The first military intervention of the United States in World War I. By Daire Brunicardi On 4 May 1917 a flotilla of unusual vessels appeared off the Daunt lightship at the approaches to Cork Harbour. These were destroyers of the United States Navy; with their low profile and four stubby funnels, they were quite different … Read more
LABOUR, ENLISTMENT AND DEMOBILISATION IN IRELAND’S FIRST WORLD WAR RAILWAYS By Peter Rigney In the early weeks of the First World War, British railway companies were taken under government control. The companies obtained a commitment that no railwayman would be accepted into the forces without the permission of his employer. Irish companies were not thought … Read more
A FIRST WORLD WAR SOLDIER’S READING LIST By Laurence Fenton On 14 September 1914, James O’Donnell, an eighteen-year-old soldier from Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary, was injured while digging a trench near the small French town of Verneuil during the mayhem of the Battle of the Aisne. A German shell had landed close by, shattering the leg … Read more
WHAT WAS THE IMPACT ON THE IRISH SOLDIER? By Lar Joye The Battle of the Somme has been described as the blackest period in the history of the British Army, and 100 years later its consequences are still in dispute.The year 1916 was to be a key one for the British Army, the first whentheir … Read more
WHY WAS THE BATTLE FOUGHT? By Jennifer Wellington By late 1915, the war in the west had been effectively at stalemate for months. Repeated attempts to rupture the lines of trenches, barbed wire, concrete posts and dugouts had made little real difference, despite the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of lives. The Allies and the … Read more