IN the broad green acres of Phoenix Park across the road from Aras an Uachtarain, one can see strange undulations and surface scars beneath the grass. Soon those undulations will vanish as the summer returns, and one might even believe that the scars do not exist and whatever happened to the earth is now gone, past, extinct.
But it is not; not in Ireland. Our past haunts our present, as even now the scarred topsoil of Phoenix Park bears the memory of what was done to it. Societies, like the earth of Phoenix Park, carry the mark of past events, in all sorts of unsuspected and unexpected ways, just as the Army of this republic carries the imprint of its past experiences and influences in ways which are hard to define, but are there in habit and attitude, loyalty and tradition.
Raising an Army
Part of those habits and attitudes, loyalties and traditions, recognisably dates from that day in 1922 when Gen Emmet Dalton invited veterans of the Great War to report to the Curragh for the purposes of raising and training an army of the field for the new Free State.
Consciously or otherwise, those men carried into their training and their attitude much of what they had already learned, as did many of the "new" recruits who were in truth also veterans of the Great War. The drill might have been different, but the military attitude and culture largely was the same. A guerrilla army became an orthodox army - the first of many such transformations in the world this century - and one of the greatest institutions in Irish life came into existence.
We know why the full parentage of the Army could not in subsequent years be admitted openly. Newly emergent states understandably do not admit continuing traditions from their colonial masters; that the Army might have inherited honourable, decent traditions from the British precedent might have been implicitly understood, but could not be explicitly celebrated. The barracks, after all were named after another, more conspiratorial republican tradition Collins, Brugha, McKee. To place a largely old wine in such new bottles might be one thing; to label it as such were another.
Privately soldiers might admit to this truth but publicly they stayed silent, especially since soldiers in our tradition are not political. They do what they are told. Politicians command, and they obey. Thus we had the disgraceful and shoddy affair of 10 years ago or so, when the Army was ordered not to commemorate their fellow Irishmen killed in two world wars, which it had been doing for years.
Historical Neglect
Yet the truth does not go away. Part of the military culture which shaped the attitudes of the soldiers of the Free State, later of this republic, during the second World War and through the illustrious service in the UN, was imbibed in the three Irish divisions raised during the 1914-18 war. Grass might grow over these origins and they might be obscured; but when that grass is cut back, the ancient lineaments are there to be seen.
The lineaments were there to be seen last Friday, when the Army lent the hospitality of Cathal Brugha Barracks to the launch of Schull Books' reprint of Neill's Blue Caps, the history of the first battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, from its inception in the 17th century through to its disbandment in 1922.
Here run various imperial streams indeed. What was once a regiment in the Indian establishment went through numerous metamorphoses to produce the regiment which was by 1916 to become the quintessence of nationalist Ireland in lawful, conventional arms. Over 4,000 men died in the uniforms of the Dublin Fusiliers - over 1,400 of them in the First Battalion. The arithmetic is simple; some - 40,000 men in all served in the Dublin Fusiliers. 14,000 of them in the first battalion alone.
We all know of the historical neglect which befell those men, yet they remained active in Irish life, achieving purposes and ends which are not always obvious. Yet they are there in Irish life today, rather like those odd markings which in the Phoenix Park the spring grasses will soon be covering.
That epoch of historical neglect is over. It is a measure of the opening of hearts and minds which has occurred in recent years that the Army could so openly and generously host the republication of volumes which - in part tell the story of the First Dublin Fusiliers.
Much of that story touches - upon us enduringly today: many of the survivors from the bloody landings in Gallipoli 81 years ago in April 1915 through to the virtual destruction of the battalion in the Kaiser offensive 78 years ago today went on to serve in the Free State Army in 1922, guided and trained by ex Dublin Fusiliers such as Emmet Dalton and Jack Hunt.
A Prond Evening
The Army was well represented for the return of Neill's Blue Caps. Brig Gen Bill Dwyer, GOC, Eastern Command, had given permission for the launch, and was there to enjoy the splendid army catering which the poor old Dubs of 80 years ago would have been astonished to learn was army food.
Brig Gen Colm Mangan, OC of the Military College, the Curragh, accepted a set of the volumes for the college library, with Mess President Comdt Peter Burns genially presiding. It was a proud evening and a credit to the Army and to Schull Books.
Copies of the volumes are available at £185 from Scbull Books in Cork; such publications have proved sound investments for the investor, but this publication also serves to commemorate those thousands of Dubliners who were training in the zigzag front line trenches, with communications saps, which they so laboriously dug in the Phoenix Park 80 years ago this spring.
These trenches were remarkably realistic - they followed the bizarre contours of the trenches which awaited the trainee soldiers in France. The trenches thinly remain; and so too, can it finally be said, does the memory of the thousands of Irishmen who learned their soldiering there.