Tracing a very Irish hero of WWI
Print Edition
IF you think about it, the distant past is actually in touching distance, Danny Morrison, an Irish writer and commentator, writes in the foreword of Cónal Creedon’s latest book “The Immortal Deed of Michael O’Leary.”
A century ago, Irishman Michael O’Leary was lauded the world over for killing eight German soldiers, capturing two more, and at the same time saving his comrades from a perilous situation at Cuinchy in 1915. For his heroic actions, O’Leary was awarded the Victoria Cross medal from Britain’s King George V.
When O’Leary came home in the summer of 1915, he was paraded through the streets of Cork in Ireland, before the press pursued him west to his humble roots outside the Inchigeela parish of Iveleary.
“One of the photographs that appeared in The Sphere newspaper is of my grandmother standing with him outside the local post office,” laughs Creedon, the author of the book, which looks at O’Leary’s biography as well as the history of his clan.
When Creedon was first shown the old photograph by his cousin Joe while he was researching documentary on Cork, he was surprised.
“I had never known my grandma — she had been long dead before I was born. It was fascinating for me to see her as a young girl on the cusp of womanhood. She seemed impishly coy in the presence of the young brave soldier,” Creedon writes.
Growing up in downtown Cork, Creedon says he had heard of the songs and stories of the O’Leary clan. But it wasn’t until the moment when he saw the photography of his grandma with the great war returnee that all the magical stories of the O’Leary clan came alive.
Chieftains of the land
As Creedon’s research on the life of O’Leary and of his home place went further into the west Cork area, he found the clan were once chieftains of the land. However, they were reduced to peasants — subsistence farmers — by the end of the 1600s.
Over the past 800 years the island of Ireland has struggled for its freedom and independence from England.
So, when Michael O’Leary became a poster boy for the recruitment drive for volunteers to join the British service, he still, somehow, remained a nationalist.
He was as reluctant to answer that call as most young Irish farming men were in 1915. To him, it was just a job, one he’d wanted since he was growing up around Inchigeela, where so many hungry families depended on this source of revenue to survive.
During World War I (1914-18), about 210,000 Irishmen served in the British force to fight “for the freedom of small nations”. At home in Ireland, on Easter Monday 1916, another brand of Irish nationalist formally declared war on England to secure the freedom of the small nation of Ireland.
It’s a contradictions in the book — fighting for Ireland with the English or fighting for Ireland against the English. However, Creedon says he just wanted get “a sense of the man, his background, his heritage and a sense of how he arrived to that time and place.”
With the story of Michael O’Leary from the small valley of Iveleary at the core, Creedon traces his grandparents’ family clan back to 600 BC. The upshot is a history not just of the first Irishman to receive the Victoria Cross medal for bravery during WWI; but also of the O’Leary clan and their historic tendency to join different warring groups down the centuries, making it a personal journey “home” through a stream of names, dates and events.
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