O’Duffy announced that he intended to lead a march on government buildings in Dublin, ostensibly to lay wreaths at a memorial to dead Free State leaders. Comparing O’Duffy’s proposed action with Mussolini’s march on Rome, De Valera banned both the march and the National Guard. While the Blueshirts abandoned their march, they simply renamed their organisation the ‘Young Ireland Association’, which in turn was banned and quickly renamed the ‘League of Youth’. The organisation adopted the straight-armed Nazi salute, and became heavily involved in nationwide political violence. A new opposition party, Fine Gael, was formed with O’Duffy in charge, but performed badly in the local government elections of 1934. Moderates in the new party began voicing concerns about O’Duffy and his methods, and in September that year a split within the League of Youth sent O’Duffy into the political wilderness. Under new leadership, the Fine Gael party concentrated on democratic politics, while the Blueshirts dissolved within a year. Once the true nature of European fascism became clear, a certain stigma became attached to membership of the Blueshirts. The term ‘Blueshirt’ became a popular insult, and to this day very few of the original blue shirt garments are known to remain in existence.

On 17 July 1936, a group of Spanish army officers launched an armed rebellion against their democratically elected government. This started the Spanish Civil War, which split the country into supporters of the leftist Popular Front ruling party and of the right-wing rebels. Italy and Germany soon began sending military aid to their fellow fascist, nationalist General Franco, while the Soviet Union eventually supported the republican government forces.

While the Spanish Civil War tends to be viewed today as broadly a struggle between fascist and democratic forces, this division was not so apparent in 1936. In Spain, the Catholic Church tended to be identified with the nationalists, while the republic’s supporters included fanatical communists and anarchists. In Ireland, public opinion was galvanised by press reports and newsreel footage of atrocities against Catholic churches and clergy by Spanish republican forces. Within three weeks, Eoin O’Duffy announced his intention to raise an Irish brigade to fight for the nationalists. This was the genesis of O’Duffy’s ‘fascist’ battalion which, according to popular ballad, ‘sailed under the swastika to Spain’. Like the Blueshirts, O’Duffy’s battalion, equipped with German uniforms and weapons, was certainly fascist by appearance. While the leadership was certainly pro-fascist, the main motivation for the rank and file were their devout Catholicism, and an earnest desire to fight ‘Bolshevism’. While 300 of this unit’s eventual seven hundred members had prior military experience, mostly with the Irish Free State Army, relatively few of these ‘crusaders’ could be classed as military adventurers. Two of this category had already served in the Spanish Foreign Legion, one having also served in the French Foreign Legion while the other had served in the Royal Navy and the US Navy. Whatever their actual intentions, the members of O’Duffy’s battalion would end up serving a fascist cause, but not very effectively.

On a perhaps significant date, namely Friday 13 November 1936, an advance party of ten of O’Duffy’s volunteers sailed from Ireland to Spain. Other groups followed, the largest of which left Galway on the Dún Aengus ferry on a stormy night in December to rendezvous with a larger German vessel, the SS Urundi. There followed a hazardous transfer of several hundred personnel between the two ships in gale-force conditions, after which they were transported to El Ferrol in north-west Spain aboard the Urundi. By Christmas, the 700 volunteers were assembled in the town of Cacares, the men accommodated in purpose-built barracks, the officers in a nearby hotel. By the new year, the men received German uniforms of the First World War issue, no doubt an irony to some members of the battalion who had served in the British Army during that conflict. A harp insignia was worn on the tunic lapels. Obsolete rifles of various designs were originally issued but were replaced by German weapons. It was announced that the Irish volunteers would form the XV Bandera (battalion) of the elite Spanish Foreign Legion, an indication of the Spanish nationalists’ high expectations for the unit. Eoin O’Duffy was appointed to general officer rank (outranking Colonel Yague, the Legion’s commander) since it was anticipated that more Irish units would be formed. Enough Irishmen in fact volunteered to form another bandera, but this group was left stranded in Ireland in early 1937.

