LETTER: More about Munster Fusilliers
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Wednesday September 01 2010
Sir, I was interested to read about the recognition of the Munsters in Killarney.
All the more so because my father brought them, as well as the Dubliners, to Gallipoli.
He was in Argentina before World War I, and when France and Germany went to war, volunteered for the French Army because an ancestor had to leave Ireland from Wicklow in 1798 and became a colonel in the French Army.
By the time a ship arrived to take people to Europe, England had entered the war and the French embassy said that they would prefer that he would talk Spanish to the English. England being an ally would help France (Romance languages do not understand each other, e.g. the Portuguese cannot understand the Spanish, and vice versa).
So that is how he came to be in the British Army.
He visited the cable station in Valentia, met the Ring family and ohers and, after the war, married Nora Ring, my mother. Sincerely, Brendan P. Byrne, 4 Grove Lawn, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
