In 1921 George Chester wrote a volume of poems dedicated to George Grant and John. It was a very public attempt to capture the ghastliness of war, but also to keep alive the memory of the two men he had loved. In one final poem entitled ‘The Watchers on Gallipoli’, he wrote the poignant line, ‘March away, my brothers, softly march away.’
The Duggan family paid a heavy price for the military service of George Grant and John, and the actions of the two men were not forgotten by their friends. Their names appear one after the other on an inscription on the Great War Memorial at Trinity College, where they both studied.They are also remembered at the Dublin High School and for their contribution to the scouting movement in Ireland.
Both men have their place in the history of sport at Trinity College. John’s rifle-shooting prowess is well documented, and he is remembered as a fine marksman.He was awarded a number of cups, including a Daily Express trophy and the Adjutant’s Cup from the Officer Training Corps. He also achieved the highest score amongst junior marksman in Leinster schools in 1912. His brother George Grant is still viewed at Trinity College as one of the best long-distance runners ever to emerge from student ranks.
Many families were torn apart during the Great War, but what makes the Duggan story particularly poignant is the fact that George Grant and John were in the same theatre of war and lost their lives on the same day.
They were brothers who played together as children and who died together as men.
3 Browning's Boys
‘AN HONOURABLE COMRADE AND DISTINGUISHED SPORTSMAN.’
– Tribute to Frank Browning, cricketer and rugby official
On Easter Monday 1916, Frank Browning and his men spent much of their time doing what they enjoyed best. For hours they were in the County Dublin countryside on military exercises, completely unaware of the dramatic events unfolding in the Irish capital and elsewhere. As they marched in uniform in the April air, surrounded by the trappings of Empire, a few miles away hundreds of armed rebels were swearing allegiance to a different flag and pledging to fight for Irish freedom.
Browning’s charges were not regular soldiers destined to fight in a foreign land, but older men, whose age and poor fitness meant that they were not needed for overseas military service. Instead, the volunteers spent their time on home soil, marching and drilling well away from the sound of enemy gunfire. The corps was an original ‘Dad’s Army’, and helped to recruit thousands of young men into the regular armed services. They wore a distinctive outfit, and their khaki uniforms displayed red armbands with the initials ‘G.R.’, which stood for ‘Georgius Rex’, the Latin for ‘King George’. However, the men became victims of Dublin humour and were better known as the ‘Gorgeous Wrecks’.
Aged forty-seven, Francis, or Frank as he was better known, was deemed too old for service at the front, but he played a vital role in personally recruiting hundreds of sportsmen into the services. Many young men who excelled on the sports field and later went into battle only did so because of Browning’s influence. His career and his life are essential to the story of Irish sportsmen in the Great War.
A barrister by profession, Frank Henry Browning was born in June 1868 in Kingstown, and came from an Anglo-Irish family whose roots were in County Limerick. At the outbreak of the Great War he established the Volunteer Corps, and many of his recruits would move into the Royal Dublin Fusiliers to form a ‘Pals Battalion’ made up of rugby players from across Ireland.
As Browning and his men made their way back into Dublin after their day on manoeuvres, word reached them that large parts of the city centre had been taken over by armed rebels.Around 1,600 men from the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizens Army had seized key buildings across Dublin. A proclamation for a new Irish Republic declaring that Ireland should be free from British rule was issued at the General Post Office, and shortly afterwards fighting broke out.
When the volunteer corps from the IRFU reached the inner city, not far from the familiar surroundings of Lansdowne Road, Browning’s men decided to split up. One half of the group went down Shelbourne Road towards the Beggar’s Bush barracks, whilst Browning took a section of his men down Northumberland Road.
It is not clear what Browning intended to do with his men, who had no ammunition, but it is abundantly clear that he had no indication of what was to follow. As he led his men down the road, four pairs of eyes were tracking their movements. They belonged to armed rebels Jim Grace and Michael Malone and teenagers Paddy Byrne and Michael Rowe, who had taken over a house on the corner of Haddington Road.
As Browning walked forward in front of his men, Grace and Malone tracked his movements and then opened fire. Seconds later a bullet pierced Browning’s head, and he slumped forward with blood pouring from the wound. His comrades scattered in all directions, with some taking shelter close to trees and walls and near the steps of houses. The bullets continued to fly, and when the shooting finally stopped a doctor arrived to help take the dying and wounded into nearby houses. Bleeding profusely, Frank Browning was initially taken to Beggar’s Bush barracks, and was then moved to a hospital in Baggot Street. There was little that nursing staff could do because his injuries were so severe, and two days later he died. He was one of five members of the volunteer corps to die that day, and thirteen of his comrades were also injured.
The Rising took everyone by surprise, particularly the men of the volunteer corps. They were puzzled, and also angry. Whilst they had volunteered to fight at home, they had not anticipated being fired at by their own countrymen on the streets of Dublin, and the attack on an unarmed group of soldiers did little to engender support for the rebels’ cause. When Padraig Pearse, one of the Rising’s leaders, heard of the shooting, he ordered that in future unarmed men should not be attacked.
The shooting of Frank Browning and his men appears to have been a mistake. Caught up in the drama and emotion of the time, his killers were clearly unaware that they were firing on a group of unarmed volunteers, and most likely mistook the men for regular British soldiers. In their attempt to secure Irish freedom, Jim Grace and Michael Malone had killed one of the most successful recruiters the British Army ever had in Ireland. They had also executed one of the most influential and well-respected sporting figures in Ireland.
Frank Browning loved the camaraderie of sport, and also had a great sense of duty, and within days of the war breaking out in August 1914 he became involved in encouraging rugby players to enlist. He sent circulars to all the Dublin rugby clubs calling on players to join up, he founded the volunteer corps and organised regular drilling practice on the pitch at Lansdowne Road.He was responsible for around 300 men, mainly from middle-class families, joining up, and he counted many of them as personal friends. They were well educated and articulate, and often came from the worlds of medicine, business and the law. Browning knew many of them through his connections with rugby and cricket, and he used that sporting bond to convince many to join up together with their teammates.
The official minute book stored at the archives of the Irish Rugby Football Union gives an insight into the work that Browning undertook to train men in the volunteer corps.
A memo dated 21 December 1914 shows he had secured a drill hall at Martin’s Riding School on Lower Pembroke Street in Dublin. Browning writes that ‘drills will be held there on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8 o’clock p.m, commencing (to-morrow) Tuesday, 22nd inst.’
Browning makes it clear that there will be little time to enjoy the Christmas festivities and the memo advises that ‘a field day will be held on St Stephen’s Day the 26th December’. He instructs his recruits to ‘fall in at the Tramway Terminus at Rathfarnham at 10-30 a.m. sharp.’ The men are also reminded to ‘bring their own rations’. The minute book gives details of how the volunteer corps was organised and it also records how the killing of Francis Browning in 1916 was viewed