Two Bennettsbridge men who have just celebrated their 90th birthdays recalled for me their involvement in what many people refer to as Dad’s Army, but which to them was a highly motivated force that stood between Ireland’s freedom and occupation by a foreign power.
I met Mick Muldowney and Kevin Hughes at their homes near the village. This week, I relate Mick’s story and I will turn to Kevin’s fascinating recollections in the next instalment of Old Kilkenny.
Mick Muldowney had just driven his car into the garage beside his house when I arrived. A tall athletic man, he nimbly alighted from the vehicle and I was struck immediately by his obvious commitment to a rigourous and successful “keep fit” regime.
The man couldn’t be ninety, I thought. Mick invited me into his home and over several cups of tea took me on a trip back into the early days of World War Two, when he and other locals answered Ireland’s Call and joined the Local Defence Force, which was set up to defend Irish neutrality against a feared invasion by either the Germans or the British.
“I remember the day I joined”, he reflected, “John Hennessy, a neighbour, and myself cycled from Grovine into Bennettsbridge on a crisp winter’s morning to enlist in the great national effort to save our country. As our bikes passed through Wallslough we felt a surge of patriotism. We felt proud and ecstatic. We were the lads who would stop the invasion.”
“We got our uniforms and I remember the first ones were brown and these were replaced later in the Emergency by green uniforms like those worn by the regular army.”
The LDF regional officer was a man called Peter Graham and the Group Leader, Mick recalled, was Ned Gorman of Woolen Grange, who was later replaced by Michael Kealy, a miller in Mosses Flour Mills.
Mick’s friends whistled admiringly in the streets of Bennettsbridge when they saw him in his uniform and rushed off themselves to enlist.
As the LDF was short of guns, the men drilled and paraded with brush handles most of the time but were given rifles for target practise. Mick and his comrades found themselves marching one day to the top of Cannon Hill, where Cromwell reputedly billeted his troops back in 1650.
The hill overlooked an old quarry and this was used as a firing range. Mick and his fellow recruits were trained in the art of sniping, firing hundreds of bullets from their Lee Enfield rifles at targets carefully positioned on Cannon Hill and in the quarry. Old rusty barrels and wooden soldiers were riddled and cut to pieces as the men rehearsed for a widely expected attempt by the forces of the Third Reich to attack Ireland by land, sea, and air.
They also trained in a large shed owned by Mosses, and in fields near Danesfort. They went for more advanced training to the annual summer camps at Tramore, where they got to use rifles, machine guns, and Molotov cocktails.
The latter weapon was an improvised firebomb made from petrol or turpentine in a bottle or glass jar. When thrown, the bottle or other container shattered on impact, engulfing the target in flames. (I give a detailed description of that tactic in Are We Invaded Yet? )
Though they all knew and accepted that it would be difficult for them to resist German tanks with their rifles and to shoot down the waves of aircraft that might come, the lads were always in high spirits, boosted by occasional alcohol intake that was not always “enjoyed sensibly”, though that printed caution did not appear on stout or whiskey bottles in those days.
Discipline was generally top-notch, Mick recalled, apart from the odd incident of men turning up late for duty after a hectic night at the pub. And he mentioned the night that he and a group of LDF men were on patrol in pitch darkness outside the village armed with loaded rifles.
Out of boredom, one of the men discharged his rifle. The men threw themselves to the ground or dashed for cover, assuming they were under attack. “That shot in the dark frightened the daylights out of us”, he told me, “and Sergeant Graham went berserk, demanding to know who fired the shot.
While the LDF was doing its bit, other locals joined the British army to fight the Germans in the real war. The “Nunner Jackman” served with the Irish Guards and the “Gunner Ryan” also fought on the continent. Both were great characters in the district and never failed to enthral the locals for years afterwards with their tales of battles and other adventures.
After the Emergency, Mick became a highly successful agricultural contractor who was in constant demand as he threshed on farms all over County Kilkenny.
He also excelled as a ploughman, winning an impressive six All-Ireland Tractor Ploughing championships in the post war years and fourteen Kilkenny County championships. In the course of his ploughing competition career, he met all the Irish political giants of the past forty years such as De Valera and Lemass, and a few foreign dignitaries, including France’s President De Gaulle.
He remembered that there was a security “ring of steel” around the ploughing venue for De Gaulle’s visit as it coincided with the conflict in French occupied Algeria.
In the late 1950s, Mick and a few fellow Kilkenny men participated in a display of ploughing near Rome and got to see Pope John the Twenty- Third next day.
The Pontiff was shown photographs of the Irishmen’s tractor work, with close-ups of the furrows, and declared himself to be “most impressed” with the quality of ploughing, despite being busy at the time preparing complex new Papal Encyclicals on a range of moral issues affecting the Church. “We were chuffed that His Holiness had a kind word for us”, Mick told me.
Mick’s home is festooned with pictures of ploughing events and he has shelves lined with his many trophies. Today, he takes it easy, but is always prepared to share his memories of wartime escapades and tractor driving prowess.
Though a consummate agricultural contractor, Mick never had to “plough a lonely furrow” as he has always had scores of friends and admirers to accompany him on the rocky road through life.
Long may his journey continue…
