Sir, - I refer to Kevin Myers's intemperate effusion castigating my long-standing contributions to The Irish Times (An Irishman's Diary, November 13th). I hope not to respond with corresponding choler. His chameleon scenarios are elusive targets and he is a slippery polemicist of Sumo formidability.
The position as patently presented is that Irishmen who enlisted in the British Forces during the Emergency choose the better part. The corollary is obvious. A similar appreciation of the Defence Forces is conspicuous by its absence. Neutrality, confused with pacifism by protagonists like Patricia McKenna, has to be defended by force of arms if necessary.
The columnist does concede a "greater truth": that Irishmen so enlisted could have been involved on "Bloody Sunday"-like operations to suppress Indian independence movements. A greater truth still is that they could have been involved in cross-Border operations killing fellow Irishmen. Codeword "Hunt" is all it would have taken for the already formed-up British Forces to roll across the Border (I have copies of relevant Operation Orders to substantiate). It took rapport and soldier-like talk between two fine generals - Ulsterman McKenna and Cork-born Franklyn, GOC Northern Ireland - to restrain the Churchillian "come - to - close - quarters" merchants.
Perhaps Mr Myers has not rubbished Tom Barry, his comrades and all they stood for. Maybe it is wrong to imagine that he steadfastly declines to give the War of Independence its proper, hard-won name. Maybe he does recognise the Defence Forces' Black-and-Tan medal and ribbon and the 1916 ones. You could have fooled me, though.
He does, however, make one good point: that it was possible to be benevolently neutral and anti-Nazi at the same time. Thank God for "Irish Solutions". De Valera interned would-be Nazi collaborators. He had some of them shot. His visit to Hempel offering condolences on the death of Hitler was a pedantic, algebraic embarrassing aberration: "the Casabianca of the Protocol".
In view of his own discernible advancing middle age, Mr Myers's ageist remarks about "pensionable years" are a tad unworthy. Age would rule out entry for himself to certain pubs in Camden Street: "too old"! - Yours, etc.,
J.P. Duggan, Cedarmount Road, Mount Merrion, Co Dublin.