The Irish - A History of War . .

Young idealists, like the poet Charlie Donnelly, the socialist Frank Ryan or Communist party member Michael O' Riordan, went to Spain to join the International Brigade and to defend the Republic against fascism. But men like Dick Walsh from Carlow and Denis Reynolds from Cavan joined General Eoin O' Duffy's Irish Brigade to fight godless communism and to preserve the Roman Catholic religion in Spain.

The James Connolly Column ( about 150 strong ) of the Internation Brigade became part of the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion ( which included many Irish Americans ) They arrived separately, in Spain in January 1937. Training for the group of socialists communists and ex-IRA men was rudimentary and without weapons. Many, including the young Irishmen Charles Donnelly, had not even handled a rifle before going into battle for the first time. Donnelly who was far younger than he claimed to be ( twenty-two as opposed to twenty-six ) was a talented poet. The one verse he wrote in his brief and ultimately tragic period in Spain was suitably dark and brutal, a reflection of Ireland's own tragic history. While he was there on behalf of a cause he had no illusions about the deadly nature of war. Called ' Heroic Heart ' its closing lines read:

Battering the roads, armoured columns
Break walls of stone or bone without receipt.
Jawbones find new ways with meat, loins
Raking the blind, new ways with women.

Donnelly had reached Spain by travelling incognito and often illegally. The 520 members of General Eoin O' Duffy's Irish Brigade had faced their own difficulties in making their way to Spain to assist the nationalist forces of the fascist leader General Franco. O' Duffy had sought volunteers for his private crusade but the enterprise had been banned by the de Valera government. Denis Reynolds from Cavan, later a Fine Gael county councillor, was one of almost 400 of O' Duffy's men who were about to be prevented from departing for Spain from Galway; only the intervention of the Roman Catholic Bishop Dr Browne, enabled them to depart. Reynolds, a sharp featured and ascetic looking young man, was a dedicated anti-communist and saw the Spanish Republican government as communist in everything but name. Dick Walsh from Carlow saw Franco's campaign as striking a blow for the Roman Catholic Church. He travelled to Spain on the same boat as Reynolds the Urundi.

The Battle of Jarama, which began on the 6th February 1937, drew in the Irish who sided with the Republican government and those ( far greater in number ) who supported Franco's nationalists, but the two units did not actually meet during the course of the month long battle. Some Irish members of the International Brigade, entered the contest in it early stages. A future icon for Irish socialists, Frank Ryan - later to die in Germany after two years in a fascist prison - was wounded in the first week. The James Connolly Column was sent into action on the 23rd February. On the 27th February the fascists went on the offensive. Charlie Donnelly was killed in an olive grove by a burst of machine gun fire. Shortly before his death he uttered the last phase attributed to him when he picked up a bunch of olives, squeezed them and observed : ' Even the olives are bleeding. ' This epitaph is, unjustly better known than his poetry. His body lay on the battlefield for four days before it could be recovered.

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, believed 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 troops in 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 born in mind before we get carried away with Celtic romanticism.

Most of the defectors were not seduced soley 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 Mayo man, 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. Nonetheless, 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, promised wages one third higher than anything on offer in the British Army. The guarantee, from an artful

Wexford conman John Devereux was suspicious 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 whichhad brought them; the rest bided their time. Their ranks were reduced disease - dysentery, typhus and yellow fever. Their uniforms and footwear began to disintergrate. 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 rear guard 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 to 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 for his military hospitals. Arthur Sandes rose to the rank of Brigadier General in Bolivar's army, while Corkman Daniel Florence O' Leary became his personal aid-de-camp. Daniel O' Connell who saw himself as being on par with the South American ' Liberator ' sent his 15 year old son Morgan to fight with Bolivar.