It is the case that collectors are sometimes odd people; they may even be described as obsessive but down in Caledon there’s a very sane and well organised man who is dedicated to preserving the significant history of the US forces who were based in the Caledon and Tynan area between 1942 and 1944. Davy Fitzsimons has a collection of photographic memorabilia that numbers thousands, all carefully annotated with as many cross checks for accuracy as might be humanly possible and here he thanks the facility of the Internet which allows him access to many US government sources previously inaccessible. His also has an impressive collection of arms, uniforms and other military artefacts which are all original. Davy was asked what started him on the road to amassing this huge collection of WWII memorabilia of US soldiers.  | It is now through the same facility of the Internet that we can help Davy with his main aim of allowing everyone access to his collection. Naturally with such a huge collection it would be a monster site if we were to try and put it all in but we hope to reveal much of what he has battled to collect. Although there were US troops all over Northern Ireland he’d chosen to concentrate on his own home area of Caledon and Tynan. "I haven't been able to find that much left in Northern Ireland" he told us "although I think there must be lots of stuff still lingering in lofts and at the bottom of cupboards, so much of the collection I have retrieved from America" Collections of photographs taken by soldiers when they were in the area provide a fascinating insight into how they must have found this then exceedingly rural part of Northern Ireland. |
We wondered if Davy had come across people who still had contact with some of the soldiers who were here during the war How did these young men, for they were mainly in their late teens and early twenties, from towns and cities in America where such things as cars and television were everyday items, find Caledon and Tynan, where such things were beyond the imagination of the ordinary family? It was these young men of the US 2nd Division who were brought here to be trained in the arts of war by seasoned British experts. As Davy's archives show the young Americans were not quite ready for the training regime laid on by the British. Here are a couple of quotations from one of the training booklets in Davy's collection which indicate why the US soldiers had been sent to train under British instructors: The British and French know what they are fighting for because they have been in this war a long time, and the Germans believe that they do to. The British fight for their lives; they fight to stop the Germans from bombing their homes; to stop them from killing their families. The British front line soldier slashes forward without mercy. He hates the enemy. The American soldier is different. He is fair minded and thinks that the enemy will be fair too. He does not really want to kill, because he does not hate, YET.  At this time is seems most US soldiers who hadn't been into battle still looked on it as a game where the umpire's whistle might stop it before it gets too rough - he couldn't imagine anyone wanting to kill HIM! The booklet then refers to more terrible examples of the US soldier in war:
..I know so well those men who were cut to ribbons at the Kasserine Pass and I know why they were thrown into confusion, panicked by attacks, and accepted their fate almost paralyzed. When they jumped into their foxholes to let the tanks roll over them and they were bayoneted in those foxholes by the Infantry that came behind the tanks, they died with an astonished look on their faces, as if they wanted to ask: "Could that be possible, would they really do that? " |
And so those soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Division were given the benefit of the British knowledge. The young men of 23rd Infantry Regiment - all in Caledon and Tynan - and the 9th and 38th Infantry Regiments farther away in Markethill and Armagh hopefully learned their lessons well before they went to take their part in the invasion of Europe in June 1944. In this fascinating history, which seems not to have been documented at all, it's clear the Americans were very confused when they came to this part of Country Armagh. Social conditions were obviously so unlike their homeland and they had never had to contemplate that just a mile down the road, or track or path they were on was another country, one that was not taking part in the war - a neutral country. This led to many occasions when soldiers, jeeps and other transports innocently drove over a border only to be put back on the right road by the good citizens of the 'Free State'. Then, as now, the border was of much less importance to the people who lived there than people who lived 50 miles away!  | So much of Davy's collection has come from making personal contact with people ..... is he still happy for people to contact him with any information they might have ? |
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