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I was day tripping to Derry recently to watch Wexford play football. We were going through Down when my auld lad revealed his grandfather was interned in Ballykinlar Barracks in Down during the War of Independence.
Him and his pals ambushed, disarmed and beat the fuck out of two black and tans, left them on the roadside, stole their little jeep/truck thingy, drove it into the forest above Kilworth and let it accelerate over a ravine and wrote it off.
All of them were rounded up the next day by a lorry load of black and tans and were sent to Down. He was gone for a year and his family didn’t know whether he was dead or alive.
Up the Ra.
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He was above in Down, was he?.
That’s as far fetched as the one about you scoring all the points in the county final.
I believe you pal. Throw up the ould statement from the Bureau of Military history there and silence the doubters.
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My great grandfather was interned up there too.
Not sure what he did to get sent up there, can’t have been anything major.
Equally as far fetched indeed, pal.
Everyone in this thread is a hero and would have been there in 1916. 
Except you.
I wouldn’t have been there, pal. I would have saw it as a useless blood letting- I’d have been closer to the Fenian’s and later Collin’s way of thinking and would have bombed England to death and assassinated British soldiers, officials and their families in the streets.
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If I’d have been anywhere it would have beenl the Somme or Gallipoli, along with the vast majority of Irish combatants.
Stick on Michael Collins for some kids and they’ll all tell you how they’d have been there.
Why were they fighting off on those foreign shores, pal?
Fighting for their King
I expected better. I’d say 80% of them were fighting for a state pension and a few bob more like… Whatever about the loyal Dubs, the vast majority of men in provincial Ireland had no love for the monarchy and Britain and the memory of ownership of land was still strong… They had been reduced to peasants and the big mansions around them reminded them of that every day… Look at the recruiters in provincial Ireland also - Big employers more or less forcing their workers off to war telling them there would be a job waiting for them when they get back---- Through a series of propaganda, the promise of wages/pension and the push from local recruiters and to a lesser degree Redmond and home rule these men fought ---- they fought to put food in their starving kids mouths, no more, no less.
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And your point is?
The majority of this country were not in favour of a Republic.
Use the reply function please. The majority of people knew fuck all of republics, mate. King or president, it was all the fuck to them. What they wanted was a job, education, food, land…Your pictures above show nothing. A mixture of peasants out looking on to break up their mundane existence - the rest could be anyone. You forget that scores of the gentry were loyal protestants, with Limerick being the nearest big city for parts of Clare, Tipperary, Cork and Kerry that’s most likely who lined the streets in that particular pic, pal. Up to '16 most people probably didn’t want a republic, home rule would have done. However, the results of the 1918 election speak a totally different story. The simple fact is hundreds of years of colonization had reduced the majority of the country to serfdom, totally and utterly broken. The genocide carried out during 1846-50 was to change that however- the sons and daughters of those that were forced to leave so what freedom was like and spread the word home. The rest is history, pal. But you are correct in that It was horrendous mismanagement and misrule that led to the republic. If your British ancestors were not so beset on denying the majority of the population the very same rights as those in Britain had then who knows, but your greedy, murderous barbarity was your undoing in this country.
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@Tim Riggons would have there in the thick of battle. Fighting for the IRFU battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
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