Aristocrats and itinerants, unionists and nationalists, Catholics and Protestants – the Great War united thousands of Clare men and women to a cause for which many of them would go out to fight and die. Their motives varied from a sense of duty to ‘king and country’, to concern about the fate of ‘poor Catholic Belgium’; from mercenary motives, fuelled by poverty, to the moral duty to fight for civilization against the ‘savage Hun’. Some followed ‘Redmond’s call’, to secure Home Rule, while others enlisted for sheer adventure.

This seminal work attempts, for the first time, to understand what really happened in County Clare during the Great War, how its economic and political life was radically transformed during this terrible conflict, and how the contribution of those who gave their lives was largely written out of history.