Mining Memories: Then & Now

Deserted by Paddy Reid

As the Irish government considers pardoning the 4,983 soldiers branded deserters who left the Irish Army to fight with the British during the Second World War, Paddy Reid reveals his personal story and the true impact of DeValera's actions. Ireland was neutral during the conflict, but around 10% of its armed forces felt compelled to fight fascism. Under the Emergency Powers (No 362) Order 194, on their return, many were placed on an official blacklist, banning them from jobs, benefits or pensions.

“Ma, can I ask a question?” I’m getting bored of washing mud from potatoes and passing them to my mother to be peeled. “It’s about Grandad.”

“Ask away, Pat.” She smiles.

“Why does daddy hate him so much?”

Her smile goes and she stops peeling.

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Taking Down Nelson by Honor Molloy

My mother, Yvonne Voigt Molloy, is an American who worked in Irish Radio. And my father, the actor John Molloy, was a seventh generation Dubliner. So I grew up in a house bursting with stories. Here’s one, well it’s really an event that became family legend. .

Nelson’s Pillar was a famous Dublin landmark topped by a statue of Lord Horatio Nelson, the British Admiral who lost an arm in battle. Nelson stood pompously clutching a brass sword atop his Pillar on O’Connell Street for 158 years until the IRA loaded him with dynamite and blasted Oul Lord Nelly home by air.

Our story goes: early one crisp March morning, my father pulled my mother from sleep, forcing her downstairs where he leapt upon what looked like a metal rocker from a rocking chair.

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Bloody Sunday by Sue Leonard

It was January 29^th 1972, when the blue sports car rolled off the mail boat, taking me onto Irish soil. I was 19. A student nurse in London, and this was my first ever visit to Ireland. This was strange, since I was, proudly, a quarter Irish.

We arrived, my boyfriend Michael, and I, on a grey Saturday evening, and drove to his mother’s house, which was impressively large, old fashioned, and had a view of the sea. Sunday was busy. There was a drinks party, where I was fussed over in welcome; then we climbed Killiney Hill, before going back for tea.

Later, sipping gin and tonic, we turned on the TV news. And stared in shock, as we learned of the 13 who died that day, in Derry. Even today, with knowledge and hindsight, those scenes of bloody shooting seem tinged with unreality. Watching them fresh; seeing the white hanky of surrender fill with blood; seeing people shot as they fled, was beyond bearing.

And I was English. Well, five eighths English, anyway. This was being done in my name against these very people I’d begun to love. Meeting friends in a pub, later, we were all subdued. And scared. Would this mean civil war?

English newspapers were banned. On Tuesday, visiting the long library at Trinity, we saw the crowds gathering to march on the British Embassy. We joined them for a while. We marched along merrily shouting, ‘Brits Out,’ with the best.

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Gypsy and The Poet by Dave Kenny

Memories merge when I dream about my father. They wheel and clash like magician’s rings, intersecting, passing through each other, becoming linked together. Remote moments of our lives join up. Old age and youth, fights and truces, all loop and link where they should not. Places, times and faces are confused.

Sometimes when I dream of Ted, I see us sitting in Connolly’s barbers in Glasthule. It’s the mid-70s, I am 10 and he is old and near death. His hair and fingernails are long. He is wearing pyjamas. We don’t speak. Men never speak to each other in a barber’s queue. It’s one of The Rules. The barber’s voice is the only one allowed to play at full volume. The sheepish client waiting to be shorn answers questions at half volume. Irish men don’t like to be overheard. They don’t want to make gobshites of themselves.

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