no British regiments in Ireland anno 1916

Fuinseog

In the article linked below Kevin Myers maintains that there were no British regiments in Ireland at the time of the rising. I find this hard to believe.



http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-executions-of-1916-still-form-toxic-staple-of-brainwashing-that-passes-for-education-in-schools-2977580.html

jonniebgood1

Fuinseog wrote: »

In the article linked below Kevin Myers maintains that there were no British regiments in Ireland at the time of the rising. I find this hard to believe.



http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-executions-of-1916-still-form-toxic-staple-of-brainwashing-that-passes-for-education-in-schools-2977580.html

It is quite possible that battalions of regiments were serving thus making any regiment based in Ireland incomplete at the beginning of the rising. The Irishmedals site suggests that there were reserve battalions also based in Ireland. Maybe this is what he meant by this? By 1916 a complete regiment in the British army would have swelled to many many thousand, regiments just created extra battalions to cater for the additional numbers.

Below is a list of British regiments who fought during the 1916 Rising. The list is a result of research into the period and as such may not be complete.
The Curragh Camp Kildare
Because WW1 was in progress in 1916 the majority of troops stationed in Ireland were either reserve or extra reserve troops. (R) = Reserve, (ER) = Extra Reserve.

3rd Cavalry Brigade (R)
5th Battalion (Prince of Wales) The Leinster Regiment (ER)
5th Battalion The Royal Dublin Fusiliers (ER)
8th Cavalry Brigade (R) made up of the 16th/17th Lancers, King Edward’s Horse and Dorset/Oxfordshire Yeomanry.
9th Cavalry Regiment (R) made up of 3rd/7th Hussars and 2nd/3rd County of London Yeomanry.
25th Infantry Brigade (R) (Not a full Brigade)
10 Cavalry Regiment (R) made up of 4th/8th Hussars, Lancashire Hussars, Duke of Lancaster’s/Westmoreland/Cumberland Yeomanry.

Dublin Garrison

Royal Barracks (now Collins Barracks). 10th Service Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers
Richmond Barracks 3rd Reserve Battalion Royal Irish Regiment.
Marlborough Barracks, Phoenix Park, 6th Reserve Cavalry Regiment ex-3rd Reserve Cavalry Brigade made up of 5th/12th Lancers, City of London/1st County of London Yeomanry.
Portobello Barracks 3rd Reserve battalion Royal Irish Rifles

Athlone

5TH Reserve Artillery Brigade only 4 artillery pieces were operational.

Belfast

15th Reserve Infantry Brigade comprising 1000 men, all ranks.

Templemore

4th (ER) Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers ex-25th Reserve Infantry Brigade.

The following is a list of troops, which were sent from various locations around England.
59th 2nd North Midland Division Commanded by Major General Sandbach

B Squadron The North Irish Horse
59th 2/1st North Midland Divisional Cyclist Company
C Squadron 2/1st Northumberland Hussars
59th Divisional Signal Company

176th Infantry Brigade 2nd Lincoln and Leicester Commanded Brigadier by C. G. Blackader.

2/4th Battalion The Lincolnshire Regiment
2/5th Battalion The Lincolnshire Regiment
2/4th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment
2/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment

177th Infantry Brigade 2nd Staffordshire Commanded by Brigadier L.R. Carleton

2/5th Battalion The South Staffordshire Regiment
2/6th Battalion The South Staffordshire Regiment
2/5th Battalion The North Staffordshire Regiment
2/6th Battalion The North Staffordshire Regiment

178th Infantry Brigade 2nd Nottingham and Derby under the command of Coronal E.W.S.K. Maconchy

2/5th Battalion The Sherwood Foresters
2/6th Battalion The Sherwood Foresters
2/7th Battalion The Sherwood Foresters The Robin Hoods
2/8th Battalion The Sherwood Foresters

The force also included various Artillery, Engineers and Ancillary units including

