The O'Duffy brigade

The barb most commonly aimed at O'Duffy's battalion is that they 'never fired a shot in anger and came back with more men than they left with'. Both disparaging accusations are demonstrably untrue. The Irish 'nationalists' did suffer casualties (eleven dead) and did take part in military actions. Unfortunately, the four deaths among the battalion at Jarama were as a result of 'friendly fire'-a nationalist unit from the Canary Islands mistook them for republicans. Denis Reynolds saw Captain Tim Hyde, an old IRA man from Midleton in Cork, hit once in the arm. Then another bullet hit him; 'I saw him lifting up with the force of it, and that killed him.' Undoubtedly the Irishmen fighting with the International Brigade saw far more action than their antagonistic compatriots. Fifty-nine members of the James Connolly Column died fighting for the Republic. Carlowman Dick Walsh, who fought with O'Duffy, believes today that he was on the wrong side. 'Many Irish went out to fight on the republican side and a great number died. They were the real idealists.' The O'Duffy brigade could be seen in a direct line of descent from another religiously motivated Irish unit, this time fighting in Mexico. The Mexican-American War (1846-48) gave rise to a major dilemma for the 2,000 Irish troops in the army of General Zachary Taylor. They were fighting against Roman Catholic Mexicans for a Protestant dominated army in a conflict which the Mexicans were determined to dub a 'religious' war. The Irish were encouraged by the Mexicans to desert, and a large number did. These were formed into a battalion of the Mexican army known as the San Patricios. Two things must be borne in mind before we are carried away by Celtic romanticism. Most of the defectors were not seduced solely by religious zeal - promises of Mexican land and money were also a powerful attraction. In addition, the San Patricios, despite their name and their distinctive 'shamrock' flag, were not exclusively Irish. However, they were led by one John Reilly (or Riley), a sergeant in the US Fifth Infantry. His second-in command was a Mayoman, Patrick Dalton. The San Patricios, who never numbered more than 200 and were really two companies rather than a battalion, came to grief at the Battle of Churubusco. Seventy of them were taken prisoner, fifty were hanged and twenty flogged. For some extraordinary reason Reilly was one of those who got away with a flogging. An especially agonising death awaited thirty of the San Patricios. They were placed on mule carts with ropes around their necks and made to watch the storming by the Americans of Chapultepec, the last Mexican bastion before the capital city. When the Stars and Stripes was raised over the citadel, the mules were released and the thirty men dangled.

A group of soldiers more clearly motivated by religious fervour was the 1,400 Irishmen who went to the defence of the Papal States in 1860 against the army of the northern Italian state of Piedmont. Their number included Myles Keogh from Carlow and John Joseph Coppinger from Cork, who would later distinguish themselves in the US Civil War. The Irish were treated wretchedly, not allowed to serve together in a single unit, underpaid and badly trained. Nonethelffs, they are acknowledged to have fought particularly bravely for a cause unpopular in an Italy on the verge of unification.

The 1,000 Irishmen who sailed to South America to fight for the cause of independence from Spain, led by Simon Bolivar, had no particularly lofty motives in mind. They were simple mercenaries, promlsed wages one third higher than anything on offer in the British army. The guarantee, from an artful Wexford conman John Devereux, was spurious and most of the members of the Irish Legion reacted like the mercenaries they were when they got to Venezuela. Angered by conditions, forty officers returned to Ireland on the ships which had brought them; the rest bided their time. Their ranks were reduced by disease - dysentery, typhus and yellow fever. Their uniforms and footwear began to disintegrate. By the time the Irish Legion went into action only 450 of the original group of 1,000 were left; the rest had died, were chronically ill or had deserted.

For many their luck did not change when the fighting began; things got even worse. After an initial success as an amphibious raiding force they moved on the Venezuelan town of Maracaibo. The advance guard of the legion was wiped out by Guajira Indians and the rearguard burned to death in their huts. Only the Irish Lancers, under Colonel Francis Burdett O'Connor from Cork, fared well; that they did so was all the more astonishing - they did not boast a single horse between them. After a couple of barely mitigated disasters most of the legion demanded m be shipped back to Ireland; they mutinied and burned down the town of Riohaca. Three hundred of them were rounded up by the still loyal Lancers and dumped in Jamaica.

There was, however, a positive side to Irish aid for Bolivar. A Kerryman, Dr Thomas Foley, became inspector general of his military hospitals. Another 'Kingdom' expatriate, Arthur Sandes rose to the rank of brigadier general in Bolivar's army, while Corkman Daniel Florence O'Leary became his personal aide-de-camp. Daniel O'Connell, who saw himself as being on a par with the South American 'Liberator', sent his fifteen-year-old son Morgan to fight with Bolivar. O'Connell Junior saw little action; Bolivar made sure to keep him well out of trouble. After a year spent on the general's staff Morgan got bored and went home.

Amongst many of the forces, intermingled with feelings of idealism or the simple urge for financial gain, was the element of adventure. This often derived from a certain misplaced romanticism which evaporated with the first report of gunfire. But there were (and still are) undoubtedly many Irish soldiers who drifted from war to war largely because they liked soldiering. It is not a motivating force which most of us ordinary mortals can readily understand, but it does exist and will be encountered over and over again (in future articles).

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