The XV Bandera, organised into four companies, began six weeks of basic training, and evidently made a good impression on ceremonial occasions. O’Duffy spent most of this time attending various functions held in his honour. He was absent in early February 1937 when General Franco himself made a surprise visit with orders for the Irish bandera to participate in an offensive on the Jarama valley south of Madrid. On 17 February 1937, the bandera left Cacares for the front line. Two days later they engaged in combat for the first time.11

As they approached the village of Ciempozuelos, the lead company observed a group of forty troops moving towards them. As they were approaching the front, the company prudently deployed into defensive positions. After a short time Captain Beauvais, a Spanish liaison officer, decided that the other group were nationalist troops and he led a small party forward to meet them. Beauvais stopped a short distance from the other group, saluted the officer in charge and announced ‘Bandera Irlandaise del Tercio’. Instantly the other group opened fire, killing both Beauvais and a Spanish interpreter. The Irish company opened fire and in the following fire fight two Irish were killed as well as twenty of the opposing party. It later transpired that the ‘enemy’ were fellow nationalists, Falange militiamen from the Canary Islands, who had apparently mistaken the Irish unit for members of the republican international brigades.

The XV Bandera dug in, under republican artillery fire, at Ciempozuelos and established a frontline routine. At the request of the German General von Thoma, who in 1943 would succeed Erwin Rommel as commander of the Afrika Korps, an Irish platoon was supplied to guard a German artillery position. The Irish found the Germans to be ‘cold and aloof’ but enjoyed their coffee. At about this time, the Irish may have been involved in other ‘friendly fire’ incidents. An Irish journalist meeting some Spanish Foreign Legion officers ten years later was told: ‘Although the Legion admires the fighting qualities of these Irish volunteers, it thinks little of their discipline. Apparently a certain incident during one battle left a bad taste in their mouths, when, they alleged, the Irish troops fired into the Legion ranks – they were fighting on the same front, a few miles away from each other.’ Certainly there were accusations of alcohol-related problems at Ciempozuelos.12

On 12 March 1937, the Irish received orders to capture the village of Titulca on the heights opposite their position. This village, not a particularly important objective, was on the crest of a high cliff and defended by crack republican troops liberally equipped with machine guns and with strong artillery support. The XV Bandera attacked the next day, across a mile of valley floor in torrential rain over a canal and the Jarama river itself, under heavy and accurate artillery fire. Few, if any, made it across the river and the assault was called off by nightfall. Casualties were lighter than expected (four dead, six wounded) due to the worst of the shelling being absorbed by the rain-soaked ground. O’Duffy declined to obey an order to mount another attack and claimed to have had this refusal sanctioned by his immediate superior and by Franco himself. On 17 March Franco paid a surprise visit to the bandera, and talked at length with the bandera’s Spanish liaison officers. O’Duffy was absent; it is unlikely to be coincidental that this was the feast day of St Patrick. On 23 March the XV Bandera was transferred to La Maronosa, a quieter sector of the front apart from occasional air attacks. The following day, Colonel Yague visited; O’Duffy was naturally absent for this. Yague interviewed the liaison officers and subsequently recommended to Franco that the XV Bandera be disbanded. There was no doubt that the unit was suffering from internal problems and that O’Duffy’s leadership left a great deal to be desired. Although a gifted if authoritarian administrator in earlier years, these talents seemed to have deserted O’Duffy by 1937. Particularly resented by the frontline troops in the bandera was O’Duffy’s entourage of non-combatant staff-captains with which he spent most of his time sightseeing and socialising. One of this ‘elite’ was O’Duffy’s aide-de-camp Tom Gunning, who had been assistant general secretary of O’Duffy’s ‘League of Youth’ movement. He made his own particular contribution to the decline of the bandera’s morale by his strict censorship of the men’s mail home to the extent of halting it altogether. Yague’s recommendation may have also been influenced by the bloody ethos of the Spanish Foreign Legion; while O’Duffy’s refusal to launch a second attack on Titulca might have saved many unnecessary casualties, this would have been anathema to the legion, who were often referred to as the ‘bridegrooms of death’ and who typically suffered 50 per cent battle casualties throughout the civil war. O’Duffy could be credited for at least avoiding such casualties on this scale among his command.

