Irish Volunteer Soldier 1913–23

This extract taken from the Introduction

Eventually arriving in O’Connell Street he found, not violent rebellion, but looters emptying several shops of their contents and the air reeking with the rancid smell of dead horses rotting where they had fallen, shot from under the Lancers as they had charged at the General Post Office (GPO) the day before.
When Walton eventually found his unit, C Company of the 2nd Battalion, they were holed up in Jacob’s biscuit factory on Wexford Street, surrounded not by the British Army but by an irate mob screaming abuse at them and demanding that they come out, go to France, and fight in a real war. Within hours this under-age volunteer would also find himself embroiled in a real war as General Lowe embarked on operations to restore British authority in the capital.

Fortunately for Walton, Lowe’s main thrust would focus on the GPO, where machine-guns, incendiary shells, 18-pounder artillery pieces, and the gunboat Helga were all employed in a concentration of fire designed to batter those inside into capitulation. It worked, and many volunteers died in the process. Deployed within the biscuit factory, Martin Walton was spared this savagery. He was destined to survive the rebellion and its aftermath having played his own unique part in the Irish Volunteer Movement.