'The Far Side of the World':
Kildare Author James Durney's Latest Narrates Travails of Irish in Korea
A REVIEW BY ALEX FÉTHIÈRE
The considerable Irish sacrifice in Korea was often made with the hope of U.S. citizenship, and the coda of Kildare-based writer James Durney's latest book, "The Far Side of the World" (Gaul House, 2006), was the 2003 ceremony in Washington, D.C., that granted posthumous citizenship to 28 Irish-born U.S. servicemen. The Wild Geese flocked to Korea under different national standards, and the personal stories told through author interviews, correspondence, and published accounts are presented here, alongside supporting statistics and military history. Two sections of period photographs help the reader put faces to the storytellers and survivors.
Durney's book draws from published first-hand narratives, a formula he established with four other books exploring the history of the Irish. (These deal, respectively, with Irish gangsters, Kildare men's actions during The Troubles and the Easter Rising, the organization of the IRA and its trappings, and men of Kildare who died in both World Wars.) In "Far Side of the World," as well, he uses contextualized extant materials, original/unpublished materials, and well-reproduced photos. Though marred somewhat by rough copy editing, the errors in spelling and punctuation are rarely such that the reader is unable to discern what is meant. The author asserts "Far Side" is the first book to collect and contextualize them with original material in a larger picture of the Irish soldier's experience in the Korean War. The volume proves that, demographically and individually, the Irish experience in the Korean War merits its own narrative, whether the Irishmen fought under the flag of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or Britain.
IrishInKorea.org Father Francis Canavan, one of the Irish priests who died in Korea.
People of the cloth were the first Irish to die in the war's early days. Sister Mary Clare (Church of England) and a number of Columban priests were murdered or marched to death by the North Korean Peoples' Army. These atrocities against missionaries were part of an NKPA broadside that caught the U.S. military's forces in a state of "shameful unpreparedness," in the words of 8th Army commander Matthew B. Ridgway, whose leadership is credited with driving the Chinese out of South Korea. The Republic of Korea's army and those U.S. forces available on such short notice stabilized a position at Pusan, on the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula, and held it until United Nations/ROK forces at Incheon had gathered enough strength to drive east to recapture Seoul.
The Irish that rushed in with the U.N. to enhance the Allied presence on the peninsula distinguished themselves with their cheer and courage. Furthermore, their valor was generous enough to allow acknowledgment of the enemy's dignity: Major Rickord, acting commander of the Royal Ulster Rifles, stated of his outfit and two other British-Irish forces after a brutal battle, "The morning after we came out, the soldiers were singing Irish songs, playing a banjo. … I think they felt very proud of the fight they had put up. We felt no particular animosity toward the Chinese. Indeed, I think we felt great respect, even liking for them. But the regiment's old motto - Quis Separabit (Who Will Separate Us?) - was something we felt very strongly about."
At Christmas, U.S. Army Private Harry O'Mara and his comrades heard the Derry Air emerge from the Chinese lines.
Such regard seems particularly open-hearted when one considers that the U.N. forces were facing a particularly brutal foe. The NKPA ran refugees through minefields to clear them, and often sent its troops in four waves, with only the first three armed so that when they were felled, the fourth wave could pick up their weapons. Despite committed efforts to slaughter each other, Durney portrays moments of humanity and respect on both sides: the Chinese yelling from a hilltop, "Tommy, this isn't your war. British Tommy, hand your rifle up," giving the British-Irish a chance to surrender (they didn't), or the 1951 Christmas appearance of a Chinese flautist playing the Derry Air (the melody to the song "Danny Boy") from behind enemy lines. U.S. Army Private Harry O'Mara checked with his companions, who told him they also heard the tune. Though the Americans took the Chinese positions two days later, the mystery of flute and flutist was never solved.
The heroism documented in Durney's book is statistical, as well as anecdotal. Among the superlative individual achievements he notes is the service of Irish-American pilot Capt. Joseph McConnell Jr., who in shooting down 16 MiGs during the war became history's first triple jet ace -- even though downed into the Yellow Sea by ground fire after his eighth kill.
Alford Lee McLaughin, Medal of Honor winner
The tales of infantry valor are particularly astonishing -- for example, that of Pfc. 1st Class Alford McLaughlin defending a position so fiercely that he single-handedly killed 150 and wounded 50 enemy soldiers, for which he was awarded a Gold Star and a Medal of Honor, America's highest military decoration. Durney is quick to note that 258 Irish immigrants were awarded Medals of Honor in America's conflicts, garnering more than any other immigrant group.
Loyalty to church, comrades and culture also characterized the Irish experience during the war, particularly in the grinding misery of the POW camps. John Lee was a Kerry native who had been in the U.S. five months before being drafted into the Army, Company L, 38th Infantry Regiment. After his company was obliterated in an ambush, he was captured and interned in Chongsong POW camp. He survived his three years' imprisonment with ingenuity and Catholic faith, which he fortified by melting down empty metal toothpaste containers to cast a cross in a mold of hard mud. Lee then incorporated the cross into a rosary with a cord knotted to represent the beads.
Durney documents the soldiers' privation through descriptions of Communist indoctrination, forced labor, air raids, night-blindness and figures demonstrating their dismal caloric intake. Sometimes a frugal upbringing in Ireland helped the men survive, retaining their morale in spite of Chinese and North Korean attempts to break them with starvation, lack of medical care, and exposure to the elements. One soldier, Cork native William Murphy (one of 28 Irish soldiers granted posthumous U.S. citizenship in 2003), helped keep his comrades alive with a sleight-of-hand move that tricked local civilians into trading food for Murphy's gold watch, wrapped in a handkerchief only to find that he had swapped the watch for a rock.
All told, Durney's account favors British military narratives, but this is understandable because of the larger Irish profile in the British forces, which included regiments long associated with the Irish. He reminds all countries who sent Irish immigrants into the fray of the sacrifice and nobility of those who served in a war that today is a footnote to the Cold War. With "Far Side," he makes a sound case for their perpetual remembrance and memorialization. WGT
This feature was produced by Joe Gannon and edited by Gerry Regan.
merits its own narrative, whether the Irishmen fought under the flag of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or Britain.
, America's highest military decoration. Durney is quick to note that 258 Irish immigrants were awarded Medals of Honor in America's conflicts, garnering more than any other immigrant group.