The XV Bandera remained in the line for another two months, suffering many privations which caused another four fatalities. Discipline and morale collapsed, water was in short supply, the men’s German uniforms had all but disintegrated, and infighting between the officers was reaching a point where injuries were being inflicted. In early April, General Franco announced the dissolution of the XV Bandera and by the end of the month they were withdrawn from the line. While the men handed in their weapons, the officers retained their pistols after a request by O’Duffy which suggested that their safety might be in doubt. A poll was taken in which 654 men voted to return home, only nine electing to stay.13

The Irishmen were eventually repatriated in June 1937, arriving in Dublin on the twentieth of that month. Gardaí searched all baggage thoroughly and confiscated the officers’ pistols. O’Duffy, whose smart uniform and considerable baggage contrasted with the ragged appearance of most of his men, formed up his troops for the march into town but only half complied, the rest making their way to the city’s pubs. O’Duffy’s group was met by cheering crowds and a reception from Dublin Corporation; at this time they were still broadly perceived as Catholic ‘crusaders’, and one Irish newspaper, the Irish Independent, carried wildly exaggerated claims of their prowess on the battlefield. They were soon to face ridicule, a popular claim being that they returned with more troops than they left with! They would also be regarded with contempt as the true nature of the fascist cause that they had served, however naively, became all too evident.14

Five years later, after the German invasion of Soviet Russia, O’Duffy covertly sent several messages to the German legation in Dublin to indicate his willingness to raise a division in Ireland ‘to fight against Bolshevism’. The Germans demurred, not least due to ‘O’Duffy’s lamentable performance in the Spanish Civil War’.15

The performance of O’Duffy’s bandera was to compare poorly with the fighting spirit of the Irishmen who had fought for the opposing side. In early December 1936, while O’Duffy’s men were assembling in Cacares, about eighty Irishmen were slipping across the Pyrenees in small groups to volunteer for the International Brigades being formed to fight for the Spanish Republic. These men included Frank Ryan, a Dublin journalist and former IRA activist. It had been hoped to form an Irish unit, but operational necessity obliged them to combine with about 200 Britons to form a ‘British battalion’ at Madrigueras. A great degree of friction between the two groups soon became apparent: the Britons were led largely by former British Army officers while most of the Irishmen were ardent Irish republicans, several having been members of the IRA. On Christmas Day, a company of a hundred men, including forty Irishmen and led by Englishman George Nathan, were sent into action near Andujar, at a heavily defended part of the nationalist front. Although losses were heavy (eight of the Irish were killed) Nathan proved himself a genuine leader of men and earned the trust of the Irishmen in his command.

Despite a new year’s appeal from Frank Ryan to the Irish at Madrigueras to fight alongside the Britons in a common struggle against fascism, trouble continued to brew between the two groups. Any hopes that Nathan’s proven leadership qualities might have helped were dashed when it was revealed that he had been a member of the notorious Black and Tans during Ireland’s struggle for independence. Although he was transferred to a post on the brigade staff (where Ryan was also serving) and replaced by Irishman Kit Conway, his removal caused further resentment among the Britons, who had elected the popular Nathan to officer rank on the battalion’s formation. Things came to a head when a small group of the Irishmen broke away and joined the ‘Lincoln’ battalion of American volunteers.

