Ireland Unveils Monument To Le Pilly Casualties

"In October 1914, 177 men from the Royal Irish Regiment, a regiment that recruited predominantly in the counties of Waterford, Wexford, Tipperary and Kilkenny, were killed outside Lille.
The Battle of Le Pilly, as it became known, was a terrible encounter which occurred during the so-called “Race to the Sea” in the early days of the first World War.
Having initially taken the village of Le Pilly, now a suburb of Lille, the men from the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment became isolated from their supporting division.
They were surrounded and either killed or captured. Of the 904 who presented to arms on October 19th just 136 were available three days later. The battalion diary was chilling in its succinctness. “Little evidence is available of what happened on this day”.
One Irish survivor of Le Pilly who had been a veteran of many British colonial campaigns, said of the battle: “You could not call it war. It is murder and nothing like the game as it is played in Africa and the Chitral Expeditions, through both of which I went.”
The battle claimed the lives of 29 men from Waterford, 27 each from Tipperary and Wexford and 13 from Kilkenny.
Among the dead were 16-year-old Private Stephen Collins from Waterford city, one of four brothers to die in the war, and Captain James Smithwick from Kilkenny, a scion of the famous brewing dynasty who died afterwards from his wounds.
Yet, this battle was completely forgotten about until it was rediscovered by Tipperary-based historian Michael Desmond quite by accident 15 years ago. He had been retracing the war records of a man who had been killed at the Battle of Mousetrap Farm in May 1915 who had been serving with the same battalion as the men killed at Le Pilly."
www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/irishmen-killed-in-forgotten-first-world-war-battle-to-be-remembered-1.3669086?mode=amp&fbclid=IwAR3XueXJtg_-9UgNtWC8Z_Y8jBHwlAE32MGX-1D-hY56daY4qFntWDvEr80#.W8nFiHOuGy4.facebook

 

The first 20 years of the 20th century weren't particularly nice to the Irish.......

 

It sounds like a take no prisoners situation and perhaps executions. Given that occupied Belgians faced starvation as their animal's and crops went to feed the Kaiser's troops the idea is not far fetched. The only remote good from all of this is they are finally getting remembered.

 

......and they became independent shortly there after so the U.K. couldn't send their boys to their deaths fighting a war they didn't give a crap about......

 

But a lot of them were actually volunteers, and they spent decades as pariahs because they had served in the British Army-
The forgotten Irish soldiers who fought for Britain in the first world war

 

A fair number volunteered for WWII as well some even deserting the Irish Army to join the British.

 

Everything I've ever read on the Irish in both World Wars stated the Irish people in general didn't want anything to do with either war. But thousands of Ireland's men volunteered regardless.......