In December 1944 Irishman Robert Armstrong arrived at Waldheim Prison in eastern Germany. It was bitterly cold and the German Reich was collapsing on all fronts.
Inmates noted this impressive man, who was 6ft tall and built accordingly, had been reduced to a skeletal figure.
Armstrong had been arrested by the German authorities in France on November 26th, 1944, and sentenced to death for collaboration with the Allies during the second World War.
His death sentence was commuted to 15 years in jail following the intervention of his neighbour Seán MacÉoin, then a prominent Fine Gael TD, with the German government.
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Armstrong’s prison sentence would hasten his death in any case. The Germans kept moving him from prison to prison to keep one step ahead of the Allies, who had landed on the continent of Europe on D-Day. He was transferred from Brussels to a prison in Aachen and then to a prison near Cologne.
While there, he was badly beaten by a German prison guard. He also developed a boil on his leg that failed to heal and sapped what energy he had left. In October 1944 he was moved eastward to Kassel-Wehlheiden to work outside, building a new camp. Armstrong and the other inmates were forced to rebuild the camp every time the Americans bombed it.
At first the conditions in early autumn were relatively clement, but, as the weather deteriorated, so did his condition. The poor nourishment and harsh weather became intolerable. After the war, an unnamed Dutch prisoner who had been transferred with Armstrong to Waldheim gave this account of Armstrong’s final days:
“Armstrong’s health deteriorated in captivity. He developed a leg sore which worsened. This magnificently built man was reduced to a skeletal and pitiful figure. A Dutch prisoner remembered: ‘He died roughly two days after his arrival. All comrades were very moved by his death and prayed for him.’”
[ Grief and remembrance – Ronan McGreevy on Dublin’s Armistice Day in 1924Opens in new window ]
Armstrong is remembered on the side wall of the shelter at Valenciennes (St Roch) communal cemetery. It records the date of his death as December 16th, 1944.
Armstrong was born in October 1894 in Newbliss, Co Monaghan, into a Church of Ireland family. His father, James, was an itinerant estates manager. The family moved around Ireland, finally settling in Currygrane outside Edgeworthstown, Co Longford, the family home of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson.
Wilson’s assassination in June 1922 by two former British soldiers turned Irish nationalists was the triggering event for the Irish Civil War.
Armstrong was a gardener whose life and career was disrupted by the cataclysm of two world wars. In June 1915, at the age of 20, he joined the Irish Guards. His brother James (Henry) was already serving in the regiment and was killed in October 1915. Armstrong was wounded in January 1917 when a bursting shell shattered his hip.
Afterwards, he joined the then Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission, a peacetime army of gardeners set up to tend to the graves of the 1.1 million British and Commonwealth servicemen who died in the Great War.
In 1940 the Germans invaded France again. Commission staff were evacuated back to Britain or interned by the Germans. Armstrong remained at liberty because he was an Irish citizen.
He expressed no gratitude towards the occupiers. On the contrary, he needled them whenever he could. It was a dangerous game.
Though too old to fight, Armstrong found another way to help the Allied cause. He joined the St Jacques evasion network, one of a myriad of networks set up to smuggle stranded Allied servicemen out of occupied Europe.
[ War and remembrance – Ronan McGreevy on the Battle of Le Pilly Opens in new window ]
At the same time Allied airmen who died locally were being buried in St Valenciennes. This became a flashpoint. Local women put flowers on the graves of Allied soldiers to remember Armistice Day in defiance of a ban by the German authorities. When a German officer kicked the flowers away, Armstrong punched him.
When the war ended, locals insisted that a memorial be erected to Armstrong’s memory. At every turn this proud, stubborn and courageous man chose a path which led to his premature death. He could have gone back to Britain or Ireland and seen out the war tending to some country estate. He owed nothing to anybody or any cause.
The commission concluded: “As a neutral he could probably have carried on unmolested, but his patriotism compelled him to assist Allied soldiers and later American airmen to escape.”
Armstrong’s life was documented in my book published in 2016: Wherever the Firing Line Extends: Ireland and the Western Front, and further information is contained in two relatively new publications – Clodagh Finn and John Morgan’s The Irish in the Resistance, and Caitlin DeAngelis’s The Caretakers: War Graves Gardeners and the Secret Battle to Rescue Allied Airmen in second World War.
DeAngelis notes that two other Irish gardeners with the Imperial War Graves Commission (now Commonwealth War Graves Commission) also helped the Allies in the second World War.
Dubliner William O’Connor was captured by the Germans and tortured before being liberated in April 1945. Thomas Crowley from Cork also assisted the Allies.