295th Brigade Royal Field Artillery
296th Brigade Royal Field Artillery
297th Brigade Royal Field Artillery
298th Brigade Royal Field Artillery
59th Divisional Ammunition Column
467th Field Company Royal Engineers
469th Field Company Royal Engineers
470th Field Company Royal Engineers
2/1st Field Ambulance Company
2/2nd Field Ambulance Company
2/3rd Field Ambulance Company
59th Division Train Army Service Corps
59th Mobile Veterinary Section
59th North Midland Sanitary Section

Other units who offered their service were

Trinity Collage OTC (Officer Training Corps)
A detachment from the Army School of Musketry
Home Defence Force Georgius Rex
From http://irishmedals.org/gpage5.html

dubhthach

Myers is infamous for his ranting. In general regiments in modern British army didn't fight as complete wholes. Different battalions were deployed to different locations. If his logic based on list above not been "complete regiments" then you could argue that in most parts of the war that no "British regiments" fought at all. :rolleyes:

Still it doesn't get beside the point that even if was a case that fighting was against "Irish regiments" they were still regiments in the British army. These units were regarded just as British as Scots or Welsh regiments given the membership of the UK at the time.

LordSutch

It is quite conceiveable that those British regiments stationed here during the outbreak of the 1916 Rising were all Irish regiments (within the British Army)! with possibly not an English accent within earshot?

Oasis_Dublin

"Nationalists still do not know that Home Rule had been legally established in 1914. They do not know that there were no British regiments in Ireland in 1916, and that the 1916 Rising was directed solely at Irishmen, who for the most part didn't join the army to defend the UK, but to fight for Belgium and Home Rule."

Even by our Kev's standards, this is some pretty disingenuous nonsense.

johnny_doyle

if he means that there was no complete regiment in Ireland, he is correct.... but by the same token, that would mean that there were no British regiments in England, Scotland, Wales, France, India, Africa, Egypt etc... and that Mr Myers doesn't understand the regimental system used by the British.

if he means there were no elements of a "British" regiment in Ireland then he is clearly wrong. Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Royal Munster Fusiliers etc were all British regiments and, at that time, all Irish were British.

One of the first British officers to die in the Rising was well to do Liverpudlian (born in India) 2nd Lt Guy Vickery Pinfield of the 8th (Kings Royal Irish) Hussars, a British cavalry regiment that went on to serve in WW2 and the Korean War and now the called the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars. The mortally wounded Pinfield was given first aid by Francis Sheehy-Skeffington.

Fuinseog

Myers tends to ramble and rant in his writing but I always thought he new his stuff regarding the British army in the first world war. Indeed, some people have even called him a historian. it would appear however that his hypothesis was poorly thought out in this case.

slowburner

Ban Kevin Myers for trolling

Oasis_Dublin

It's more the "Nationalists still do not know that Home Rule had been legally established in 1914." They did know, as did Republicans. However, a chance was seen to achieve more.

"They do not know that there were no British regiments in Ireland in 1916." This statement is ambiguous at best, disproven at worst.

"The 1916 Rising was directed solely at Irishmen, who for the most part didn't join the army to defend the UK, but to fight for Belgium and Home Rule." This is built on a huge assumption (did some join simply to get a job, without having strong ideological feelings either way?). It is also patent Myers nonsense to claim that fighting for independence against the British Army was a war against Irishmen. It was a war against the army of an imperial power. Whether the soldiers fought against happened to be Irish, Scottish, Welsh, or Indian for that matter, he is obviously, and I wager intentionally, missing the point.

Snickers Man

Oasis_Dublin wrote: »

"Nationalists still do not know that Home Rule had been legally established in 1914. They do not know that there were no British regiments in Ireland in 1916, and that the 1916 Rising was directed solely at Irishmen, who for the most part didn't join the army to defend the UK, but to fight for Belgium and Home Rule."

