Ireland and World War I - Demobilisation and Post War Experience

Demobilisation and Post War Experience

The War ended with the Armistice on 11 November; a war that had the active participation of an estimated 210,000 Irish men and women in the British forces and more in other allied armies.

When the Irish Divisions raised for the war were demobilised, roughly 100,000 war veterans returned to Ireland. This indicates that in the region of 70-80,000 decided to live elsewhere. Several reasons may explain this, one being high unemployment in Ireland and another being the rise of militant nationalism in the country, which in many cases was hostile to those who had served in the British forces.

With the outbreak of the guerrilla conflict, the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), in which the Irish Republican Army attacked the police and British military, ex-servicemen were in a difficult situation. Some like Tom Barry and Emmet Dalton joined the IRA. Some others joined paramilitary police forces, the Black and Tans and Auxiliary Division, charged with putting down the guerrillas. In County Clare, for example, 15 locals joined the Auxiliaries, all of whom were war veterans, while 46 joined the Black and Tans, of whom 25 had served in the British Army Similarly in Northern Ireland, many ex-servicemen joined the Ulster Special Constabulary - an armed Auxiliary police force raised for counter-insurgency purposes. Over half of this (mostly Protestant and Unionist) force's 32,000 recruits were veterans of the Great War.

The majority of ex-servicemen, who took no part in the conflict, were however in many cases subjected to intimidation by the IRA. Some were targeted by the IRA for allegedly giving information to British forces, and for example, a total of 29 ex-servicemen were shot dead in County Cork as suspected informers. In total out of around 200 civilians killed by the IRA as informers, 82 were ex-servicemen.

When most of Ireland left the United Kingdom on the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the five regular, full-time Irish regiments garrisoned in Ireland, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the Connaught Rangers, and the Royal Irish Regiment, that had suffered so severely in the Great War, were disbanded.

Many ex-servicemen re-enlisted in the emerging Free State's newly formed Army Defence Force on the pro-Treaty side at the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in June 1922. One, W.R.E. Murphy rose to second in command in the Free State Army in the civil war and after became Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police.