Book review: Remembering the GAA members killed during the Troubles

August 15, 1969, was a Friday, and the second last day of our family holiday in the Kerry Gaeltacht when we climbed Mount Brandon. On our way down, we met some other climbers on their way up.

“There’s murder in the North,” a man told us. “I heard it on the radio. They’re burning the Catholics out of their houses”.

That was my introduction to “the Troubles” in what was then called the Six Counties.

 From that day until the signing of the Good Friday agreement in 1998 (and well beyond it), the Troubles were a daily feature of every news bulletin and newspaper in the country.

For those of us in the safety of the Republic, and who rarely travelled to the North, the Troubles became like wallpaper; white noise in our lives. It was always there but you didn’t see it, or hear it, anymore.

Because I never took the time to give the Northern Ireland situation a second thought, I found reading Peadar Thompson’s book, Lost Gaels: Remembering the Members of the GAA Killed During the Conflict in Ireland a disturbing experience.

Like most GAA members in the Republic, I went about my daily routine without fear, but this was not the case in Ulster, where GAA members were constantly under threat, whether going to training, opening and closing the club facilities, or just travelling to games.

Lost Gaels is the story of 164 members of the GAA who lost their lives during the Troubles. It contains biographies of almost 100 of these men and women. 

Whatever way you read these biographies, at random or in chronological order, it is sobering. 

The statistic once heard on the radio — “A man was shot in Belfast last night…” — becomes the story of a family man who supported or played for his local GAA club and the void that was experienced when he failed to come home one day.

Patrick Elliman was the first member of the GAA to be killed in July, 1970. 

Patrick was shot in the head by the British Army. He was 62 years of age, born in 1908 and played as a goalkeeper for Antrim for nine years.

He was walking along his street, dressed in slippers and a short-sleeved shirt when he was shot in the head by a British soldier.

Some of the victim’s stories struck closer to home than I could have expected. Máire Drumm, killed by loyalist forces in 1976 aged 57, is one such story. 

The opening line of her story, as told by her son Seamus reads: “I was eight years old the first time I was ever in Croke Park in 1956. Mum took me down to see Antrim play Cork in the All-Ireland Camogie final.”

My mother, Sheila Cahill, played for Cork in that final and although Cork lost on that day, the game was one of her great sporting memories. I can only imagine what the win meant to Máire Drumm and the Antrim supporters.

The 1970s were statistically the worst times of the Troubles. There were 2,096 killings between 1970 and 1979, and 68 of these were members of the GAA. Forty-four more GAA members were killed in the ’80s and another 49 in the ’90s. There have been three deaths this century, the last in 2011.

Of the 164 victims of the Troubles recorded in Lost Gaels, almost three quarters (72%) were killed by the British Army or loyalist forces. 

A further 16 were killed in action with the republican forces, 20 were killed by the IRA or dissident breakaways (three GAA members were killed in the Omagh bombing in 1998, for example), and five lost their lives on hunger strike.

In writing Lost Gaels, Peadar Thompson has given us a view of the important role the GAA played in Ulster throughout the 20th century. 

Many GAA members were treated as second class citizens in their daily lives. In the GAA however, they could play and watch games, train, share a laugh, and not have to hide their true personas.

The tragedies of the Troubles remain. More than 3,500 people were killed and thousands more were injured and scarred for life.

The GAA is one of the families that suffers the void of the loss of its 164 members. 

One would hope that the families of the victims recorded in Lost Gaels will get some comfort knowing that their loved ones’ stories live on.