Role of the Irish in World War II with Con McGrath
AT THE time of the 1931 census in Britain, more than half a million people listed as living there were Irish born. Many of us would imagine these were Irish migrant males working in the construction industry, an idea made popular in so many songs – however the majority of Irish migrants in the twentieth century were women. Most arrived not as members of family groups but as young, single migrant workers. During the 1940s and 1950s, large numbers of Irish women were recruited as student nurses. By 1951, 11 percent of nurses and midwives in Britain were Irish.
Hence it is with little surprise that when one looks into the Irish Newspaper Archives, there are to be found numerous stories from across the island of Ireland detailing Irish women who served with the military forces.
Nurse Higgins from Fermanagh
During the war Nurse Brigid Teresa Higgins, a native of Meenawargy, Belcoo, Co. Fermanagh, saw extensive experience in the British army nursing service. She had joined the army nursing service in December, 1943, and arrived in Normandy in June, 1944 with the first field hospital to reach the lines behind the battle-front. It was a front-line hospital, and Nurse Higgins and her sister nurses were to have occupied a certain chateau, but found on arrival that the place had been demolished by shell-fire the previous night, which shows how close to the front line the hospital was situated. Frequently the nurses had to remain at nights in slit trenches.
Nurse Higgins’ field hospital went with the British army advancing to Holland and Belgium and worked behind the front lines right through the European war. The staff and equipment were sent to India in June, 1945, in anticipation of the invasion of Japan, and remained there for a year. In July, 1946, they went to Austria, where they served until Nurse Higgins was demobilised in December 1946.
Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own