Militaria Archive

Postcards and photographs from the private collection of Comdt. Vincent Byrne, E Company, 2nd Battalion, Dublin Brigade, Old IRA.

Postcards and photographs from the private collection of Comdt. Vincent Byrne, E Company, 2nd Battalion, Dublin Brigade, Old IRA (several of these are from the Scrapbook also featured on this site). Card obverse are included as reference for Collectors. This small collection includes: unpublished private photographs of the young Vinny Byrne, the 1916 Irish Rebellion postcards, World War One era Irish Republican propaganda postcards, memoriam cards, Frongoch postcards & pictures of the Rebels returning from Frongoch. Unpublished pictures of the Irish Rising rebels at Stafford Jail & the 1920 Dublin and Tipperary Hurling and Gaelic football teams as well as a Customs House burning postcard. 26th Battalion Irish Army officers during WW2 and the Dublin Brigade marching through Dublin, Séan Lemass with Vinny Byrne at a Michael Collins Commemoration. Also Customs House and Easter Rising commmemorations from as recent as the 1983. If you can identify any of the people in any of these pictures please get in contact using the email address below.

Irish Rebellion, Easter 1916 postcard - Captain Seán Connolly of the Irish Citizen Army - Possibly the first Rebel fatality of 1916. Seán Connolly was an Abbey Theatre actor who became a captain in the Irish citizen Army. His men held City hall to disrupt British Army movements to and from the adjacent Dublin Castle. Eventually after a british army raid 26 bodies were removed, all apparently killed in direct combat. He was wentioned by W.B Yeats in his 'Three Songs To The One Burden' :" Who was the first man shot that day? The player Connolly, Close to the City Hall he died; Catriage and voice had he; He lacked those years that go with skill, But later might have been A famous, a brilliant figure Before the painted scene. From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen."