Sometimes twitter throws up noteworthy items, as it did yesterday, a screen shot of partial transcript of a US Army officer who was amongst the first soldiers to arrive in Northern Ireland. Took ages today to find the tweet by Pete Seymour Bailey @Peter_S_Bailey (not clearly a historian). This is the first post, more to follow next. Pete wrote: Followed by this screenshot and a note the link (incomplete) contained more in the first three pages.
The actual document is in the collection of: US Army Heritage and Education Center @ Carlisle, home of the US Army War College. never heard of them before. See: Welcome - USAHEC Contacted them and they replied the document is an Oral History transcript of interview(s) of Lieutenant General Robert Wesley Colglazier Junior; a career engineer officer who served for many years after WW2. He arrived, with a small party of officers, in January 1941. It is a maze to find the document, as the collection appears not to be chronological. Here is the fuller quote on invading Ireland, with my bold: Pgs. 61-62 refer. and the link is: https://emu.usahec.org/alma/multimedia/335859/20182051MN000007.pdf Some interesting passages on the dearth of construction equipment in Northern Ireland, rations, relations with the British and this puzzle: Pg. 69
Re. Nato - there are some references to events prior, during and post WW2... Ireland–NATO relations - Wikipedia
I found two threads here that in a few posts offer some context: 1) US Army in Northern Ireland, 1941-1945 Mainly photos. except Post 59. 2) Spitfires from Northern Ireland +JU-88 COMBAT Post 5
Then Twitter delivered the below map from an Irish historian, Ger Browne @GerBrowne4 and his accompanying text states: Ger gives the source as: https://www.difp.ie/volume-7/1941/t...ic-britains-claims/3437/#section-documentpage The last sentence, in a detailed report by the Irish Defence Forces , in February 1941, ends with: I note the map shows that the USA on 7/11/1939 closed to American shipping all the approaches to the UK.
While Britain and America had pressed de Valera to permit British forces to use Irish ports to no avail prior to Pearl Harbor, British policy was not to force the issue but to reassess if the use of their ports became critical for the U.K., thankfully a point that was never reached. Any unilateral decision for the U.S. to invade Ireland would surely have had to have been taken in the White House, and in view of the Irish caucus, seems incredibly unlikely. Colglazier would have been a relatively junior officer at the time (nominally aide to MAGNET Force’s first commander Major General Edmund L. Daley initially) so maybe he was merely recounting conjecture among his peers. It all sounds rather speculative, and with the confusion between the Channel and the Western Approaches, unconvincing. The Irish memorandum from February 1941 seems to be unduly partisan and quite wrong in its conclusion. While there may have been some cynical political calculation to deflect responsibility, the Chiefs of Staffs were still sincerely making the case for bases in Ireland in March 1941. Their paper COS (41) 149 (Revise) opened: We need to base naval and air forces in Eire for two reasons: In defence of our trade and in defence of Eire territory, both vital to our existence. Record Type: Memorandum Former Reference: WP (41) 64 Title: Necessity for... | The National Archives Churchill’s speech of 5 November 1940 referred to: WAR SITUATION. (Hansard, 5 November 1940)
I was intrigued by the oral history, with a junior US Army engineer officer and knew the forum would provide more information. Thanks.
