National Army Soldier Frederick McKenna

National Army Soldier Frederick McKenna of 34 Connaught Street, Phibsborough, Dublin

Date of incident: 8 Aug. 1922

Sources: II, 15 Aug. 1922; http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 30 June 2017); Keane (2017), 292-94.

Note: Private Frederick McKenna was not mentioned as a casualty in the Cork Examiner report of 17 August 1922 that discussed the joint Dublin funeral and burials (on 14 August) of a group of National Army soldiers who had been killed about ten days earlier in the battle to capture Cork city. But the ‘Irish Medals’ website mentions both Frederick McKenna and his brother Gerald as casualties identified by their mother in a mortuary after their bodies were returned to Dublin. Both brothers were interred in the National Army Plot in Glasnevin. See http://www.irishmedals.ie/National-Army-Killed.php (accessed 30 June 2017). As indicated in the previous entry, the original source for this information is the Irish Independent of 15 August 1922.

The crowds at the collective Dublin funeral of 14 August 1922 for these eight National Army soldiers were extraordinary: ‘The Dublin public of all classes turned out, not from morbid curiosity, but to convey by their presence an expression of sympathy with the bereaved. The streets along the entire route, but especially in the centre of the city, were lined by thousands of sympathetic spectators, who reverently uncovered and prayed for the deceased as the coffins passed. A large number of the shops by which the funeral passed were closed. The train service en route was dislocated, and many of the cars had to be diverted owing to the density of the assembled crowds.’ See II, 15 Aug. 1922.