National Army Soldier (Sergeant Major) Francis Neary

National Army Soldier (Sergeant Major) Francis Neary (aged about 22) of Ballinakill, Killashee, Co. Longford (Gurteenroe/Codrum Cross near Macroom)

Date of incident: 2 Sept. 1922

Sources: CE, 4, 7 Sept. 1922; II, 5 Sept. 1922; SS, 9 Sept. 1922; Longford Leader, 9 Sept. 1922; MSPC/2D206 (Military Archives); Keane (2017), 301-2, 417; An t-Óglách, ‘War Special’, ‘Day by Day’, 9 Sept. 1922, p. 2, http://antoglach.militaryarchives.ie/PDF/1922_09_09_Vol_IV_No_14_An_t-Oglac.pdf (accessed 6 July 2017).

Note: Sergeant Major Francis (Frank) Neary was killed on 2 September 1922 almost alongside Private John O’Leary when the anti-Treaty IRA attacked the town of Macroom in strength after the forces of the National Army had driven them out and occupied it. See CE, 4, 7 Sept. 1922. A report on the specific circumstances of Neary’s death was sent from Colonel S. Murphy at Southern Command Headquarters in Cork city to Colonel F. McHenry in the Office of the Adjutant General at GHQ in Dublin on 9 February 1923: Neary ‘was killed in action on the 2/9/22 while in charge of a party of ten men entering Macroom. The party was heavily attacked with machine guns and rifles, and whilst firing at an enemy machine gun post, Neary was hit in the head, death being instantaneous. Commdt. [Peter] Conlon reports that [the] deceased was a brave and reliable soldier. He was attached to “A” Company, 1st Midland Division, and joined the Regular Army 7/2/22. The occurrence took place on the morning of the heavy attack on Macroom.’ See MSPC/2D206 (Military Archives).

Immediately after the Irregulars’ attack on Macroom on 2 September 1922, Commandant O’Conlon had given a brief account of Private Neary’s death to the correspondent of the Cork Examiner: ‘Nearer still to the town, as we approached the Glen Gate, Sergeant Neary, another brave soldier [like O’Leary, who had just been fatally shot], was killed. He had fifteen men with him and was bringing them down the road [towards Macroom]. At this point he found there was a sniper inside the fence. Capt. Chambers was right up behind him. He showed the captain were the sniper was and said, “I have something that will settle him.” He pulled a bomb out of his pocket, drew out the pin, and fired it towards the place where he suspected the sniper lay.’ But the bomb or grenade failed to explode. Neary ‘then went down along the road and tried to get the sniper with his rifle. Just before he was shot, he shouted “Up McKeon!” a favourite cry of the men of McKeon’s Division, of which he was one, and a very brave soldier too. Just before he died, Capt. Chambers bent over and recited an Act of Contrition in his ear.’ See CE, 7 Sept. 1922. 

Miss Margaret Tanner, the aunt of the victim, was awarded a gratuity of £100 in May 1924. Frank Neary had lived with her from the age of 5 and apparently until his enlistment early in February 1922. Prior to joining the National Army, he had worked as a farm labourer at varying wages (sometimes 30s. weekly or 20s. plus ‘board’), from which he had given an average of 10s. a week to his aunt. He had also shared another portion of his income (5s. per week) with his widowed sister Mary Anne Hussey—perhaps amounting to about £10 annually. She lived in a small cottage without any garden attached. She was a non-working mother with a four-year-old boy. She pleaded that she was ‘trying to live on five shilling[s] a week from the County Home’. See Mary Anne Hussey to Army Pensions Board, 23 May 1924, MSPC/2D206. Her claim for an allowance was denied on the grounds of ‘no dependency’.

Francis Neary grew up in the household of his grandfather and grandmother Edward and Catherine Tanner of house 13 in Templeton Glebe townland in Killashee parish near Longford town. His grandfather was an agricultural labourer. His grandparents were already 76 and 74 respectively in 1911. Their daughter Margaret Tanner (then aged 44 and still single) no doubt acted as the ‘mother’ of the three co-resident Neary grandchildren, including Francis Neary (then aged 11), the youngest of the three resident siblings (two boys and a girl). Margaret Tanner was the sister of the siblings’ real mother, about whom we know almost nothing. Only two of the elderly Tanners’ six children were alive in 1911, four having died, according to the 1911 census. The family was undoubtedly poor. Margaret Tanner worked as a domestic servant, as did her 19-year-old niece Mary Anne Neary, the sister of Francis and of his older brother Patrick. Years later, aunt and niece would wrestle over the rights to the dead Francis Neary’s pension. There were no Nearys living in the three-person Tanner household in 1901. Whatever happened to the children’s absent parents occurred in the period between 1901 and 1911.