Dudley Clarke was best known as British intelligence chief who devised the SAS but lesser known is his role advising De Valera’s government on how to fend off a feared German invasion
There’s too much death: Prospect of an ‘official’ British history of the Troubles is hurtful to families like mine
Clarke’s first Irish contacts were Joe Walshe, the top official in the Department of External Affairs – the forerunner of the Department of Foreign Affairs – and Col Liam Archer, the Irish Army’s military intelligence chief during a hastily-called meeting in Downing Street. Walshe said he and Archer had come with “the knowledge, but no more” of De Valera and the Irish army’s chief of staff, Gen Daniel McKenna, but only a “few of their other colleagues” knew of the mission.“I could see that it was by no means to the taste of the visitors who had rushed to London overnight obsessed with the imminent danger,” he wrote.
Fighter aircraft were available, too, on invitation; though anti-aircraft guns and other weapons could be supplied to Dublin at once, the Irish officers were told, who, in turn, gave a frank report on their lack of materiel.“The principle of British intervention after an invasion had started was accepted, but it would inevitably have to wait until the Government of Eire judged the time to be ripe for them to ask for it,” he wrote.
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