In February 1937, the British battalion, now six hundred strong, was deployed to the Jarama valley for one of the most vicious battles of the Spanish Civil War – 17,000 were killed in a month’s fighting. Most of the British battalion were lost in the first day of fighting, in which it held out against a determined assault by elite nationalist troops. After three days of savage fighting, the battalion was reduced to less than 200 men and began to withdraw. At this moment, Frank Ryan courageously rallied the demoralised troops and led them back to the front, being shot and wounded twice in the process. Assuming that Ryan’s group were republican reinforcements, their enemy withdrew.16

In March 1937, Frank Ryan returned to Ireland to recover, making a brief but unsuccessful return to politics. Despite his personal doubts about the Spanish Republic’s chances of survival, Ryan returned to Spain in June.

Of the original eighty Irish members of the British battalion, thirty were killed at Jarama and nearly as many badly wounded. More Irish volunteers continued to arrive, and in July the battalion performed superbly at Brunete but at terrible cost, being reduced to less then a hundred men. The Irish contribution to the battalion was recognised with the appointment of two Irishmen, Peter Daly and Paddy O’Daire, to be the unit’s commanding officer and adjutant respectively. Daly was mortally wounded that August when the battalion took part in the offensive on Aragon, again holding out against elite nationalist troops and suffering grievous losses in the process. By the end of the year, when the battalion was committed to the fighting at Tereul, only one hundred and fifty members of the battalion were English speakers; a third of the battalion was lost in a month’s fighting under appalling winter conditions.17

The following March, the British battalion (to which staff Major Frank Ryan was attached) was deployed to the Aragon front in a desperate attempt to stop a nationalist offensive. On a night march to their assigned positions at Calaceite, the lead company stumbled into a nationalist tank unit and over one hundred men, including Ryan, were taken prisoner. They were fortunate in that they were taken by the Italians, who did not summarily execute their prisoners, as was the case with Franco’s Spaniards.

Ryan was brought to Zaragoza for execution but was saved when he was recognised by a foreign journalist, and was sent to rejoin his fellow prisoners at a prison camp near Burgos. By all accounts, he proved himself a troublesome prisoner to his captors while providing an inspiration to his fellow prisoners, and in June he was court-martialled and sentenced to death. He was transferred to Burgos prison to await execution, but his life was saved by a well-orchestrated campaign for his freedom organised in Britain, Ireland (where petitions were signed in both the Dáil and the House of Commons) and the United States. Although Ryan’s death sentence was commuted to thirty years’ imprisonment in late 1939, the two years that he eventually spent in the dreadful conditions of Burgos prison destroyed his health and shortened his life expectancy to just a few more years.18

In July 1938 the British battalion, by now reduced to two hundred men, took part in the battle of the Ebro river, the last republican offensive of the war. Initially meeting with some success, the republicans were gradually forced back through August. In November, the republicans disbanded their international brigades and fifteen Irishmen were present at their final parade in Barcelona that month.

1 GUERNSEY

On 2 December 1938, a young Irishman who gave his name as ‘James Brady’ entered a recruiting centre in Liverpool and volunteered his services for the British Army. When he gave his birthplace as Co. Roscommon and his date of birth as 20 May 1920, he was evidently not asked to produce a birth certificate as proof. This was not unusual at the time. Although some 35,902 volunteers had joined the British Army by November that year, this still represented an annual shortfall of 21,000 men, and prospective recruits were unlikely to be questioned too closely. Brady’s given date of birth made him very slightly older than eighteen years of age, the minimum age necessary to join the army without parental consent. Subsequent events suggest that Brady might have originated from a more privileged background than the simple farmer’s son he claimed to be. A later acquaintance described Brady as ‘well-mannered and considerate, about 5’11” in height, well-built, fresh complexion, blue eyes and brownish fair hair’. The same man also noted: ‘His people [i.e. his family] did not know that he had joined the Army.’1

Brady’s entry to the British Army was preceded by a few days by that of Frank Stringer, a thin dark-haired young man born in Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim on 24 July 1920. Stringer’s father, a ‘fitter’s mate’, was dead, and Stringer had a minor criminal record, having been arrested for stealing turf at the age of fifteen. While Brady apparently followed the traditional Irish emigrant route of the ‘boat train’ from Dublin to Liverpool, Stringer signed up in Scotland Yard, London, having served a short stint in the Royal Navy, from which he was discharged for reasons not stated by him.2

