Contrasting events as we remembered WWI and 1916 Rising

2016 will forever be associated with Kerry’s extraordinary effort to commemorate the men and women of 1916. In towns and villages across the county, committees were formed with the purpose of honouring those from the parish who took part in, or were ready to take part had the Rising spread outside Dublin.

What is remarkable about the 1916 commemorations is that they galvanised the hearts and minds of people who sought to revive family and community participation in the Rising, and to connect communities with the seismic events of one-hundred years ago.

Regardless of one’s own personal viewpoint on the political intrigues of 1916, historians will reflect favourably on 2016 as it created a swell of public interest among those who may otherwise have only had a passing interest in the history of their locality. The 2016 commemorations did much to strengthen this and if people are furnished today with facts about history they never knew existed, then history can be said to have done its job.

But while the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising produced no shortage of people willing to come forward and tell stories about combatants in the fight for Irish freedom, a story less told is that of the hundreds of Kerry men fighting on the Continent and Middle East during the same period. This project is still in its early stages and while a faint light has managed to reveal more about these men, signs of a shift in attitudes towards WWI are gradually taking shape.

Given that Kerry soldiers in the Great War will always form part of what’s known as the counter narrative to Irish nationalism; there’s now acknowledgment that the best hope of resurrecting the forgotten stories of these men lies with the families and relatives of today. Staunchly republican and nationalist families have shelved stories of family involvement in WWI for decades and yet some of the same families - unlike the politically compromised generations of the past – are today unearthing the forgotten lives lost to WWI. Family is key to remembering Kerry’s WWI soldiers as such a pathway is more likely to produce information that is both personal and removed from the kind of prejudicial, political atmosphere that made their stories silent in the first place. In short, it’s time Kerry’s WWI soldiers were researched and remembered free of retrospective political judgement.

(Above) Members of the Defence Forces raising the Irish Flag, at the special 2016 commemoration at the Cable Station Valentia Island. The ceremony marked the role brothers Tim and Eugene Ring and their cousin Rosalie Rice played in spreading news of...

(Above) Members of the Rice family gathered at April’s commemoration at the Cable Station in Valentia. The event honoured Eugene and Tim Ringof Valentia Island and Rosalie Rice from Kenmare, who secretly and successfully sent a coded telegram from...

Photos by Valerie O’Sullivan (Left) John Lyne, Diarmaid Ring and Adrian Mackey – who are all former employees of Valentia Cable Station – at the commemoration in April.

(Right) Former Minister Jimmy Deenihan inspects the monument in Valentia with Tim Ring’s son Diarmuid and Eugene Ring’s son Austin.