(FWIW, my maternal grandfather was a Scots-Irish Prod, and every St. Paddy's Day he'd trot out the old Orangman's toast. It went something like this:
"Here's to Good King William the Fourth
Who saved us from knaves and knavery,
rogues and roguery,
Popes and popery,
From brass buttons and wooden spoons."
(this, by the way, is where nine-year-old me thought "Grampa, WTF?" or at least would have had nine-year-old me known WTF WTF meant at the time...)And may he whosoever denies this toast,
Be crammed, slammed and jammed into the Great Gun of Athlone.
The gun fired into the Pope's belly
The Pope into the Devil's belly,
The Devil into Hell, and the key in an Orangeman's pocket.
And here's a fart for the Bishop of Cork."
And this was in 1966, mind.
There were reportedly 51 British battalions in Ireland in early 1921 (although only 300 or less in each battalion were operationally capable). That is according to Bartlett and Jeffrey's "A Military History of Ireland".
ReplyDeletehttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3697133-a-military-history-of-ireland
But apparently they kept their involvement quiet and have not published any detailed histories. Probably due to a number of reasons: A lack of participants wanting to write this history; i.e. a 'who cares' attitude as this was just a pimple on the arse compared to the killing fields of the Somme and Ypres, or the glory of Amiens and Megiddo? Or understrength units with no time to write history? Or hiding their participation in ad hoc 'murder gangs', prequels to the 'death squads' of the later 20th century; plus burying their units share of kidnappings and torture? And in the case of Crossbarry, a deliberate muzzling to cover the brasses arses.
Tom Barry throws in a list of the British forces in Cork at the end of his memoir. He says that in March 1921 the 6th Division included eleven infantry battalions (he gives about 800 for the nominal assigned strength, down fro 950 authorized), a short battalions of machinegunners and seven batteries of field artillery along with assorted ash-and-trash. Throw in about 500 Auxiliaries - and Barry points out that this was a full third of all the Auxiliary bodies in Ireland at the time - and roughly 1100 RIC and Tans. The total number he comes out with is about 12,000 assorted Imperial bodies.
DeleteAnd, as Barry points out, the IRA had to put against this a whopping total of 310...because that was the total rack-count of rifles available to the 3rd IRA "Brigade". Throw in some pistols and five Lewis guns and you'd get another couple of dozen, maybe.
Some of the IRA's success owes to the British unwillingness to go full Roman. But certainly much has to do with people like Tom Barry, who had been hardened by years of fighting. Or, as he himself puts it:
"...none of these (nonviolent means) would have induced the lords of the Conquest to undo their grip or even discuss our liberation. The only language they listened to or could understand was that of the rifle, the revolver, the bomb, or the crackling of the flames which cost them so dearly in blood and treasure."
What you gonna do with guys like that..?