A Short Fiction Based On Fact!

Some years ago, a neighbour living in the flat directly beneath mine seemed to be only interested in drinking himself to death. To me he was an independent and principled person.
Lonely and embittered, he kept to himself and read a lot, preferring such material as might describe Adolf Hitler in a favourable light.
I thought this odd and out of character with him, especially as he had served as a navigator in the RAF during WWll. Of course, he was on record as a deserter.

It hadn’t been his intention to desert. He had simply come home on a few days leave to pass on a few shillings to his mother, and let his father and young sisters see that he was alive and well. Poverty in Dublin was ugly in those days.
What he hadn’t expected, however, was to be approached , alone, by a faceless stranger with a Dundalk accent, and told that he was not to return to England. That if he returned and his family died in an accidental fire shortly afterward, he himself would be to blame.

He was afraid that this was no empty threat, so he never returned. Instead he stayed home and had to make up excuses for “deserting”, thereby becoming acceptable to the noble cause of Irish Catholic Nationalism. Men in his situation could then be held up as proud examples while Irishmen who continued to serve in the British forces for the duration of the war were vilified and scorned.

He was only a young man at the time, and he lived another sixty years, fitting into a despicable and shameful pretence, and I am pretty convinced that by the time he and I became close neighbours, he actually looked forward to the peace of mind which only death could bring.

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It would be interesting to know just how many decent, honourable Irish men are listed in the records of the British forces as “deserters”. Similar shameful incidents most likely occurred in every town and village in Ireland, and possibly even worse.

As all such victims would now at least be in their 70’s, the chances are that the Catholic Nationalists feel fairly confident of their “patriotic” terrorism never being exposed. But some victims may yet, or may have already confided in a trusted family member or friend, and probably British military records could still produce factual statistics on the numbers of Irishmen who came home on leave and never returned.

In major urban areas particularly, joining the military and fighting in a war was very often seen as no more than earning a living and contributing to a hard-pressed family. To his family, each soldier would be a hero.
To be intimidated into becoming a “deserter” and keeping quiet about the real reason behind his newly discovered “patriotic” values, must have placed an intolerable stress on such victims.
On a wide-spread basis, it would have cut deeply into the Irish psyche and leave ugly scars, again most likely in major urban areas more than in rural areas.

Ireland’s intellectual need to “avoid mirrors” is deep-rooted and widespread, not to mention bloody-well justified!