The Irish Defence Forces since 1922

An extract from 'In the Beginning'

The genesis of Irish Defence Forces uniform was that of the Irish Volunteers of 1913–22, formed to counter the Ulster Volunteers in the North, which were strongly opposed to Home Rule for all Ireland. This was promised by the then British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, but with the outbreak of the Great War it was put on hold. Members of the Irish Volunteers were encouraged to join the British forces (as were the Ulster Volunteers), and many thousands did, fighting bravely on the Western Front and elsewhere. Others, dedicated to an independent Irish Republic above all other considerations, declared this in arms during the Easter Rising of 1916. After the Rising the Volunteers remained in being, gaining strength and status from the general election of 1918 in which the Republicans gained an overwhelming majority. Their representatives stood on a platform of abstention from the British House of Commons, and campaigned for the establishment of an independent Irish parliament. The Volunteers, an autonomous body with its own Executive, gave allegiance to these representatives, who formed their own parliament – Dail Eireann – in 1919, when a guerrilla war against the British forces in Ireland slowly gathered momentum.

Two years of bitter struggle followed. The Irish forces involved were guerrillas or irregulars, flexibly organized, not usually uniformed or serving full time. Their organization was subject to differing factors of terrain and population; the pattern of operations was based on small groups of volunteers, not all of the same quality or degree of activity. The Flying Columns and Active Service Units were nevertheless structured into nominal brigades and divisions; and there were 16 of the latter by July 1921, when a truce was agreed. At this stage, the strength of the Irish Republican Army or the Volunteers was 114,652 officers and men. Statistical information is hard to come by, but on the Irish side 752 had been killed and 866 wounded; these include civilian casualties, but it is probable that some 400 of them were combatants.

Many were deeply dissatisfied with the terms of the treaty which was negotiated following the truce; civil war was a possibility, as was social revolution, and perhaps even re-occupation by the British. The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921, creating a separate province of Ulster still governed from London, and the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. This latter body then started to recruit a National Army on a regular basis from the ranks of the Irish Republican Army, and to take over the various barracks from the departing British forces. This new army, established by Michael Collins, was planned as a conventional land force supported by a small air arm, with a total strength of 4,000. The first appearance of the new force was the Dublin Guards, a composite unit of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade, who wore entirely new uniforms and rank markings. Elsewhere troops wore Volunteer uniforms or, in many cases, civilian dress with military equipment.

The National Army

In February 1922 the Department of Defence under the new Provisional Government began to recruit volunteers for the regular army. General Collins picked men from the Active Service Unit of the IRA Dublin Bde and his own special ‘Squad’ as the nucleus. Properly uniformed and equipped, this unit marched past Collins at Dublin City Hall en route to take over barracks vacated by the British. About 3,500 men had enlisted by April 1922, but this figure was to multiply to 55,000 as a consequence of the impending civil war.

When the Dail approved the Treaty on 7 January 1922 the majority was only 64 to 57 votes, and dissension continued to brew. Many members of the IRA which Collins had led were dissatisfied with the terms of the Treaty, believing that they should fight on for a fully independent all-Ireland republic. In this atmosphere the new National Army was recruited from a revolutionary military organization, which had no sooner emerged from a successful guerrilla campaign with an external enemy than it was engaged in a bitter civil war. Its organization was not based on any military theory but rather on the basic principle of survival.Initially the National Army loosely followed the order-of-battle of the War of Independence, but in October 1922 instructions to regularize enlistment, pay and organization were issued. A centralized system of reporting to GHQ was initiated, enabling the General Staff to plan their tactical operations in a way not previously possible – before this, local Army commanders had acted very much on their own initiative.

A dark green uniform was designed, based on that of the Irish Volunteers and, apart from the colour and insignia, resembling contemporary British Army service dress. The peaked cap bore a bronze Army crest against a cloth diamond. The long-cut tunic had a stand collar, five large front buttons, two box-pleated patch breast pockets, two large side pockets, and shoulder straps sewn into the sleeve heads. Breeches or trousers were in the same colour and material as the tunic, the latter having turn-ups, and boots and leggings were brown. The officers’ version was made up in a dark ‘whipcord’ material and the other ranks’ in serge. These uniforms were to outlast the Civil War and would remain standard for 18 years, though with considerable styling and changes of insignia. The original unwired cap with its soft crown was pulled and pushed into some very unsightly shapes; the use of motoring goggles contributed to this, and personnel would parade in fairly well-cut tunics and breeches but with the effect marred by caps of all conceivable shapes.