Leitrim is traditionally the poorest and most sparsely populated county in Ireland, a rural society which was particularly hard hit by the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s. Even the soil of the region is too heavy to sustain significant agriculture. Conditions were scarcely better in Brady’s native Roscommon, which borders Leitrim. Options for any young man growing up in the area were minimal, particularly one whose family had been deprived of its breadwinner. For those of an adventurous bent, service in the particularly well-travelled British Army had obvious attractions.

Brady and Stringer both swore the British Army’s oath of allegiance and proceeded separately to Borden Camp in Hampshire, Stringer from London and Brady from Liverpool, to begin their basic training. Both had been assigned to the Royal Irish Fusiliers, ‘that most Irish of the Irish regiments’, commonly known as the ‘Faughs’ after the regiment’s Gaelic battle-cry, the polite translation of which is ‘clear the way’. This regiment traced its origins back to the raising of the 87th and 89th Regiments of Foot in Ireland in 1793, the latter regiment being heavily involved in the putting down of the Irish rebellion of 1798. The 89th Regiment subsequently fought the French in Egypt, the Dutch in Java and the Americans in Canada in 1813. The 87th Regiment fought at Montevideo in 1807 and later at the fierce battle of Talavera in Portugal. Later, at the Battle of Barossa Hill in Spain in 1811, part of this regiment routed the elite 8th Demi-Brigade of the French Army, capturing their prized eagle standard. This was the first such standard to be captured in battle by the British Army, earning the regiment and its descendant the sobriquet of ‘the eagle-takers’. The outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 saw the 89th fighting at Sebastopol. Both regiments were involved in putting down the Indian mutiny in 1857 and the 87th fought in the China War in 1860. The 89th returned to Ireland in 1867 to deal with another Irish rebellion, this time the abortive Fenian rising. In 1881, the 87th and 89th Regiments of Foot were amalgamated to become Princess Victoria’s Royal Irish Fusiliers, with their depot in Armagh. A battalion was deployed to Egypt the following year, winning the regiment’s first battle honour. The regiments’ two battalions suffered heavy losses in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902, the second battalion relieving the siege of Ladysmith.

In the First World War, the Royal Irish Fusiliers were expanded to fourteen battalions, fighting on the western front and in the Middle East, two members winning Victoria Crosses. Following Irish independence in 1922, most of the Irish regiments of the British Army were disbanded, the Royal Irish Fusiliers only surviving by the generosity of a sister regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, who sacrificed one of their two allotted battalions to allow the ‘Faughs’ room on the

British Army establishment.3

In May 1937, the regimental depot of the Royal Irish Fusiliers moved from Omagh in Northern Ireland to Borden Camp in Hampshire, thereby breaking the link with their benefactors, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Stringer and Brady arrived here at about the same time in early December 1938, receiving consecutive army numbers (7043206 and 7043207 respectively). Both young men were of the same age, from the same region of the west of Ireland, and both had suffered the bereavement of a close relative; Brady’s mother was deceased, as was Stringer’s father. It is not surprising that the pair appear to have become friends. It was common practice in the British Army at the time to accommodate individual recruits in a depot until there was a sufficient number to form a training unit; ‘the normal number of recruits in a squad will be 30, and training will commence on the first Monday after the squad is complete’, to quote the training manual. Since their recruit training commenced in January 1939, it is likely that Brady and Stringer spent the Christmas period together in Borden Camp, the first of several such Christmases together.

