'Friendly Fire' – The Francis Ledwidge story

A NEW play looking at the life of Francis Ledwidge – an Irish poet and nationalist who was killed while fighting with the British Army in the First World War – opens at the New Theatre in Dublin on Monday 29 September.

Friendly Fire, by Gerard Humphreys, deals with Ledwidge's work as a trade union organiser in Meath, the conflict he faced at the outset of the war, his return home during the Easter Rising, and finally his last battle at Ypres.

Born in Slane, County Meath, Francis Ledwidge had a flair for writing and his poetry was published in local newspapers from when he was just 14. 

A trade unionist, he would lose his job at a copper mine in Beauparc after organising a strike for better working conditions in 1910. He was also an Irish-speaker and supporter of Sinn Féin.

During the Home Rule crisis, Francis joined the Irish Volunteers, who were formed in response to threats from the unionist Ulster Volunteers to mount a civil war should Ireland be granted Home Rule.

Like many of his fellow nationalists of the time, Ledwidge answered the call of John Redmond for Irishmen to join the British Army and fight in the First World War. He enlisted in the British Army in October 1914. Explaining his decision, he said:

"I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy of civilisation and I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing but pass resolutions."

He fought at the Battle of Gallipoli and returned home on leave in 1916 where he learned of the brutal execution of his two poet friends, Pádraig Pearse and Thomas Mac Donagh, by the British Army.

His attitude to the war changed completely after that and epitomised the shifting nationalist sentiment in Ireland.

"If someone were to tell me now that the Germans were coming in over our back wall, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop them. They could come!" he said.

Before he left for France, this now disillusioned poet composed his Lament for Thomas Mac Donagh, completed about a week after he was shot in the bleak stone-breakers' yard of Kilmainham Jail.

Francis himself perished at the age of 29 in the muddy trenches of Belgium on 31 July 1917 at the Battle of Ypres.

Friendly Fire runs at the New Theatre in, East Essex Street, Temple Bar (behind Clarence Hotel) from 29 September to 14 October.

Tickets are €15 and available from www.thenewtheatre.com