The Irish Republican VC
Company Sergeant MajorDoyle’s irefutable courage in the service of the Crown led to the award of a Victoria Cross, but his VC was later controversial when he became an active member of the Irish Republican Army.
Martin Doyle is unique among his gallant peers, as, within a year of the announcement of his VC, he was fighting against the country that had bestowed the award upon him. This was because Doyle, an Irishman, is the only recipient of Britain and the Commonwealth’s most prestigious award for bravery who is known to have been a member of the Irish Republican Army.
Doyle was born on 25 October 1894 in the village of Gusserane, close to New Ross. He was the son of Larry Doyle, a farmer, and his wife Bridget. Educated at local primary schools, Doyle eventually took the ‘King’s shilling’ and joined the Royal Irish Regiment on Boxing Day 1909. At the time, he had only recently turned 15 but lied that he was two years older.
After the outbreak of war, Doyle transferred to the Royal Munster Fusiliers before going to France prior to being promoted to sergeant in 1916. It was after transferring to the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster
Fusiliers, in early March 1918, that Doyle received recognition for bravery on the battlefield. On 24 March, he was awarded the Military Medal for his courage in capturing a barn at Hattenville held by a German gun crew. Doyle later described his part in the action to an Irish newspaper, The Free Press:
“We had to cross about 1,000 yards of open country, exposed to terrible shell and machine gun fire. The casualties were very heavy. Having reached the trench, we found the Germans were dug in not more than 40 yards ahead of us. A big barn stood in the ground between us, and a fight ensued to take possession of it. On the enemy side there was long grass, which afforded them cover, and a machine gun party succeeded in creeping out and capturing the ruin, and they set up a heavy fire. I called for volunteers and went over the top at the charge but when I reached the barn, I was alone. I bayoneted the two Germans I found there, seized the machine gun, and took possession of the barn.”
As the enemy pushed forwards later in March 1918, Doyle was captured during the German Spring Offensive. It is unclear how long he spent as a POW, but it was no more than days as he was freed again following an Allied counterattack.
Doyle was promoted to acting company sergeant major in August 1918, just days before his VC action in France.
His VC was announced in The London Gazette on 31 January 1919, more than two months after the Armistice. As a result of his decoration, Doyle was given
a hero’s welcome when he returned home in March 1919. He attended a Buckingham Place investiture on 8 May 1919 when he received both his MM and VC from King George V.
However, after being demobbed in July, the Ireland that Doyle returned to was very different to the one he had left at the start of the war. This is where, notwithstanding his gallant and hazardous feats in the service of Britain, Doyle’s path took a dramatic turn.
Doyle was certainly serving in the IRA when he attended a garden party for VC recipients at Buckingham Palace in June 1920. Within five months, he was back in London - this time representing the Royal Munster Fusiliers at a party to mark the unveiling of the Cenotaph in Whitehall. After the truce of July 1921, which later resulted in Irish independence but also with the partition of the country, there were further divisions in the new Republic.
Doyle sided firmly with Michael Collins, and, in February 1922, enlisted into the Irish Free State Army, serving during the 1922-1923 civil war. At one point, Doyle was wounded in his left arm, apparently trying to stop a bullet fired at him from close range. However, after the civil war, he continued his military career.
In November 1929, Doyle attended a dinner for VC recipients at the House of Lords, and in 1937 was awarded a Coronation Medal – a medal to commemorate the Crown he no longer recognised!
After the armed Easter Rising rebellion in Dublin and other areas in April 1916, a surge of Irish nationalism saw more and more men and women seeking to sever ties with Britain. As a result, some returning troops were looked on as traitors by their countrymen for fighting for what had become the ‘enemy’ during the Great War. Many of these former troops were quickly won over to Irish republicanism and, after the IRA was formed in 1919, Doyle was one of those who joined the ‘cause’, serving with the Mid Clare Brigade of the IRA in Ennis and working as an undercover agent for the Republicans when he would have preferred to have taken up arms against the British.
Because of his distinguished military career, Doyle had a role at the garrison in Ennis and the IRA were not slow to see his value as a spy. Years later, an IRA colleague stated Doyle had: “…advanced all sorts of arguments to prove why he should leave the home with his rifle and go to the hills. Rightly or wrongly I convinced him that he was more useful in the British barracks at the time”.
It is believed that Doyle provided information to the IRA on troop movements and smuggled out arms and ammunition. He retired from the Irish Free State Army in 1937 and for the final years of his life, Doyle worked for Guinness in Dublin but died of polio in November 1940, aged 46. He was posthumously decorated by the Irish Government with the War of Independence Medal.
While he saved British lives in the war, he was responsible for the deaths of others. Here was a man who decided to take up arms against Britain within a year of being decorated. Historians, however, might distinguish between the early IRA fighting for independence and the Provisional IRA, later willing to blow up innocent civilians in its quest to end British rule in Northern Ireland.