If there's one thing that really gets my bloody goat it's being told what I know and don't know by some cretin I don't know. And who doesn't know me.

How the bloody hell does Kevin Myers know what I do and do not know?

He doesn't, does he?

Confused?

johnny_doyle

at the declaration of war on the 4th August 1914, Canada, Australia, NZ, West Indies, India etc were automatically also at war, with no real say in the matter despite some having their own parliaments (I am being simplistic there). The only country that debated it's automatic involvement was South Africa who eventually declared war on Germany and it's allies on 9th September. This prompted it's Chief of Staff to resign and sparked a Boer rebellion that lasted till December 1914 (the Maritz Rebellion, in which the Boer rebels allied themselves with the local German forces).

If Ireland had Home Rule before August 1914, it too would have been automatically at war, possibly re-inforcing that it would not have been an independent country and there may still have been a Rising and an anti-conscription campaign of some sort.

Would there have been an Irish Army, an Irish Expeditionary Force, Irish Regiments in the same way that the Canadians operated in WW1 (and then WW2)? Hard to know. One thing is for sure, the British governments never learnt from Ireland and went on to make the same mistakes in India, Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya, Palestine, Egypt and then Ireland again.

Snickers Man

...and another thing.

I went to school within spitting distance of Mount St Bridge so I have known since I was knee high to a grass hopper that the British English regiment that suffered heavy casualties there was the Sherwood Foresters.

Kevin Myers is one of those soft middle aged chumps who regret that they were too cowardly in their youth actually to join an army and get some military experience. So he gets more belligerent as he gets older. But he's such a pudgy old poof that he can only fight straw men.

Wouldn't be fair on him otherwise.

johnny_doyle

the Sherwood Foresters were rushed over on the RMS Ulster from their quarters around Luton/Dunstable and weren't based in Dublin at the start of the Rising. They suffered at the South Dublin Union too.

Fuinseog

johnny_doyle wrote: »

the Sherwood Foresters were rushed over on the RMS Ulster from their quarters around Luton/Dunstable and weren't based in Dublin at the start of the Rising. They suffered at the South Dublin Union too.

apparently they thought they were in France and were thrilled when the natives of Kingstown greeted them with tea and buns. They received quite the shock at Mountstreet Bridge.

Snickers Man

johnny_doyle wrote: »

the Sherwood Foresters were rushed over on the RMS Ulster from their quarters around Luton/Dunstable and weren't based in Dublin at the start of the Rising. They suffered at the South Dublin Union too.

From Mr Myers' article as quoted in the OP

"Nationalists still do not know .......that there were no British regiments in Ireland in 1916, and that the 1916 Rising was directed solely at Irishmen"


He doesn't make any distinction between the start of the rising and its conclusion. He implies that there were no British soldiers here at all in 1916. That is obvious nonsense.

johnny_doyle

indeed it is nonsense that Mr Myers spouts. I just wanted to make the point that the Sherwoods were rushed over rather than being on hand when the Rising started.

The Leicestershire Regiment battalions listed earlier from Brendan Lee's IrishMedals site came over at the same time as the Sherwood Foresters and after a stint in Dublin, proceeded to Kerry and then onto Fermoy and were in Ireland from April 1916 to January 1917. When they departed they left behind 2 dead in the cemetery in Fermoy from when the river there burst it's banks in November 1916.

mikemac1

johnny_doyle wrote: »

indeed it is nonsense that Mr Myers spouts. I just wanted to make the point that the Sherwoods were rushed over rather than being on hand when the Rising started.

