Haughey’s riotous behaviour was no comfort to war victim’s relatives
Earlier that day some students at Trinity College had staged a demonstration on the roof of the Dame Street entrance to the college, where they had gathered to celebrate news that Germany would be surrendering formally next day.
They raised Allied flags on the flagpole, with the Union Jack on top, followed by the Stars and Stripes, the French tricolour and the Irish tricolour.
When people on the street below called for the Irish flag to be put on top, the students took it off the pole and tried to burn it. They then threw the smouldering remnant from the roof.
Word spread to the other side of Stephen's Green, where University College, Dublin, was still located on Earlsfort Terrace. A group of students marched on Trinity, some carrying Swastika flags. Charlie Haughey and Seamus Sorohan produced a Union Jack, doused it with inflammable liquid, and set it alight. In the process they sparked a riot.
The gardaí baton-charged the crowd, which dispersed in various directions.
Some went to the British legation and others to the American consulate and stoned the two buildings, breaking windows.
While Dublin was assessing the cost next day, they had one hell of a party in London. Yet for many people who had lost loved ones in the war, this must have been a bitter-sweet moment.
Growing up in Tralee in the 1950s, there was no television, so films provided the most popular form of night-time entertainment.
There was no shortage of war movies, but I was always conscious at the end when the boys would be coming home, my mother would be crying because, of course, my father was one of those who never came home.
He was killed in action in Germany on January 31, 1945.
"We plan to be in a different country in the next couple of days," he wrote from Luxembourg the day before he was killed. "We are all looking forward to getting back into those German towns again."
His division had invaded Germany on November 25, 1944 and had spent a month there before being withdrawn to Belgium to help hard-pressed Allied forces in the Battle of the Bulge.
That battle was now over and they were heading back into Germany for what he believed would be the final push the following day.
"We are almost ready now to finish up this war," my father concluded his last letter. "The chaplain told the boys to put a little more into their prayers. Well, darling, take good care of yourself and Ryle and Thumperess (my brother Seán, who was born five weeks later) I'll write as soon as I can." On the afternoon of Valentine's eve, the dreaded telegram arrived: "The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that your husband First Lieutenant John G Dwyer was killed in action on 31 January in Germany." That was the total amount of what I knew about my father's death until earlier this year.
While on the internet one night I entered his company, battalion, regiment, and division on a search and came up with one name John T Ingram, who was looking for photographs of the company. I wrote to him and got an extraordinary reply.
He was a young private in the company and received the Bronze for bravery on the day my father was killed. It was awarded, according to the citation, "for heroic achievement on 31 January 1945 in the vicinity of Wallmerath, Germany. During an enemy counter-attack, an officer was seriously injured and was lying helpless in an area subjected to heavy fire of various calibres. Private First Class Ingram, voluntarily and without regard for his personal safety, exposed himself to intense fire to reach the position of the wounded officer and administer first aid.
WHEN his company moved to a more favourable position, Private First Class Ingram refused to leave the officer until all possible aid had been rendered."
It seemed almost providential that the one name I came up with on the internet was a man who was actually beside my father when he was shot and was with him when he died.
I talked to John Ingram, a cotton farmer in Alabama, on the telephone during the week of my father's anniversary in January of this year.
He had only joined the unit, in December 1944, just before the Battle of the Bulge. "It was living hell," he said. "We went through living hell at the Battle of the Bulge. It was so cold, like 5 and 20 degrees every day and every night and snow knee-deep and waist-deep. We were cutting across an open field on January 31 near a little village of Wallmerath and a tank was behind a building. It pulled up and it starting shooting at us point blank," he said.
"The lieutenant got hit in the shoulder and the snow was over our... we were knee-deep in it, and snowdrifts were around. It was up to four and five feet deep where the snow drifted up against a snow fence. I was a machine-gunner, and it was shooting at me and got the lieutenant, plus five enlisted men, and wounded four the same morning.
"There was wounded and dead Americans all around me. He went back for help but the first aid man wouldn't come out, as he said it would be suicide. He wouldn't come out and give any first aid. He just got a yellow streak down his back.
"After he wouldn't come out I went back and tried to give more aid to them and wrap them up in blankets and keep them from going into shock. No one else tried to save the first one that morning. I was the only one out in the field trying to save them. I was a machine-gunner, and I wasn't supposed to try to do anything like that."
He was only 19 and knew practically nothing about first aid. Yet he was trying to look after four wounded men. As he had only been with the division less than two months during a particularly hectic period, he really did not know my father, and only learned his name afterwards.
"I struggled there, and it was so cold," he explained. "The snow there was 18 inches deep." He tried to help my father. "Lying in the snow like that, he couldn't move or anything. I couldn't move him, you know, out in the field and get him into a house or a basement or something, and no one would help and he just passed on out. I was sure he was going to make it because it was in his left shoulder he got shot. It was kind of low in his shoulder, you know.
"He died there," Mr Ingram told me. "He passed away before I left him. I stayed there and tried my best to save him, but he died."
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