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Hmm. Context. The Treaty forbade the Free State to institute conscription. Maybe because militia along Swiss lines had been one of the balloons floated by Sinn Fein before it was signed. This would give grist to Dev's objections.
If loyalists were mostly signing up, those conscripted would be those who had not already volunteered in the age group subject to conscription in the North so one can see how nationalists would be more likely to face conscription.
Hmm. Context. The Treaty forbade the Free State to institute conscription. Maybe because militia along Swiss lines had been one of the balloons floated by Sinn Fein before it was signed. This would give grist to Dev's objections.
If loyalists were mostly signing up, those conscripted would be those who had not already volunteered in the age group subject to conscription in the North so one can see how nationalists would be more likely to face conscription.
I think the point is that 'Loyalists' weren't mostly signing up...
It was discussed in Westminster several times that a lot (but definitely not exclusively) of those from NI, who did volunteer, were from a Unionist background.
However, a lot more could have volunteered, but didn't, from both communities.
Given a choice, I'm not sure most of those conscripted in GB would have volunteered either.
Anyway, I'm grateful to those who did, like this man, an ex-Royal Marine Commando, who died at the weekend;
Of course, Irish residents in the UK were conscripted. A cousin of mine was killed at Anzio aged 20, RIP. He was conscripted from Leicester, but served in the Queens (a Kentish regiment). By coincidence, the same brigade that my former TA unit was the Field Ambulance of!
'He died who loved to live,' they'll say,
'Unselfishly so we might have today!'
Like hell! He fought because he had to fight;
He died that's all. It was his unlucky night. http://www.salamanderoasis.org/poems...nnis/luck.html
Oh and some additional trivia. Conscription was also not introduced to Northern Ireland during WW2.
Every day's a school day !
"Well, stone me! We've had cocaine, bribery and Arsenal scoring two goals at home. But just when you thought there were truly no surprises left in football, Vinnie Jones turns out to be an international player!" (Jimmy Greaves)!"
I think I've mentioned this before; my Dad's father, was a 35 year old married man with 4 children at the outbreak of the war. A farmer, he left granny to run the farm as he took on a job as foreman at the building of a new RAF Station in Northern Ireland. Most of the men he worked with were from County Donegal. I know this because my granny told me about how she had taken him on a church bus-trip to Donegal town in the 1950's. Granda fell in with some of the boys he worked with, they ended up in a bar, he wasn't allowed to put his hand in his pocket, and returned to the bus that evening drunk, and embarrassed granny in front of the Minister and his wife. Top man my granda.
He died in 1979, when I was 6, so my memory of him is hazy, but I do recall asking him once which regiment he had been in during the war.
He laughed, and said he was in the 'Royal Standbacks'.
Years later, I asked granny; he had been in the Home Guard, and was in fact a lewis gunner
I LMFAO'd at this... fair play to your grandad...
"Well, stone me! We've had cocaine, bribery and Arsenal scoring two goals at home. But just when you thought there were truly no surprises left in football, Vinnie Jones turns out to be an international player!" (Jimmy Greaves)!"
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