Rank distinctions reflected the general styles of the Irish Volunteers’ 1915 instructions, including cloth diamonds backing the cap badge (see Table A herewith). Later, officers’ ranks and insignia would be changed, but this original uniform was that worn by the nascent, and basically infantry Army in the Civil War. Supporting corps were developed in an ad hoc manner.

The Civil War, 1922–23

Each of the two sides into which the IRA split maintained that they were the ‘true IRA’. Depending on their allegiances, the public at large labelled them the ‘Free State Army’ on the one hand and ‘Republicans’ or ‘Irregulars’ on the other. On 14 April 1922 the latter set up their headquarters in the Four Courts complex on the north bank of the Liffey in Dublin. Negotiations continued, but on 15 June supporters of the Treaty won a general election. The Irregulars disdained an ultimatum to surrender; and at 4am on the morning of 28 June the guns of the Army opened up from the south bank of the river.

The Civil War turned out to be an untidy one, without a clear-cut beginning or a definite end; in truth, neither side had prepared for a war. The artillery piece that was to breach the Four Courts stronghold was employed simply by looking down the barrel and opening fire. After hand-to-hand fighting the Irregular garrison threw their arms into the fires which had broken out, and surrendered. After the fall of the Four Courts the Army, using a single gun, armoured cars, mounted infantry and foot soldiers, captured the other Irregular strongholds in Dublin over eight days of confused street fighting.On the day the war erupted, the anti-Treaty forces concentrated at Blessington in Co Wicklow were preparing to move on Dublin when the Army launched a pre-emptive strike. Employing one of the first Bristol F2B Fighters from the new Irish Air Service, and artillery and armoured cars, the Army encircled the town; but the Irregulars escaped from this noose and dispersed south-eastwards into the hills.

The battle for Limerick city that followed was one of the war’s major turning points. Victory there on 20 July opened the way for an Army sweep into the heartlands of what the Irregulars called ‘The Munster Republic’. Retreating, the Irregulars fought well-conducted rearguard actions, making good use of covering machine gun fire while blowing bridges and felling trees as road blocks. However, on 2 August a landing at Fenit, Co Kerry by the Dublin Guards, supported by armoured cars and artillery, threatened the flank of this ‘Republic’. High explosive and shrapnel shoots over open sights at ranges up to 2,500 yards proved effective, and both flanks of the Irregulars’ line were turned. Meanwhile, the Irregulars planned for a second time to isolate Dublin by severing lines of communication; this came to nothing when their battle plans were captured. The first phase of the war, in which the Irregulars attempted to maintain their hold upon towns and districts, was coming to an end.

Whenever they retreated from their positions they used fire and explosives to hamper their advancing opponents: railway bridges were blown, the permanent way was lifted, stations destroyed, and roads cratered. There were still confrontations where considerable strength was employed, but the struggle had now degenerated into bitter guerrilla warfare, following the pattern of the earlier war against the British. Imaginative coastal landings led to the capture of Cork city on 11 August. The Army employed its 18-pdr guns and armoured cars with increasing effect; but despite its success in conventional operations, it suffered a grievous blow on 22 August when Gen Michael Collins was killed in an ambush in his native Co Cork. The nation and the Army mourned the passing, at the age of 31, of the outstanding personality of the generation that founded the modern Irish state. One thousand Irregular prisoners spontaneously knelt down and prayed for the lost leader.

A Command Training Depot was set up to give a hard three-week course in patrol duties, rounding-up operations, and the denial of the canals to Irregular boats. There were still ambushes on motorized troops, and both sides were responsible for outrages. To prevent the country from slipping into total anarchy, the government gave the Army increased power, including that of establishing military courts that could (and did) enforce the death sentence for those taken in arms. Shortly after the death of the Irregulars’ chief-of-staff Liam Lynch in April 1923, his successor Frank Aiken ordered an end to offensive operations.

The anti-Treaty political leader Eamon de Valera published peace proposals, but the government would not budge from the principle that all political questions must be determined by the majority vote of the people’s elected representatives (a principle de Valera had ignored when a majority of the Dail had voted in favour of the Treaty). De Valera issued a general order to cease fire and dump all arms on 24 May 1923. On that same day the last significant military action took place, when National Army troops captured the entire HQ staff of an anti-Treaty division, together with a huge store of arms, explosives and ammunition. The total killed on both sides came to approximately 4,000 – several times the losses inflicted by the British Army in 1919–21; and though an uneasy peace reigned, the deep wounds of the Civil War would not be healed for many decades.The National Army had never yet known what it was like to be a regular peacetime army. On 3 August 1923 the Defence Forces (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 finally put it on a statutory footing.