It was apparent soon after the establishment of the State that the memory of those who fought in British uniforms in the first World War was quickly eclipsed by the memory of those had fought against the British in those tumultuous times.
In that spirit Maj Gen William Hickie, who had commanded the 16th (Irish) Division, and Maj Gen Bryan Mahon, his counterpart in the 10th (Irish) Division, made a public appeal for money to provide permanent memorials to the Irish who fought in what was then known as the Great War.
“Every nation whose sons took part in the war has erected on the scene of their victories and sacrifices some monument to commemorate their share in the great effort and testify to its remembrance,” the two men wrote in 1923.
Hickie and Mahon, who had been appointed senators by the Cumann na nGaedheal government in the Free State senate, promised the memorials would be “simple and unassuming in design which will for all time stand evidence of the deeds of the South Irish Divisions and keep fresh the memory of Irishmen who gave their lives in this achievement”.
The money was quickly raised for three crosses, one for Flanders, one for the Somme and the others for the mountains of Macedonia where the 10th (Irish) Division fought during the Salonika campaign.
The public appeal was heavily subscribed and the first of the three crosses was unveiled amid extraordinary scenes in College Green, Dublin, on Armistice Day 1924.
The police expected a small gathering; instead a crowd filled College Green and the adjoining streets observed the two-minute silence at 11am.
The object that had prompted this national outpouring of grief and remembrance was a large Celtic cross, 13ft 6in high, made of solid granite and weighing three tonnes. It was enclosed by a metal railing measuring 15ft sq. At its base was an inscription in Irish and English. “Do chum glóire Dé agus Onóra na hÉireann” (To the Glory of God and Honour of Ireland). In commemoration of the victories of Guillemont and Ginchy Sept 3rd and 9th 1916 and in memory of those who fell therein and of all the Irishmen who gave their lives in the Great War RIP.”
The memorial at Kosturino Ridge in North Macedonia was unveiled the following year.
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It took another year before suitable locations were found for the Guillemont Cross, first unveiled in College Green and then transported to France, and its exact replica in the Flanders villages of Wytschaete, which the 16th (Irish) Division and the 36th (Ulster) Division liberated during the Battle of Messines Ridge in 1917.
It was decided to unveil these two crosses on successive days. A party of 150 people from Ireland and Britain travelled first to Flanders and then travelled the length of the still battle-scarred front to Guillemont in the Somme the next day.
The Wytschaete cross provided the Free State’s ambassador in Brussels, Count Gerald O’Kelly, with the “horns of the dilemma”. These men had fought for the crown and therefore it should be the British who honour them.
To refuse to attend would give the British press a field day; to attend would be seen to defer to them.
In the end he did turn up for the unveiling on August 22nd, 1926, but the Tricolour was not displayed.
A day later the memorial party arrived in Guillemont. The locals of Guillemont had prepared a banner across the main street that proclaimed “Viva l’Irlande”.
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The principal guest was Marshall Joseph Joffre, the acclaimed saviour of France and the victor of the most important battle of the war, the Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Joffre, the “grandpére de la Victoire”, had aged considerably since the war ended.
Now 74, his gait was bent with age and his moustache had turned a snowy white. Mounted gendarmes lined both sides of the road. Joffre and Hickie pulled down the drapes that covered the cross. The bishop of Amiens was the principal speaker. He spoke of the long service of Irishmen in the armies of France stretching back three centuries. “La belle Irlande” and “la douce France” were now “sisters in sorrow” but rejoiced in a freedom that had been won at a bitter cost.
In 2016 the French government unveiled a memorial in Glasnevin Cemetery to the Irish who fought and died in France during the first World War. The words on the memorial were from a tribute printed in The Irish Times by the Allied supreme commander Ferdinand Foch in 1928.
“The heroic dead of Ireland have every right to the homage of the living; for they proved in some of the heaviest fighting of the world war that the unconquerable spirit of the Irish race, the spirit that has placed them among the world’s greatest soldiers, still lives and is stronger than ever it was.”