On the return of the couple from their evening out, I was acutely tempted to ask the husband about the story of the knife, but at that age I was not old enough to ask directly, and anyway it was not appropriate under the circumstances. I resolved to get to the bottom of the matter, but unfortunately the family left the neighbourhood shortly thereafter and moved to Dublin, and to this day my quest was unfulfilled. Ever mindful of this, I decided that if I was ever again faced with a similar situation of encountering a Second World War veteran, I would not let the occasion of such meetings go by without at least enquiring into their wartime experiences. And so it was, and although such encounters were infrequent, they were very informative. Since then I have read, researched and reflected on the topic at length, specifically on the D-Day battlefield, and I have visited its beaches and areas of interest around the Normandy shoreline. Conscious of there being no overall associated ‘Irish narrative’ as such, but knowing of individual involvements, I have always felt that only part was known of a larger, more complete and comprehensive participation of Irish forces, and so over time set about building up a story of the Irish contribution to the Normandy invasion.
In revealing this story of the ‘D-Day Irish’, I wish to acknowledge the advice and assistance of the staff of the Reference Section of the Imperial War Museum, London; Professor Jane Maxwell, Trinity College Dublin; Brenda Malone, National Museum of Ireland; Richard Bradfield, Boole Library, University College Cork; Professor Geoff Roberts, School of History, University College Cork; Doctor Steven O’Connor, Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po, Paris; Stephen Leach, Local History Department, Cork City Library; Sergeant Wayne Fitzgerald, Editor, An Cosantóir (the Irish Defence Forces magazine); Lieutenant-Colonel Fred O’Donovan, for information on his father and uncle; and Phillip Ness, for details about his father’s D-Day participation.
I would also like to thank Kevin Myers for writing the Foreword to the book and otherwise for being in front of most everyone else in his consistent efforts over the decades to seek recognition for the involvement of Irish men and women in both World Wars, and to Richard Doherty, whose much-needed books on the ‘Irish’ involvement in the Second World War amply and authoritatively illustrate this fact. Both have been generous with their time, knowledge and wisdom, and indeed have displayed great courtesy and patience with me, thank you sincerely.
To Paul O’Flynn, for his immensely practical help with many matters associated with getting the manuscript and illustrations ready. To Deirdre Maxwell, for transforming my handwritten manuscript into a professionally typed, presentable version. Thereafter to Conor Graham, Publisher and Managing Director of Merrion Press, his Managing Editor, Fiona Dunne, Marketing Manager Maeve Convery, and editor Keith Devereux for seeing the book’s production from concept through process to becoming a reality, and for their overall faith in the project.
FOREWORD
When 22-year-old Private Edward Delaney O’Sullivan of the 22nd Independent (Pathfinder) Company of the Parachute Regiment touched down outside the little Normandy village of Touffreville around 4 am, 6 June 1944, he was the human vanguard of one of the greatest military advances in world history. Up until he landed, almost the entire Eurasian landmass, from the North Cape of Norway to the South China Sea and from Cadiz in the Eastern Atlantic to the Sea of Okhots in the Western Pacific, with the exception of the Alpine ambiguities of Switzerland and the Nazi-affable, ore-suppling Nordic neutrality of Sweden, was under some kind of totalitarian rule.
For a brief while, the Irish-born O’Sullivan was the sole armed embodiment of freedom on the European mainland. His was not the individual liberty of the gallant resistance fighters, whose freedom was individual, existential and moral, but that of an entire culture, arriving under arms to displace the genocidal murderousness of the Third Reich. We cannot know what this brave Irishman felt about being the harbinger of freedom for France and for Europe, for he was soon to die in a brief and mutually fatal firefight with a German soldier. If ever a man deserved to be honoured in his native land, it is he.
In the month of June seventy-five years ago, at least 301 Irishmen were killed with British and Canadian forces in the war against the Third Reich – ten per day – even though most of the Irish regiments of foot, the Irish Guards, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Royal Irish Fusiliers, were not seriously in action during that time. Sixty-eight Irishmen were killed with the Royal Ulster Rifles, the only regiment in the British Army to supply two battalions on D-Day. The rest of the 230 or so Irish dead were killed in a variety of other regiments, in which many had already distinguished themselves.
One in thirty of all warrant officers in the British Army to die during the war came from independent Ireland. In addition, over one hundred Irishmen were killed serving with the Parachute Regiment. 100 and thirty of the Special Air Service were killed in deep penetration raids behind enemy lines; 10 per cent of them were Irish. Indeed, an Irish soldier was nearly six times more likely to join the SAS than were his British equivalents. There was a price for this kind of daring. At least eleven Irishmen captured while serving with Special Forces were murdered by the Nazis. Such soldiers are mentioned here because, although outside the purview of this book, they serve to remind the reader of the huge contribution Irish volunteers made to the Allied cause – and never more so than by the men and the women mentioned in the pages that follow.
Colonel Dan Harvey is uniquely qualified to remind us of the Irish of D-Day, for he is a much-published author and a former officer in the Defence Forces. Furthermore, Normandy 1944 is the perfect place in which to take a snapshot of Irish participation in the war against the Third Reich. Because the War Office was reluctant to admit too many soldiers from independent Ireland into one regiment – even ones like the Irish Guards or the Inniskilling Fusiliers – which might then become more loyal to Dublin than London, Irish volunteers were dispersed throughout the British Army, Air Force and Navy. It is only when all those arms came together, as they did in June 1944, that we get a real picture of Irish involvement in a war that finally lifted Nazi tyranny from the peoples of Europe.
But let it be remembered, as Colonel Harvey reminds us here, that it was a vital weather report from ‘neutral’ Ireland, authorised by de Valera’s government, which made possible the Normandy landings. The history of the world was changed by that absolutely vital piece of meteorological intelligence, confirming this unassailable truth: D-Day is in part a truly Irish story, which this book tells in all its thrilling and tragic detail.
Kevin Myers, May 2019
PREFACE
There had been other land invasions during the Second World War (North Africa, Sicily and Salerno among them) but D-Day 6 June 1944 was different. The Normandy landings were staggering in scope, and the history of warfare had never known a comparable amphibious invasion for its breath of conception, grandeur of scale and mastery of execution. Operation Overlord, the opening of the ‘second front’ against the German Army, was a bid to restore liberty to Nazi-occupied western Europe and laid the foundations of the Allied victory. This book is dedicated to the ‘D-Day Irish’, both native-born and of Irish descent, whose involvement on D-Day and in the Normandy Campaign must be acknowledged and not forgotten, and the values for which they fought must never be lost.
The reality there was the chaos. It was not that you were terrified, it was that you did not know where the Germans were; you did not know where your comrades were. You could not walk very fast, weighed down with heavy equipment, and because of the bad weather the reinforcements that were meant to come at 0900 hours that morning, about six hours after we jumped, did not arrive until 3pm, at which stage the main battles were over and you were either, dead, wounded or exhausted.
Lieutenant Leonard Wrigley (Waterford),
British 6th Airborne Division
As I parachuted down, the noise became overwhelming – machine guns,