The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
‘We fought for Christ against Moscow devil’
HISTORIAN RYLE DWYER LOOKS AT THE EXPERIENCES OF A SMALL GROUP OF TRALEE MEN WHO JOINED UP WITH EOIN O’DUFFY TO FIGHT AGAINST INSURGENTS AT THE HEIGHT OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
EAMON A. Horan, an independent member of Tralee Urban District Council, was one of the first to respond to General Eoin O’Duffy’s emotional appeal for volunteers to help the insurgents during the Spanish civil war in August 1936.
He said he would like to lead a contingent from Kerry.
Russian communists, backing the Spanish government, had been killing of thousands of nuns and priests in Spain, according to Horan. He had served in the IRA during the War of Independence and rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Free State Army during the Civil War.
Commandant Diarmuid O’Sullivan of Killarney was among a contingent of ten that left Dublin for Liverpool en route to Spain on November 13, 1936. Horan and six others from Tralee were in the next contingent of 84 men who sailed from Dublin before the end of the month.
Although their motives were ridiculed, Horan —a married man with four young children — said they were accepting “the challenge that has been thrown down to Christianity by the ignoble menace, Communism.”
“I challenge anyone to prove that we are actuated by any motive other than to fight in the army of Christ Our King against the enemies of His kingdom,” he added.
A further 42 Kerrymen were among 693 men who followed from Galway on December 13th.
The Irish Brigade moved to the front near Madrid, where Dan Chute of Tralee was the first Kerry fatality on February 19, 1937. “My boy is an only son who went to fight for Christ,’’ his widowed mother told The Kerryman. “Although there is a load on my heart, I offer him to Christ for Whom he fought.”
Three days later Robert Hilliard of Killarney was killed fighting on the goernment’s side. He was one of those celebrated by Christy Moore in his song Viva la Quinta Brigada.
Hilliard, who represented Ireland in boxing at the 1924 Olympics, had been ordained a Church of Ireland minister, but became disillusioned, quit the church, and joined the Communist party in London. This led him into the International Brigade. Three more Tralee men were killed, or mortally wounded, at the Madrid front on March 13. They were John Sweeney, 21, and Bernard Horan, 23, both of Mitchell’s Crescent, and Thomas Foley of Mary Street, who died of his wounds the following week.
Over 150 were hospitalised suffering from wounds, shell-shock, rheumatic fever, and pulmonary diseases. There was considerable uneasiness among the Irish volunteers.
The food was atrocious; they had no change of clothes and no proper sanitation.
The trenches were crawling with lice, with the result that the men were in more danger from disease than enemy fire.
In June, at the end of the six months for which they had enlisted, 654 voted to go home immediately, and only 9 wished to stay. The Spanish were clearly tired of O’Duffy, anyway, and they were not alone.
When the Irish Brigade arrived back in Dublin on June 22, 1937, they marched to Mansion House in two groups. The Kerry contingent insisted on marching separately in order to emphasise their disgust with O’Duffy.
“We have returned from a campaign that should have added one of the most glorious chapters to the pages of Irish history, but instead of returning with honour and renown we returned humiliated and disgraced,” Horan declared.
He openly blamed O’Duffy for using the campaign for political ends.
“The men of Kerry, in answer to my call to fight for Christ and Christianity against the devilish agents of Moscow, did so on the strict understanding that the Irish Brigade was to be non-political,” Horan explained.
“As far as myself and the men of Kerry are concerned, we have broken with General O’Duffy because we considered that we would be disloyal to our martyred dead if we allowed their martyrdom to be used for political motives.”
INSTEAD OF RETURNING WITH HONOUR AND RENOWN WE RETURNED HUMILIATED AND DISGRACED