I've read a few times the Sherwoods were so badly prepared that some of the common soldiers didn't even realise they were in Ireland, they though they were in France

How is that even possible? Sure they are raw soldiers but they are not stupid
If you move from your depot to Wales to the Irish Sea where do you think you are going?

http://theirishwar.com/2011/03/1916-rising-dublin-sherwood-foresters/

They were volunteers, recruited from the towns and villages of Nottinghamshire. From Newark and Bingham from Huthwaite and Hucknall, Robin Hood county, the English folk hero from which the regiment took it’s name. They had responded to Kitchener’s posters, to fight in the trenches of Belgium and France, but had been caught instead in a smaller cause and had been pulled out of basic training at Watford to be thrown into street fighting against the Irish Rebels in Dublin

They were so raw. Most had less than three months of military service. They were unfamiliar with their weapons and many of them had not yet had live firing practice. Young men with guns and little training are as much of a danger to themselves as they are to anyone else. On Dublin’s dockside their officers issued live ammunition but ensured that as the men charged their weapons they were pointing their rifles safely out to sea – just in case of accidents amongst such unskilled soldiers.

The officers, all volunteers from English public schools, breakfasted at St. George’s harbourside Yacht club while the men opened tins of bully beef and biscuits. Some of the men thought they had landed in France. They were excited, keen, anxious and apprehensive.

As for the officers? :rolleyes: They were the ones who deserved to be shot.
Dublin has many canal bridges and you might call me an armchair general but anyone could wonder did they think about flanking it instead of ordering their men into a crossfire

The British infantry had been trained to advance towards enemy lines on the sound of a whistle. It was the only tactic they knew. Now, every twenty minutes, on the sound of a British Army issue whistle, the Robin Hoods again charged their enemy. They charged No. 25 Northumberland Road. They charged the school at the corner of the bridge. They charged the bridge. They charged Clanwilliam House. They charged and charged, and were slaughtered. They were refused permission to flank the rebels with an attack from the right. Only frontal attacks were to be allowed. The attacks were to be pressed home “at all costs”. Frontal charges onto the guns of the rebels.

johnny_doyle

the division the Sherwood's belong called themselves the Lost Division - they'd lost hope of ever getting to France. It's possible that because they wanted to go to France that they decided that their time had finally come and they were being deployed to where they wanted to go. In a similar fashion, the Irish volunteers tended to believe the rumours that "all Ireland had risen" and that "Germans had landed and were marching on Dublin". After Dublin, the Sherwoods were posted to the Curragh and remained there till January 1917.

Alternatively, it may have been a security measure to ensure that nothing leaked to the U-Boats that prowled the area. U-68 had been sunk off the coast of Ireland in March 1916, U-19 had just dropped Casement off in Kerry, UB-13 was sunk off the English coast on the 24th April 1916, UC-5 was sunk off the English coast on the 27th April (HMS Firedrake being involved in this - Firedrake was involved in the Curragh Mutiny). The Helga was stationed in Ireland on anti-submarine duties and there were anti-submarine balloon detachments stationed at Malahide, Wexford and the Welsh coast. The British were aware that some of the German fleet had set sail on the 24th April, bombarding Lowestoft and Yarmouth and appear to have felt that this was co-ordinated with the Irish rebellion. From 31st March 1916, German Zeppelins had been bombing the east coast of England and Scotland; not sure if these were part of a plan to support the Rising or part of a general campaign to bomb English and Scottish cities.



There were so many tactical errors on both sides but the attack on Mount St seems to have been one of the worst.

Peregrinus

Snickers Man wrote: »

From Mr Myers' article as quoted in the OP

"Nationalists still do not know .......that there were no British regiments in Ireland in 1916, and that the 1916 Rising was directed solely at Irishmen"

He doesn't make any distinction between the start of the rising and its conclusion. He implies that there were no British soldiers here at all in 1916. That is obvious nonsense.

I think from the context that by "British regiments" he must mean "regiments headquartered in Britain (as opposed to regiments headquartered in Ireland)"

The claim that none of the units stationed in Ireland on Easter Monday 1916 were part of regiments headquartered in Britain is plausible. The claim that Nationalists "still do not know" this is, at best, unevidenced. The implied claim that this fact somehow undermines the Nationalist positions is, to put it no higher, very odd.