Construction of Borden Camp, near the huge British Army camp in Aldershot, had begun in 1903. Originally an artillery barracks, it was expanded in 1906 by the mammoth task of transferring nearly seventy large huts by a purpose-built railway from the nearby infantry camp at Longmoor. By 1937, the camp had expanded into several barracks complexes. The Royal Irish Fusiliers moved to Guadalope barracks, named after a battle, not due to any misapprehension regarding the local climate. The ‘South African’ model huts in which Brady and Stringer were accommodated were constructed of heavy corrugated iron. These tended to be noisy during heavy rain, and the hut’s solid-fuel ‘pot-belly’ stoves often proved not to be equal to the demands of the Hampshire winter.

For a typical British Army recruit of 1939, the day began with a bugle call at 6 a.m. After a short run, the men assembled at the cookhouse with knife, fork, spoon and a tin plate and mug. Breakfast consisted of porridge (usually too watery or too lumpy) washed down with strong tea. After a morning inspection of uniform and quarters, the morning was usually spent in intensive ‘square-bashing’ (foot drill) on the parade ground. There was a lunch parade at midday at the cookhouse, consisting of meat, vegetables and ‘duff’ or tart to follow, again with strong tea. The quality of the food depended very much on the cook. Afternoon training sessions were usually physical training or classroom lessons, for example military discipline or map reading. After an evening meal of tea, meatloaf, bread and jam, there was little free time for a recruit. The issued ‘ammunition boots’ had to be kept highly polished, from the toecaps to the studs. The newly-issued 1938 pattern webbing, consisting of belt, yoke, ammunition pouches, bayonet ‘frog’ (holder) and waterbottle container had to be thoroughly ‘blancoed’ and the brass buckles polished with Brasso. This was an awkward business, as any spillage of the latter would result in an obvious and hard to remove stain. For the same reason, the use of Brasso on the brass buttons and badges of the recruit’s uniform required infinite care; any neglect would result in the incurring of a training NCO’s wrath. The rest of the recruit’s kit (most items of which were marked with his number to prevent theft), from his rifle to his eating utensils, had to be kept in immaculate condition, as had the recruit’s barrack rooms, from the windows to the floor. The latter was typically scrubbed four times daily.

Some elements of this regime may have seemed nonsensical. Many other armies insisted on their soldiers’ boots being coated in dubbin rather than being highly polished, which although looking smart on the parade ground actually decreased the boot’s waterproof qualities. Likewise in early 1939, the new recruit had to wind on ‘putties’, long lengths of serge cloth to be wound tightly and symmetrically from the ankle to the knee, with the fastening to be placed on the outside. This was difficult at the best of times, and a nightmarish proposition when rushing to be on a morning parade. If not wound tightly, the puttee would unwind on the parade ground, tripping the recruit or a colleague and provoking the rage of a superior. On the other hand, when puttees were wound tightly enough, they restricted circulation for soldiers involved in long route marches and sentry duty and were frequently the cause of varicose veins in later life. There did not seem to be any readily discernible logic to some aspects of this regime, other than an apparent belief that any cause of discomfort for the troops was somehow good for discipline. The hated puttees began to be phased out in 1939 with the introduction of a new battledress. This consisted of ‘an overall made of khaki serge with large patch pockets; the trousers of the same design as skiing trousers and are of full-length, being secured round the ankle by a short canvas gaiter’. The new battledress was not issued to the Royal Irish Fusiliers until just before their deployment to France in October 1939, by which time Brady and Stringer were unable to avail of its relative benefits.4

Other aspects, such as the insistence on high standards of hygiene, and on keeping the soldier’s rifle and kit in good order, assumed an obvious importance on the battlefield. Some of the apparently more mindless methods of instilling discipline actually served certain purposes – making a group of individuals undergo various discomforts and indignities together was a proven method of instilling team spirit and camaraderie.

The British Army was famous for insisting on a high standard of foot drill as a means of instilling discipline and group cohesion. Physical training assumed great importance for any army and for an infantry regiment in particular, but in 1939 a particular problem had to be addressed; many of the recruits inducted at this time were in poor physical condition due to the low standards of nutrition in the working class of the 1930s. The American journalist William Schirer would, in 1940, unfavourably contrast the bad teeth and skinny physique of British soldiers taken prisoner with the fine physical condition of their German captors.5

‘Anti-gas training’, in which recruits were taught how to don a respirator and experience the discomfort of wearing this awkward item for long periods, was to prove, in the Second World War, a wise but mercifully unnecessary precaution.

