Hundreds set to march for Martin Doyle commemoration

HERO SOLDIER TO BE REMEMBERED IN COLOUR PARTY PARADE IN ROSS

UP TO 200 people from organisations across the country will march in a colour party procession through New Ross this Sunday, February 2.

The British Ambassador’s attaché to Ireland is due to attend and Irish and UK army council officials will also be present for the event.

Doyle who was born in New Ross on October 25, 1894, was awarded the Victory Cross and the Military Medal for fighting for Britain in the First World War. He joined the IRA during the War of Independence and played his part in the struggle.

Participants will assemble in Maher’s Yard, New Ross, (on South Street) at 1 p.m. on Sunday where car parking is available. Led by the FCA New Ross Pipe Band the parade will march from Maher’s Yard to the Tholsel Square via South Street. An ecumenical service will be held and wreaths and poppies will be laid at The Tholsel where a reception will be held and speeches made.

The parade will halt briefly on South Street at the Commemorative Plaque to 1916 hero Michael O’Hanrahan at the foot of Brennan’s Lane.

While it is not as unusual for Irishmen to have served in both the British army and the Old IRA only one could boast both a Victoria Cross and a War of Independence medal, New Ross man Martin Doyle.

Doyle lied about his age to join the British army on St Stephen’s Day, 1909, when he was barely 15. His father Larry is said to have sold a cow to buy him out but Martin re-enlisted.

Doyle was a company sergeant-major in the Royal Munster Fusiliers when his bravery earned him the Military Medal on March 24, 1918.

He successfully led a bayonet charge on a German machine-gun post in a derelict barn in no-man’s-land.

The official announcement concluded: ‘ Throughout the whole of these operations, Doyle set the very highest example to all ranks by his courage and total disregard of danger.’

When the awarding of his VC was confirmed, he wrote to his parents: ‘I am all in a whirl of joy.’

Doyle was welcomed home to New Ross in March 1919 by a large crowd.

This newspaper reported: ‘ The meeting between the young hero and his aged parents was very touching: going straight to his mother and father he embraced them. He was escorted to his home in Mary Street amidst a scene of great enthusiasm. As they approached the Royal Hotel a trumpeter standing on the steps sounded a stirring bugle call which evoked ringing cheers. There was a profusion of decorations in the town along with scrolls bearing words of welcome to the New Ross hero.’

Doyle went to Buckingham Palace to receive his VC from the king but left the army that July.

In 1920 he joined the IRA and became an intelligence officer for the mid- Clare brigade in Ennis in the War of Independence. During the Civil War he served with the Free State Army in Waterford, Kilkenny and south Tipperary and was wounded in the left arm in Limerick in early 1923.

He served in the Irish Army until 1937. His Army record described him as ‘an excellent NCO, a very good Vickers machine gun and rifle instructor, and someone who could not be replaced without serious inconvenience to the service’. He spent a further year and a half in the Army Reserve. Having spent nine years and five months in the British army, two years in the Old IRA and 15 years and five months in the regular Irish Army, he hung up his uniform on January 25, 1939. Now married with three daughters, he had joined Guinness as a security guard but on November 20, 1940, he died of polio in Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, aged only 46.

Even though Doyle had fought against the British and spent most of his career in the Irish Army, at his death he chose to be buried in his British first World War uniform and his gravestone, erected by former comrades in Grangegorman military cemetery, Dublin, records only his British military rank and honours. Doyle is one of 24 Irish holders of the Victoria Cross profiled in Victoria Cross.