The Anonymous Widower

The British POWs Who Went Fox-Hunting

This may seem a strange heading, as after all Adolf Hitler banned hunting and the Boy Scouts before the Second World War. But these prisoners weren’t in Germany or the parts of Europe they had occupied, but in the Republic of Ireland.

Dan Snow, is making about a program this bizarre story, which also includes recovering a Spitfire from a Donegal peat bog.  To make the story even more strange, the pilot was an American, who like all Americans fighting at that time in the War had been stripped of his citizenship.

There is more here on the BBC web site.

But then the role of the Irish in the Second World War contains a lot of strange and almost unbelievable facts.

I once heard that more from the south actually fought in British forces in the war than from the North.  Remember that there was no conscription in the North. This page from the Imperial War Museum explains why.

To avoid inflaming sentiments in the nationalist community, conscription was not extended to Northern Ireland.

 Even today, I believe that the Irish Guards still accept some recruits from the Republic. This report gives the stories of two Irish Guards killed in Iraq. One was from Zimbabwe and the other from Dublin. There’s more on the story here.

June 28, 2011 - Posted by AnonW | World | Republic Of Ireland, Second World War, United States