Tag Archives: Connaught Rangers

Useful (but often unreadable) regimental histories of WW1 for those tracing their ancestors’ involvement in the Great War

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Regimental War Diaries – available in The National Archive (formerly the PRO) in Kew, London.

 

General Works

Bartlett, Thomas and Jeffrey, Keith, A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Bredin, General A.E.C., A History of the Irish Soldier (Belfast, Century Books, 1987).

 

Divisional and Regimental histories

Cooper, Bryan, The Tenth (Irish) Division in Gallipoli (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 1993).

Cunliffe, Marcus, The Royal Irish Fusiliers, 1793-1968 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1970).

 

Denman, Terence, Ireland’s Unknown Soldiers: the 16th Irish Division in the Great War (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 1992).

 

Fox, Sir Frank, The Royal Inniskilling Rifles in the World War (London, Constable, 1928).

 

Geoghegan, General S.C.B. Royal Irish Regiment (Army and Navy Press, 2007)

Hanna, Henry, The Pals at Suvla Bay (Dublin, Ponsonby, 1916).

Harris, Henry, Irish Regiments in the First World War (Cork, Mercier Press, 1968).

 

Hogarty, Patrick, The Old Toughs: A Brief History of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion (Dublin, Private publication, 2001).

 

Jervis, Lt.Col. H.S., The 2nd Munsters in France, (Aldershot, Gale and Polden, 1922).

 

Kerr, J.Parnell, What the Irish Regiments Have Done (London, T.Fisher Unwin, 1916).

 

Kipling, Rudyard, The Irish Guards in the Great War, Vol.1. (London, Macmillan,1923).

 

McCance, Captain S., History of the Royal Munster Fusiliers: Volume II – from 1862-1922 (Aldershot, Gale and Polden,1927).

MacDonagh, Michael, The Irish at the Front (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1916).

MacDonagh, Michael, The Irish on the Somme, (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1917).

 

Rickard, Jesse Louisa, The Story of the Munsters at Etreux, Festubert, Rue du Bois and Hulluch (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1918).

 

Taylor, James. W., The 1st Royal Irish Rifles in the Great War (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2002).

Taylor, James. W., The 2nd Royal Irish Rifles in the Great War (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2005).

 

Walker, G.A.C., The Book of the 7th Service Battalion – The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers – from Tipperary to Ypres (Dublin, Brindley, 1920).

 

Whitton, Col.F.E., The History of the Prince of Wales Leinster Regiment, Vol.2 (Aldershot, Gale and Polden, 1926).

 

Wyly, Col. H.C., Crown and Company – The Historical Record of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, vol.2 1911-1922 (London, Humphreys, 1923)

Wylly, Col.H.C., Neill’s Blue Caps – Vol.3, 1914-1922 (Aldershot, Gale and Polden, 1923).

 

On this day – Connaught Rangers mutiny – execution of James Daly 2.11.1920

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Most people are familiar with the notorious Indian army rebellion of 1857 – less well known is a more recent mutiny, this one  by Irish soldiers, members of the Connaught Rangers regiment, in India in 1920.

It began in June of that year in Jullundur barracks in the Punjab when a number of Irish soldiers refused to perform their duties while Ireland was governed by martial law and subject to the ravages of the Black and Tans. The soldiers had been getting reports of atrocities being committed by this new RIC force, largely recruited, ironically, from demobilized Great War veterans like the many of the Rangers themselves.

The mutiny quickly spread to other Rangers’ units. The protest escalated when a number of soldiers, led by James Daly, whose brother William was also a Connaught Ranger, stormed the armoury in their barracks at Solan near the Tibetan border. The attempt to seize the weaponry failed, and two of the mutineers, Patrick Smyth from Drogheda and Peter Sears from Mayo, were killed.

In a highly symbolic gesture, on 28 June the union jack was lowered in the garrison at Jullundur and replaced by the tricolor. The rebellion, however, only lasted three days before the mutineers were outnumbered and overpowered. Eighty-eight of those who surrendered were court-martialled. Nineteen were sentenced to death, but only James Daly actually faced a firing squad. The lessons of the 1916 rising had been well learned. The 21 year old from Tyrellspass, Co.Westmeath was the last British solider to be executed for mutiny.

In 1922, after the creation of the Irish Free State the Connaught Rangers regiment, whose origins went back to 1793, was disbanded. The imprisoned mutineers were amnestied.  Many of the regiment’s former members went on to join the Free State Army.

In the 1936 the government of Eamon de Valera offered pensions to the surviving mutineers, thus equating them with soldiers of the War of Independence.

On the 50th anniversary of the mutiny, in 1970 the bodies of Daly, Smyth and Sears were repatriated to Ireland and a memorial to the mutineers was erected in Glasnevin cemetery. A stained glass window in Galway cathedral also commemorates the event.

Private James Daly, mutineer and Connaught Ranger, was executed by firing squad 93 years ago, on this day.

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