Commander-in-Chief
List of Plates
1.Emmet Dalton in his youth. Image courtesy of Audrey Dalton Simenz.
2.Emmet Dalton in British Army uniform with unidentified young man – possibly his half-brother Martin. Image courtesy of Audrey Dalton Simenz.
3.Members of D Coy 2nd Leinsters decorated for bravery, front row from left, Emmet Dalton MC, Sgt O’Neill VC, Capt Moran MC and Pte Moffat VC. At right, Lt Dorgan. Dhunn, Germany 9 Jan 1919. Image courtesy of Audrey Dalton Simenz.
4.Emmet Dalton and Michael Collins in London in 1921 during the Anglo-Irish Treaty talks. Image courtesy of Private Collection/Bridgeman Images.
5.Emmet and Charles Dalton in National Army uniform with their parents, James F. and Katherine Dalton and other siblings, from left, Nuala, Deirdre, Dermot and Brendan. Image courtesy of Audrey Dalton Simenz.
6.Shelling of Four Courts, Dublin, 1922 with artillery under command of Major General Emmet Dalton. Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.
7.Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief, National Army (second from left) with Major General Emmet Dalton (third left) at Curragh Camp, August 1922. Also in photo, from left, Colonel Dunphy, Comdt. General Peadar MacMahon and Comdt. General Diarmuid O’Hegarty. Image courtesy of Getty Images.
8.Major General Emmet Dalton (left) with General Tom Ennis, and ship’s officers, aboard one of the ships deployed for the Passage West landings. Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.
9.Emmet Dalton (front row, right) at funeral of Michael Collins, with General Richard Mulcahy (left) and Adjutant General Gearóid O’Sullivan (centre). Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.
10.Wedding of Major General Emmet Dalton and Alice Shannon at Imperial Hotel, Cork, 9 October 1922. Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.
11.Emmet Dalton and bride Alice on their wedding day. Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.
12.Emmet Dalton and children, from left, Richard, Nuala and Audrey, in the back garden of their home at Iona Road, Dublin. Image courtesy of Audrey Dalton Simenz.
13.Emmet Dalton, smoking a cigarette as he finishes a golf swing. Image courtesy of Audrey Dalton Simenz.
14.Dermot Dalton, in US Army uniform, with brothers Charles and Emmet at Leopardstown races, October 1945. Image courtesy of Audrey Dalton Simenz.
15.Emmet and Alice Dalton and family, 1945/46, in front row Nuala and Richard, at back from left, Sybil, Emmet Michael and Audrey. Image courtesy of Audrey Dalton Simenz.
16.Emmet and Alice Dalton at a film premiere in London. Image courtesy of Audrey Dalton Simenz.
Introduction
My fascination with the story of Emmet Dalton goes back to my boyhood in 1950s Dublin. It was a drab, grey era, and it seemed to me that Dalton brought a touch of glamour and much-needed excitement to the austere Irish scene by founding Ardmore film studios near Bray, County Wicklow. My parents were great newspaper readers, we were also great cinema-goers, and I read exciting stories about Dalton’s Ardmore venture attracting well-known film stars like James Cagney to Ireland to make movies. Dalton’s own teenaged daughter, Audrey, had become a film star in Hollywood, and in the Irish media this was a great success story. It meant that ‘one of our own’ was appearing in films with some of the biggest names in the movie business.
It emerged that Emmet Dalton was a man with an intriguing military past. Sometimes the newspapers referred to him deferentially as Major General Dalton. I cannot recall when I learned that he had won an award for bravery while serving as a junior officer with the British Army in the First World War. The 1950s was an era when official nationalist Ireland seemed reluctant to acknowledge the role of the countless thousands of Irishmen who had fought in British uniform ‘for the rights of small nations’ during that conflict. But I do remember being utterly spellbound reading an interview with Dalton about an exploit during the subsequent Anglo-Irish War when he had thrown in his lot with the IRA. He told how he had bluffed his way into Mountjoy Prison in a hi-jacked armoured car in a vain attempt to rescue a notable IRA leader. The article was accompanied by a large photograph of Dalton, a handsome man with a neatly-clipped, military-style moustache. I thought that something of his calm air of authority and his qualities of leadership came through in that picture.
When the Irish republican movement split on the issue of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Dalton stayed loyal to his friend, the charismatic pro-Treaty leader Michael Collins, known as the Big Fellow, whom he hero-worshipped. Collins, clearly impressed by Dalton’s raw courage and