Many Irish men and women fought in the second World War fought for reasons far removed from ideology

During the second World War, British prime minister Winston Churchill found opportunity in the House of Commons to refer to the “large numbers of Irishmen who are fighting so bravely in our armed forces and the many deeds of personal heroism by which they have kept alive the martial honour of the Irish race”.

Offering this compliment also served to underline what he regarded as the treachery of those Irish who were not fighting, and his disdain for their political leaders who stuck to a public script of neutrality. The irony that it was an English imperialist exploitation that partly explained a history of Irish “martial honour” hardly bothered Churchill. Amid war, absolutes were the main currency, at least in relation to public rhetoric, and he had certainly met his match in the guise of another political wordsmith, taoiseach Éamon de Valera, even if their styles were markedly different.

As was apparent this week in coverage of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, in June 1944, more space than previously is now devoted to Irish involvement in that war, whether through soldiering (an estimated 130,000 from Ireland, north and south) or ancillary support, including weather forecasting and working in munitions factories. Research of those Irish experiences opened up significantly from the 1990s, and that also involved recording the voices of Irish veterans, including Irish women who served in various wartime capacities in Britain as nurses and in the auxiliary arms of the services. One of them, Ethel, quoted by the historian Mary Muldowney, recalled being proud of her service in a British uniform, and said of a later reunion with her former colleagues: “I wasn’t anybody’s wife or anybody’s daughter or sister, I was me and it was really marvellous. It’s nice to be yourself once in a while.”

[ World leaders, veterans, commemorate D-Day’s 80th anniversary in Normandy ]

Ethel’s perspective is a reminder that not all Irish involvement needs to be seen in ideological terms. Many men and women went in search of liberation, adventure or experiences unavailable at home. They may not have been overly mindful of the horrors that could await them, but numerous soldiers in the Irish Army were aggrieved at the idea they should be footing turf in the Phoenix Park instead of experiencing combat. Much more attention has been devoted in recent years – rightly so – to those who deserted the Irish Army to fight, an issue surrounded by too much silence for too long. A historian of the Irish Defence Forces, Eoin Kinsella, highlights a note from chief of staff Daniel McKenna in April 1943: “Those who have a taste for military life are more inclined to join the British forces, where a more exciting career is expected”. Between April 1941 and March 1945 there were 6,602 desertions from the Irish Army and at the end of the war, roughly 5,000 of those soldiers were still listed as “absent without leave”.

Many see these men as heroes rather than traitors; as fighters who risked so much and opted to face the great moral question then at stake; the defeat of Nazism. But it should be remembered too that many of those same men defended Ireland’s right to be neutral. At the same time, at home, thousands volunteered to answer the call of “The Emergency” and took the defence of Ireland seriously. Ireland, of course, was not equipped or its defence sufficiently financed for it to be capable of withstanding a full scale military onslaught, but the politics of Irish neutrality should not be mocked and should instead be viewed through the lens of that era, including the still raw legacy of Civil War, partition, and the premium attached to an independent foreign policy in the midst of state building.

Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen, who compiled reports on Irish neutrality for the British Ministry of Information, was an admirer of Churchill, frustrated with what she regarded as elision of the consequences of Irish neutrality, and a mood among too many Irish of detachment, as opposed to those she found more “Europeanly minded”. But she was nonetheless nuanced in some of her reports. She recognised early on during the war that Irish involvement would be a “sheer disaster”, and that British propaganda and hostility towards neutrality was self-defeating. Neutrality, she concluded, was seen by many Irish as affirmative rather than negative; as “Éire’s first free self-assertion”.

Versions of these themes – defence capabilities and financing, neutrality, propaganda, the role and rights of small states amid international conflict – have swirled around debates on Irish foreign policy in recent years. The scale of the second World War tragedies and sacrifices commemorated and recalled this week, and acknowledgment of Irish involvement, does not have to amount to endorsement or condemnation. But it should serve as a reminder, in this era of renewed aggression, of why foreign policy debate continues to matter.