Emmanuel Destenay. Shadows From the Trenches: Veterans of the Great War and the Irish Revolution (1918–1923).

Abstract

Early in Shadows from the Trenches: Veterans of the Great War and the Irish Revolution (1918–1923), Emmanuel Destenay refers to recent shifts in Irish historiography, prompted by Great War centenaries, that have “permitted the Irish to come to terms with the historical oblivion” into which the Great War had sunk (xv). In truth, these shifts had begun much earlier than that, most relevantly here with Jane Leonard’s examination of Great War veterans published in the 1990s. But even if it is no longer the case, the Irish contribution to the British war effort was certainly underserved by historians for some time. Shadows from the Trenches thus builds on work by Leonard and, more recently, Paul Taylor, Michael Robinson, and others in examining the fate of Irish ex-servicemen on their return home. These men found an Ireland dramatically different to the one they had left, and in the midst of its own conflicts—most obviously, a war of independence (1919–1921) against British rule followed by a bitter civil war (1922–1923). Destenay follows their trajectories as they navigated their way through these new wars and into a new political order. Importantly, the book reminds us that this was not a homogenous cohort of men, and they held a range of loyalties and allegiances that drew them in an array of directions. They fought among the guerrillas of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) but also joined the forces of the British Crown tasked with suppressing IRA insurgency—as so-called “Black and Tans” in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), in the often brutal Auxiliary Division of the RIC, and in the Ulster Special Constabulary in what became Northern Ireland. Others avoided taking up arms again but were dragged into the conflict as victims of intimidation and violence. Inevitably, Irish ex-servicemen found themselves shooting at and killing their former comrades.