Michael O'Leary (VC)
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Michael O'Leary VC (September 29, 1890 – August 2, 1961) born Inchigeela, Macroom, County Cork, Ireland was an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. Also considered a Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross.
[edit] Details
He was 26 years old, and a Lance-Corporal in the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, British Army during the First World War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC.
On February 1, 1915 at Cuinchy, France, Lance-Corporal O'Leary was one of the storming party which advanced against the enemy's barricades. He rushed to the front and killed five Germans who were holding the first barricade, after which he attacked a second barricade 60 yards further on. This he captured after killing three of the enemy and taking two more of them prisoner. The lance-corporal thus practically took the position by himself and prevented the rest of the attacking party from being fired upon.
Michael O'Leary can also be considered Canadian. He came to Saskatchewan in 1913 and enlisted in the Royal North West Mounted Police, returning quickly to Ireland on the outbreak of the war a year later. O'Leary and his family returned to Canada after the war and he became an inspector in the Ontario Provincial Police. In 1925 they went to Michigan briefly before returning to England where O'Leary was a linkman in the Mayfair Hotel at London. He re-enlisted during World War II in the Middlesex Regiment, retiring as a major in 1945, and died on August 21, 1961, aged 70, at Whittington Hospital in Highgate. He is buried at Paddington cemetery Mill Hill, London.
The British Army featured a recruiting poster of “O’Leary VC”. The British also decided it would be a good idea to enlist Michael O'Leary's father’s support in the attempt to recruit more soldiers in his native Cork in Ireland. Frank Gallagher, editor of the Cork Free Press and later editor of the Irish Bulletin during the Anglo-Irish War, and of the Irish Press takes up the story:
“The news items which never survived the blue pencil of the British censor often decorated the newspaper office walls. The best was the recruiting speech of Michael O'Leary’s father in his native Inchigeela. For incredible bravery, his son had won the Victoria Cross, and the War Office took the father on to the recruiting platforms, or rather platform, for he did not last more than one meeting. His speech, as the censor killed it, was something like this:
“Mr. O’Leary, senior, father of the famous V.C., speaking in the Inchigeela district, urged the young men to join the British army. ‘If you don’t’, he told them, ‘the Germans will come here and will do to you what the English have been doing for the last seven hundred years’.” (excerpted from Frank Gallagher's Four Glorious Years, 1953. He wrote under the pen name David Hogan.)
Manus O'Riordan (head of research for SIPTU re-tells the story in the Ballingeary Historical Society Journal (2005).
His Victoria Cross is displayed at The Guards Regimental Headquarters (Irish Guards RHQ) (London, England).
O'Leary Lake in Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan, has been named in his honour.
[edit] References
- The Register of the Victoria Cross (1981, 1988 and 1997)
- The Irish Sword (Brian Clarke 1986)
- Irelands VCs ISBN 1-899243-00-3 (Dept of Economic Development 1995)
- Monuments to Courage (David Harvey, 1999)
- VCs of the First World War - The Western Front 1915 (Peter F. Batchelor & Christopher Matson, 1999)
- Irish Winners of the Victoria Cross (Richard Doherty & David Truesdale, 2000)