Brady and Stringer would not have been issued with weapons until after at least two weeks’ training on the parade ground. The British Army’s standard rifle was the ubiquitous Lee-Enfield, a bolt-action rifle with a reputation for reliability and accuracy that had been firmly established in the trench warfare of the First World War. The army prided itself on a high standard of marksmanship, and the two young Irishmen would have become thoroughly familiar with their Lee-Enfields through long hours of arms drills on the parade ground, followed by a minimum of sixty hours of classroom sessions culminating with several practice sessions on the nearby rifle ranges, just south of Borden Camp.

Relatively little time, especially when compared to training later in the Second World War, was devoted to actual combat training, such as camouflage training or ‘fire and manoeuvre’ tactics. This was probably a legacy of the crude tactics employed by the British infantry throughout the First World War. The commander of an infantry division in France in 1939, Major-General (later Field-Marshal) Bernard Montgomery observed that the British Army had not carried out any realistic large-scale manoeuvres for several years.

Contact between officers and men was discouraged in the British Army of 1939. Rather than learning skills that might be useful in a possible war, young officers were required to learn a bewildering array of officers’ mess etiquette and social rules. A new officer being posted to a new regiment, for example, was required to introduce himself to all married officers by presenting an engraved card, printed cards being unacceptable. Young officers joining the Royal Irish Fusiliers were expected to learn Irish dancing.

Brady and Stringer would also have received training in the ‘Bren’ light machine gun. This superb weapon’s designation referred to its place of design (Brno, in Czechoslovakia) and its place of manufacture (Enfield, in England). Firing the same .303-inch calibre round as the Lee-Enfield rifle, the Bren was to prove a reliable and popular weapon throughout the Second World War. On 15 March 1939, as the regiment was preparing to celebrate the feast of the patron saint of Ireland, the Brno weapons plants fell into the hands of the Nazis as Germany annexed the remaining part of Czechoslovakia that had not been granted it under the Munich agreement the previous year. Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister, announced a rapid expansion of the British Army without consulting his defence chiefs.

In that month the British Army re-introduced conscription. Brady and Stringer would have trained with one of the last all-volunteer recruit platoons before the outbreak of war.

As Brady and Stringer’s training continued, the strict regime may have been alleviated by access to a NAAFI (Navy Army Air Force Institute) which stocked such items as Brasso, polish and soap at cheap prices, and where a recruit might enjoy tea and buns in the evening. In March 1939 it is likely that the pair may have been allowed to participate to some degree in the Royal Irish Fusiliers’ two most sacred days, the enthusiastically celebrated Barossa Day (5 March) and of course St Patrick’s Day on 17 March.

Following completion of their basic training in May 1939, Brady and Stringer transferred to Guernsey where the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers had been based since November 1938. Guernsey, the second largest of the Channel Islands, was situated thirty miles off the Normandy coast and was regarded as a particularly pleasant posting. The Channel Islands were the holiday destination of choice for Britons in the 1930s, in much the same way that package holidays in Spain and Greece are today. The climate of Guernsey is semi-tropical, and was no doubt a welcome contrast to Hampshire in winter. In 1939, Guernsey was dotted with glasshouses for the cultivation of tomatoes, which, along with tourism, represented the main source of income for the island’s 40,000 inhabitants.

Guernsey, although a British dependency, maintained its own system of government. The office of Bailiff combined the duties of prime minister and chief justice, and since 1935 had been held by the elderly Victor Carey. The king of England’s representative on the island was the Lieutenant Governor, who sat to the Bailiff’s right when the States of Deliberation (Guernsey’s parliament) were in session, and was usually a position held by a serving major-general of the British Army.