Newspaper Clippings Volume

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Team Compiles Record Of Freedom War Send Along Your Story BURO SCAIRE MILEACA 1913-1921 BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY (IRISH PRESS Reporter) SEVERAL unusual letters arrived on the desk of Mr. Michael McDunphy, Barrister-at-Law, this week, and immediately cast his mind back to New Year's Day of 1947, the day he was asked to carry out a new task. Mr. McDunphy is Secretary to the President. It was because of the same high qualifications for which he got that position that it was he who was given the direction of the new project. The man who would begin the Bureau of Military History five years ago would have to be completely unbiased, yet fully aware of all the facets of the Irish fight for freedom. The letters on his desk were from the recorders of the resistance movements (World War II) in European Countries. The quietly proceeding silent service being carried out in the Bureau's house in Westland Row has nevertheless become known to the war historians of Europe and Michael McDunphy was being asked: "How is it done?" Coincidentally, I also arrived to ask him the same question. From the moment in January, 1947, when he stood in an empty room, furnished with two chairs, a table and one assistant, the director of the service (which is, as far as is known, without precedent), told me of how the project was planned and how it has fared. His terms of reference were: To assemble and co-ordinate material to form the basis for the compilation of the history of the movement for Independence from the formation of the Irish Volunteers on 25th November, 1913, to the 11th July, 1921. Remembering the bitter differences of political thought of thirty years ago, it is easy to visualise what barriers of suspicion, even prejudice, the Bureau had to surmount. Thousands Of Documents Yet to-day thousands of documents, carefully recorded, filed and triplicated and safely locked away, testify to the continuing success of the task. Photostat and microfilm have been brought to bear on precious scripts and photos vibrant with the stuff of revolution. Despite the fact that thousands the movement. Their task is very big and the investigators cannot hope to contact everybody, therefore they appeal for data to be sent into the Bureau where it would be very welcome. Most of the staff of the Bureau (including the director) were active participants in the movement for independence or were closely associated with it. "Our enemy," Mr. McDunphy said, "is time—that takes its steady toll of the living and that dulls the edge of memory of those who remain, Cajoling, entreating, urging, the Bureau men go after the witnesses, getting fact after fact after fact. . . ." For they work against time for posterity. Witnesses who were in their teens when the Republican Brotherhood staged a demonstration—prelude to 1913 and the Volunteers—at the 1898 commemoration, are in their seventies now. Confidential Confidence has developed in the Bureau, which sets the strict seal of confidence over all infor…