大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Major Sean Murphy at the Dublin WW2 Commemoration, and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Jim Lynne, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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I enlisted in boy service in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, an Irish regiment. And I have to say, we who served in the irish regiments, and there were at that time 3 Irish infantry regiments in the British army, we had the feeling we were in the finest regiments in the british army. And indeed, they were the finest. There was a wonderful feeling of being at home. You were serving with fellow Irishmen and suchlike. No problems or suchlike. One hears mention of people having problems because they served in the british army. I think a lot of that鈥檚 a fallacy. In my own case everybody would have known in the town where I came from in Leitrim. That I served And my brother served also. One never met with any animosity.
The great thing about it, when you join, at the time when I joined, it gave you a regular wage. More importantly, it gave you the opportunity to travel, which was the greatest attraction. One of the selling points in the recruiting Literature in those days. Much easier to travel today when we鈥檙e all well-paid and suchlike.
I suppose there was an intermingling between the british serviceman and the irish serviceman. We all did the same job. Wearing different uniforms, but they were the same people. An accident of fate took us into the british army or the irish army. I think in my case the irish army was ill-paid in my days, and didn鈥檛 go abroad. So naturally I went to the british army.

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