Search Results for 'Royal Flying Corps'

Week II

One of Galway’s best kept secrets was the extraordinary double life led by a quiet, well brought up girl, who became the first and youngest professor of German at Galway University, only to abruptly resign her post to accept a challenge from the British Secret Service to enter the strange world of silently listening to the enemy’s conversations.

In the decades preceding the 1916 Rising, an extraordinary revolution had already taken place in rural Ireland. The British government had lost its patience with Irish landlords who owned 95 per cent of the land of Ireland (100 percent of county Galway was landlord owned), and had largely squandered their wealth leaving themselves vulnerable to poor harvests, successive seasons of bad weather, and an increasingly impoverished tenantry.

Week II

In April 1913, the Daily Mail offered £10,000 (about €500,000 today)

A great grandson of Galway's World War I fighter ace Major Robert Gregory, Robin Murray Brown, read WB Yeats' famous poem An Irish Airman Foresees His Death in Belfast last Sunday. St Anne's Cathedral was filled to capacity for a service to commemorate the centenary of the Royal Air Force (RAF), which succeeded the Royal Flying Corps in which Major Gregory flew. Major Gregory joined the war effort in 1916 and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry. He was also awarded the Legion d’Honneur — France’s highest honour.

Week IV

On February 2 1918, a day after she heard that her only son had died while flying with his squadron on the Italian front, Lady Gregory wrote briefly to WB Yeats: ‘The long dreaded telegram has come - Robert has been killed in action ….it is very hard to bear.’