Irish Soldiers who deserted during WWII to join the British Army & Starvation order

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Thanks Bannasidhe, Fascinating posts, lucky to have that experience.

One of my uncles was in the RN, served on HMS Ajax and later HMS Achilles. He took part in the battle of the River Plate. I never was able to get him to open up on his experiences, other than a few shoregoing experiences in places like Montevideo or Mombasa. His brother was a commissioned officer in the Irish army. I had another ‘uncle’ (married to my aunt) in the RAF, bomber pilot, very active war – more than 10k flying hours, decorated, shot down several times and only once did he mention the War and that was to tell me one story. He said he did it to explain why he never wanted to discuss it again. I understood. In the 1980’s I was involved with a German company, the owner of which had fought at Monte Casino, as had a friend of mine who was with the British Army’s transport corps, fought all the way up from North Africa. I asked the latter would he like to meet the German at a dinner and he refused outright. Although he was quite a mild man, the hatred was there , primarily because the Germans had almost no ammunition left, were totally surrounded/outnumbered but kept fighting.

Has your uncle come across a German book named ‘Uber die Englische Humanitat'? It is an anti-British propaganda book from c1940, supposedly was going to be published in English ‘en masse’ prior to the German invasion of Ireland. The text is mainly in German, but it includes facsimile pages from books in English. It covers diverse atrocities, Indian mutiny, Boer war concentration camps, and includes the address by the 1921 Dail to the US Congress on ‘The Struggle of the Irish People’ which has some fascinating appendices on the destruction of wealth, capital loss in population, etc

I'll mention it to him when I see him next week. He is fluent in German (and Arabic) so will be able to read it in the original - if he hasn't already.

Normally he doesn't do into the specifics of his experiences ('What was the Battle for Italy like?' 'Sweaty.') but he opened up during this discussion and spoke of both 'wonderful' moments - realising he was Carthage which had fascinated him as a schoolboy- and the truly horrific - being sent in as a medic (apparently the M.O. was squeamish so tended to 'disappear' when things got 'icky and sticky') to remove the remains of a bomber aircrew who had been killed/fatally injured by some sort of percussive implosion. Most of the crew were decapitated and he found himself - at 23 years of age - unsuccessfully trying to find some way of picking up the heads of men he know in a dignified manner rather then by their hair. This particular aircrew had being deprived of air support by a man he termed a 'deserter'. Apparently, this 'deserter' had been a radio operator and had issued a false order to the fighter planes to stand down before going AWOL. I asked if he thought the man was a traitor and he said no, that he believed the man was sick of death and thought that if there were no fighter planes then the bombers would return to base. Grand-Uncle participated in this 'deserters' autopsy a month later after he had been executed.

He was also part of a mad scheme to 'invade' Turkey dressed in civilian clothes... luckily that one never got passed the issuing of civilian clothes stage as he reckoned they would have been shot as spies within feet of crossing into Turkey - not least because the clothes they were issued with were demob suits from WWI with trousers that went to the nipples, flat caps for the non-officers and top hats for officers (apparently the officers stole the flat caps....) and prison issue braces complete with 'prison arrows' printed on to them...

My G.I. friend would say only that he had driven the first truck into a concentration camp and that he could still see it when he closed his eyes. He wouldn't divulge any other information. As he was Polish-American, and spoke Polish fluently, I suspect he would have been stationed in Poland...but given the military mind - who knows...

CDfm wrote: »

That is their right.

Who is covered under the pardon, presumably it is not limited to those who enlisted in the allied forces during WWII.

Does anyone know ?

This is the interesting part- why do you presume it would not be limited?

CDfm wrote: »

Is it an en masse pardon like this

What I mean is en masse irrespective of the reason for desertion and no matter what reason, organisation or army (Allies or Axis) were joined. ?

I understand what you mean by this, would someone who left to fight for Hitler be pardoned. I would think not given that the reasons for the pardon would be partly based upon the circumstances that were apparent at the time and were particular to fighting on the Allied side (stopping facism, ending the Holocaust, liberating death camps, etc.).

I know its conjecture as nothing has been announced regarding this but why do you say "presumably it is not limited to those who enlisted in the allied forces"?

It seems that this has been decided upon.

Minister for Defence Alan Shatter has told the Dáil that the Government apologises for the manner in which the deserters were treated by the State after the war.

He said the Government recognises the value and importance of their military contribution to the Allied victory.

Up to 4,500 soldiers fled from the Defence Forces during the Second World War and did not return to their Irish units.

Many of them joined the British Army.

After the war, the De Valera Government published a list of those who deserted.

Anyone who was mentioned in this book was banned from getting a public service job at any level. http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0612/govt-pardon-for-former-soldiers.html

infactaniceone wrote: »

These men were heroes , they put themselves and their lives on the frontline while this "KILLINASKULLY" country had its finger up its ass. They fought because they were trained to fight and felt they were needed in battle. Hoo-ah they deserve more than a pardon, do u honestly think that putting yourself in front of German and Italian bullets was the easy way out. Shame on you all and your bigoted Irish stupidness. Without people like this, people like u would not be here. Remember 5000 made the decision to fight and they were blacklisted when they came home. Shame on Ireland and its usual country bull**** and thank you Grandad for fighting for me to live like i am today, today your war was won.

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Infracted -- Uncivil posts/trolling are not welcome in this forum. Please desist from such in the future or I will be forced to ban you.