#OnThisDay 1945 Winston Churchill said in his Victory in Europe speech,
“If it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr. de Valera or perish forever from the earth. However, with a restraint and poise to which, I say, history will find few parallels, we never laid a violent hand upon them, which at times would have been quite easy and quite natural, and left the de Valera Government to frolic with the German and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart’s content.”
He then names several Irish VC winners, including Lance-Corporal Keneally, who was in fact, an English man from Birmingham, who had stolen an Irish labourer’s identity card.
Three days later, De Valera would give a response to Churchill.
The Irish at War 