Shadows from the Trenches
Emmanuel Destenay

In his first work published in 2021, Shadows from the Trenches. Veterans of the Great War & the Irish Revolution (1918-1923), historian Emmanuel Destenay, winner of the CCI 2015 Prix de thèse, traces the return of Irish soldiers from World War I. He focuses on the contributions of these survivors to the Irish War of Independence and proves how decisive their contribution was in the armed fight against the British Crown.

During the ensuing civil war, they held important positions in the command of the national army and swore allegiance to Dáil Eireann. Destenay revisits discourses affirming that this community was persecuted by the IRA, and emphasises instead the diversity of their trajectories. In so doing, he sheds light on the role of the survivors of the trenches in the Irish revolution, long-ignored by historians and broadly unknown to the public up to this day.