The Beginning 1969 - 1973 — Ruairi O'Cashel

Erin go bragh: The Beginning, 1969 1973

Roger M. Schlosser

Abstract

A new book on the modern Irish Troubles seems at once a bit late now that some thing of a peace has settled in the North of Ireland, but it is also possibly anticipating what is to come.

2016 will be the one hundredth anniversary of the 1916 Rising, or Irish Rebellion. In the Republic of Ireland there will be commemorations celebrating the birth of Eire. But in the North of Ireland there will be a different atmosphere since six counties of the Province of Ulster remain part of the United Kingdom. The fiftieth anniversary in 1966 inaugurated the recent round of the Irish Troubles in the North. What will the centennial bring?

In Erin go bragh, Roger M. Schlosser tells a story beginning in the late 1960s as the New Troubles are breaking out in the North of Ireland. An American college student, Rudy Castle, recently home from Vietnam, finds himself engaged in the recent Irish Troubles in large part because of his Irish American mother. She encourages him as a matter of family responsibility to uphold the honor of the family in fighting for Ireland.

He becomes a foreign exchange student in Scotland, but through an Irish acquaintance living in Chicago he becomes actively involved in the events first in Belfast and then farther a field for the cause of Ireland. The Chicago Irishman tells him the story of a Protestant girl who is mistaken for a Catholic by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and who pays the price for this mistaken identity. The story catches the imagination of Castle.

But it is the ghost of his dead grandfather and his living mother that really nudge him along the path set by the Republican Movement in the North of Ireland. As he gets more involved, in part because of the skills learned in the
U S Army and a growing awareness of his Irish heritage and commitment to the cause of Irish freedom, he meets and makes friends with some of the old and the newly emerging leaders of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. But at every turn the shadow of his mother crosses his past.

His post-graduate work transfers to Queens University and provides him with a good academic cover, but British Military Intelligence enlists him. He turns this contact into a double cross arrangement and also arranges a sting on a MI5 employee for the good of the Republican Movement.

A third woman and her sister tie him irrevocably to the North of Ireland as he comes to marry her and her sister marries his best friend from America. His future wife is ignorant of much of what he is involved in with the PIRA, but her sister is wise to whats going on. The sisters brother is also involved in Republican subversive activity.

After contacting members of his distant family in both the North and in the Republic, and after traveling to North Africa and Eastern Europe procuring arms, etc., Castle gets further involved in missions for the Provisional IRA and he feels his luck is running out, and the time has come for a hasty retreat out of Ireland for his home in western Michigan.

As Castle gathers his degree from Queens university and his new wife, fate places him at a going away party with old comrades only to be raided by the British Military.
Sanctuary is found in a Protestant womans house who is not only a fellow teacher of his new wife, but also that little Protestant girl who was mistaken for a Catholic from the story hed heard in Chicago, all grown up. Ironic and Irish at once.

Thus ends the first book of the trilogy, Erin go Bragh, The Beginning, 1969 1973, centering on the Modern Troubles and leading up to the one hundredth anniversary of the 1916 Rising, and around the role of Rudy Castle. The second book, Erin go Bragh, The Middle of an Era, 1973 1982, is followed by the third book, Erin go Bragh, The End of an Era, 1995 2003, and sees the fourth generation working for justice, liberty, and freedom in the North of Irela