Talk:Michael John O'Leary

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008
Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 16:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Removed during clear-up
I removed the following information from the article primarily because I could not source it precisely enough. If anyone can help with this it would be great to restore it to the article.--Jackyd101 (talk) 18:51, 26 September 2008 (UTC) The British Army featured a recruiting poster of “O’Leary VC”. The British also decided it would be a good idea to enlist Michael O'Leary's father’s support in the attempt to recruit more soldiers in his native Cork in Ireland. Frank Gallagher, editor of the Cork Free Press and later editor of the Irish Bulletin during the Anglo-Irish War, and of the Irish Press takes up the story:

“The news items which never survived the blue pencil of the British censor often decorated the newspaper office walls. The best was the recruiting speech of Michael O'Leary’s father in his native Inchigeela. For incredible bravery, his son had won the Victoria Cross, and the War Office took the father on to the recruiting platforms, or rather platform, for he did not last more than one meeting. His speech, as the censor killed it, was something like this:

“Mr. O’Leary, senior, father of the famous V.C., speaking in the Inchigeela district, urged the young men to join the British army. ‘If you don’t’, he told them, ‘the Germans will come here and will do to you what the English have been doing for the last seven hundred years’.” (excerpted from Frank Gallagher's Four Glorious Years, 1953. He wrote under the pen name David Hogan.)

Manus O'Riordan (head of research for SIPTU re-tells the story in the Ballingeary Historical Society Journal (2005).

His Victoria Cross is displayed at The Guards Regimental Headquarters (Irish Guards RHQ) (London, England).

O'Leary Lake in Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan, has been named in his honour.


 * For the location of his VC see . DuncanHill (talk) 18:54, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

The Irish Guards in the Great War
Would the text describing O'Leary's actions from Rudyard Kipling's The Irish Guards in the Great War be of any use? I have the book, and I believe it to be public domain (author dies more than 70 years ago). DuncanHill (talk) 19:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Very useful, any detail, corrections, references or quotes would be great (quotes especially, perhaps in a nice blue box). I've been using Batchelor & Matson, so they should dovetail quite nicely. I was gonna take a run at GA with this, perhaps you'd care to join me?--Jackyd101 (talk) 19:34, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

From The Irish Guards in the Great War, Volume I, chapter "1915 La Bassée to Laventie" by Rudyard Kipling, first published 1923, this taken from pp. 76-77 of the 1997 Spellmount Limited edition. Early in the morning of the 1st February a post held by the Coldstream in a hollow near the Embankment, just west of the Railway Triangle - a spot unholy beyond most, even in this sector - was bombed and rushed by the enemy through an old communication trench. No. 4 Company Irish Guards was ordered to help the Coldstream's attack. The men were led by Lieutenant Blacker-Douglas who had but rejoined on the 25th January. He was knocked over by a bomb within a few yards of the German barricade to the trench, picked himself up and went on, only to be shot through the head a moment later. Lieutenant Lee of the same Company was shot through the heart; the Company Commander, Captain Long-Innes, and 2nd Lieutenant Blom were wounded, and the command devolved to C.Q.M.S. Carton, who, in spite of a verbal order to retire "which he did not believe," held on till the morning in the trench under such cover of shell-holes and hasty barricades as could be found or put up. The Germans were too well posted to be moved by bomb or rifle, so, when daylight showed the situation, our big guns were called upon to shell for ten minutes, with shrapnel, the hollow where they lay. The spectacle was sickening, but the results were satisfactory. Then, a second attack of some fifty Coldstream and thirty Irish Guards of No. 1 Company under Lieutenants Graham and Innes went forward, hung for a moment on the fringe of their own shrapnel - for barrages were new things - and swept up the trench. It was here that Lance-Corporal O'Leary, Lieutenant Innes' orderly, won his V.C. He rushed up along the railway embankment above the trenches, shot down 5 Germans behind their first barricade in the trench, then 3 more trying to work a machine-gun at the next barricade fifty yards farther along the trench, and took a couple of prisoners. Eye-witnesses report that he did this work quite leisurely and wandered out into the open, visible for any distance around, intent upon killing another German to whom he had taken a dislike. Meantime, Graham, badly wounded in the head, and Innes, together with some Coldstream, had worked their way into the post and found it deserted. Our guns and our attack had accounted for about 30 dead, but had left 32 wounded and unwounded prisoners, all of whom, with one exception, wept aloud. The hollow was gull of mixed dead - Coldstream, Irish and German. I have quoted the passage in full, to give context. DuncanHill (talk) 20:01, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * O'Leary's service number was 3556 (from Appendix C of The Irish Guards in the Great War). DuncanHill (talk) 20:03, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thankyou very much, that was very helpful. I'm going to take a shot at GA now, please feel free to dip in if you have any thing to add.--Jackyd101 (talk) 11:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

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