Poor The Kevin Myers

Kevin Myers wrote an article in today’s Indo rebuking certain people for not giving him sufficient praise and credit for his work in highlighting Irelands involvement in the Great War. Some of which is posted below ...

On Wednesday last, the Second Glucksman Memorial Symposium opened at Trinity College Dublin. Its subject was 'Commemorating the Unthinkable: Europe, Ireland and the Great War.' Chaired by Terence Brown, participants included Gerald Dawe, John Horne, Jane Leonard, with readings from Sebastian Barry and Michael Longley. To be sure, I was invited to be present, but merely as a mute journalist, not as a contributor.

Last week, before a large gathering of official guests, the President laid a wreath at Messines Ridge, to commemorate the joint attack by the 16th Irish and the 36th Ulster Divisions 90 years ago. I learnt about this only from the news, which is also how, two days earlier, I had heard of a similar official wreath-laying by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern.

How delightful, how utterly delightful, that others who came to the field so long after I had begun to plough my lonely furrow are included in such events, and I am not.....

As an 'Irish Times' columnist, I made it my business, ceaselessly, year upon year, to write on this topic, causing many threats and much abuse, with the vile 'Phoenix' magazine christening me "Colonel Myers". But I persisted, because I felt Ireland owed a duty to those tens of thousands of its sons who fell on the Western front and Gallipoli, and were then written out of history......

He continues ...


But once official Ireland woke up to the subject, I began to be marginalised. When the memorial tower at Messines Ridge was opened by the President and Queen Elizabeth in 1998, I was not invited to the ceremony. However, an Army friend arranged a pass for me into the viewing stand, and to the reception afterwards.

It was here that Paddy Harte TD, who had been a driving force in the creation of the tower, rose and said there was one man in the room to whom they were all indebted for their knowledge of the Great War: he then named someone I had never heard of. And for 1998, now read 2007.


Poor the Kevin Myers, poor the misunderstood, overlooked, marginalised, ceaseless Kevin Myers. If I had time to rush into town and give him a medal and a hug I would.