Writer Coral Atkinson remembers her Father and his militaria on Anzac day

The Irish National War Memorial Gardens

 As something of a pacifist I am an unlikely enthusiast for a war memorial, but then, like many things emanating from Ireland, the Irish National War Memorial Gardens, at Islandbridge, in Dublin, is also a surprise.

 My relationship with the memorial garden begins with my father, the late Cyril Atkinson (left), who was a collector of militaria.  Recollection places him bent over a newspaper covered kitchen table, in our Christchurch house; a tin of Brasso in one hand, a rag in the other -- cleaning the butt mask of a duelling pistol, the grip of a sword or, more frequently, one of his antique military cap badges. His most prized cap badges were his collection of those belonging to Irish regiments in the British army; as an ex-Royal Artillery officer in World War II, and an immigrant from Ireland, he had a sentimental regard for these objects. The smaller badges he framed on a green velvet mount, while the larger ones, which originated on the outlandish shakos of the Napoleonic period, hung in rows on the panelled walls of our twenties bungalow.

My father died in the early 1990s, and some years later, when I was planning a trip to Ireland, my mother, sitting forward in her lazy-boy chair, said, ‘Do you think you could take those badges of the Irish regiments back with you? Cyril was always so keen they should be returned.’

Previously I had never paid much attention to the badges, seeing them merely as symbols of the whole unfortunate grab-bag of exploitative British imperialism, but this changed following my father’s death and the collection acquired a softer, more personal flavour.

The collection, which comprised about twenty items spanning a period from the Peninsula Wars of the early 19th century to the end of World War I, had undoubted monetary value. But, as the metal badges rattled about in my suitcase, I did wonder what exactly I was to do with them.  I could hand them over to a museum, but given the nature of Ireland’s history I feared that these emblems of the country’s colonised past might well result in banishment to some gulag for politically embarrassing relics.  Short of selling them, which would in no way ensure the badges stayed in Ireland, or abandoning the box under a seat in St. Stephen’s Green, the options didn’t look promising.

In Dublin I flicked through the telephone directory, hoping for inspiration. My eye fell on the British Legion.  I rang the number and told my tale; they would take them but there seemed no enthusiasm for the offer. I imagined the collection consigned to a desk drawer, wood stained with ink from long dead soldiers’ dip pens, keeping company with torn ration books and gravy coloured 1914 propaganda postcards, showing luckless Belgians fleeing from Wagnerian Huns. I was sure I could do better.

 ‘Islandbridge,’ my Irish friend, Caroline said, ‘there’s some sort of war memorial garden near the Phoenix Park; it’s down by the Liffey. Try there.’

Next morning, I found a contact number and rang it. I was directed to another number and redirected again. Eventually I spoke to a charming, very English sounding Irishman, a former officer with the elite Irish Guards (British) regiment, now working in Dublin as a share broker.

‘ Where are you?’ he asked.

‘ Dundrum,’ I said.

’ I’ll be right over and take you to Islandbridge. We’re trying to build up a small museum there and we’d love to have your father’s collection, but you must decide yourself if it is the right place,’ he said.

As we drove, the former Guards officer told me something of the place. The war memorial’s past, like Ireland’s own history, had been somewhat chequered. Originally envisaged in 1919, the garden was designed by the famous architect Edward Lutyens to remember the 49,400 Irishmen who died serving in the British forces in World War 1. It was hardly an auspicious time for such an undertaking, the war of independence against England was raging in Ireland, and no sooner was that over and Ireland gained autonomy as a Free State in 1922, when the civil war broke out. Finally, in the depression of the 1930s, the building of the memorial garden began, with unemployed Irish ex-soldiers from both the British and the new Irish national army doing much of the work. The memorial was opened in 1938, but with World War II- in Ireland endearingly called,

‘The Emergency’- starting the following year, coupled with the residual bitterness of feeling against England, up-keep was not a priority. The once grand garden gradually sank under a tangled jungle of nettles and brambles, and for many years the place was totally neglected.

Times changed and attitudes mellowed; the 1980s brought new more positive feelings towards Britain and a growing holistic view of Ireland’s past. The memorial was painstakingly renovated and the gardens restored to their original design. The names of Irish servicemen who died in World War II, and in subsequent deployment in the Irish army under United Nations’ command, were inscribed on the huge Wicklow granite memorial cross. The memorial was no longer associated with foreign rule; it had become truly national.

 My guide parked the car and we went in to the memorial. It was one of those ambivalent Irish days, alternating between a dazzle of sunshine and a smear of rain. The clouds, like outsized white bloomers, flapped fatly about the sky and the grass looked absurdly green.

Stretching on all sides was a huge, carefully tended garden, with circular fountains, stone pergolas and four squat book rooms or pavilions at either corner. The architecture, which was impressively 1920s Empire style, seemed reminiscent of Queen Mary, erect and stately in her toque and pearls.

‘ I’ll show you our little museum,’ my guide said.

 We went into one of the bookrooms, where there were display cases containing artefacts connected with Irish regimental history. The bookrooms originally housed Henry Clarke’s Arts and Crafts style illustrated memorial books, which listed the names of all the Irish World War I dead. Technology had now taken over and a park ranger offered me the details of any Irish soldier who died in World War 1.

 ‘ Give us a name, someone in your family who fell,’ he said. For a moment my mind went blank and then I remembered the photograph, hanging in an elderly relation’s house when I was a child in Dublin. It was of a young man in army uniform; the heavy picture- frame perennially decorated by a poppy,

 ‘ Bobby Dilworth,’ I said, and within a few moments I was holding his details on a copy of a page from the memorial book.

Footnote:

Coral Atkinson is a New Zealand Irish writer and adult educator, living in Governors Bay, in Canterbury.
Read about her books, and her other writing.
Coral Atkinson can be reached at: atkinsoc@ihug.co.nz