This book explores the war writings of Patrick MacGill James Hanley and Liam O'Flaherty
working class Roman Catholic Irishmen all of whom fought in the First World War as privates
and who collectively it is argued constitute a distinct trio of war writers. Through
discussions focusing upon class camaraderie violence religion trauma and the body this
book considers these Irish soldiers within a cultural social and historical context. Central
to this examination is the idea that the motives for enlistment and the experience of army
labor and even combat was such that military service was perceived as work rather than a duty
or vocation undertaken in support of any prevailing doctrines of patriotism or sacrifice. The
men's Catholicism also shaped their aesthetic and philosophical responses to the war even
while the war conversely troubled their faith or confirmed their religious scepticism. The war
writing of these men is located within both an Irish and a pan-European literary working class
tradition thereby permitting the texts to be viewed within a wider context than literature of
the First World War and from a perspective that goes beyond Ireland and Britain. These
characteristics shape a perspective on the conflict very different from that of the canonical
officer-writers men such as Siegfried Sassoon Robert Graves or Edmund Blunden whose work is
considered alongside those of the three Irish soldier-writers.
