Essays from The Irish Sword: An Irish Sister of Mercy in the Crimean War

Book excerpt: The second volume of essays on Irish military history, is a facsimile version of the original articles from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The articles were first published in the Irish Sword, the journal of the Military History Society of Ireland. The Society was founded in 1949 with the aim of promoting the study of Irish military history, defined as the history of warfare in Ireland and of Irishmen in war. Each contribution to the second volume has been chosen because it is regarded as authoritative. The authors include scholars, professional soldiers, diplomats and a distinguished international journalist. The study of Irish units in the British army is represented by J A MacCauley's account of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. The first world war is the context of Terence Denman's analysis of the conflicts, military and political, that underlay the formation of the 10th (Irish) Division, Patrick MacCarthy examines the post-war history of the five Irish regiments that were selected for disbandment in 1922 in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. There are articles devoted to Ireland and the American civil war and General P J Hally gives an account of the military aspects of the 1916 Easter rising in Dublin. The civil war of 1922-3 is examined from a pro-treaty perspective by Michael Hopkinson and from the perspective of the treaty's opponents by Brian P Murphy. The divisions of the period resurface in Brian Hanley's study of the Volunteer Reserve of 1933 in relationship to the IRA. The organisation and capability of the army during the Second World War is considered by Donal O'Carroll, Eunan O'Halpin discusses aspects of military intelligence, Noel Dorr discusses the development of UN peacekeeping concepts over the last fifty years from an Irish perspective. Robert Fisk considers the role of the Irish in UNIFIL (United Nations interim force in Lebanon) between 1978 and 1995 and David Taylor relates his experience with UNIFIL as company commander in 1979-80 and as a battalion commander in 1992.