Виктория кресінің иесі: Майкл Джон О'Лири өмірі мен ерлігі

Recipient of the Victoria Cross

Major Michael John O'Leary VC (29 September 1890 – 2 August 1961) was an Irish soldier and police officer who was a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth military personnel. O'Leary achieved his award for single handedly charging and destroying two Imperial German Army barricades defended by machine gun positions near the French village of Cuinchy, in a localised operation on the Western Front during World War I. At the time of his action, O'Leary was a nine year veteran of the British Armed Forces and by the time he retired from the British Army in 1921, he had reached the rank of lieutenant. He served in the army again during World War II, although his later service was blighted by periods of ill health. At his final retirement from the military in 1945, O'Leary was in command of a prisoner of war camp at the rank of Major. Between the wars, O'Leary spent many years employed as a police officer in Canada and is sometimes considered to be a Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross. Following the end of the Second World War, he worked as a building contractor in London, where he died in 1961.

Returning to Britain to receive his medal from King George V at Buckingham Palace on 22 June 1915, O'Leary was given a grand reception attended by thousands of Londoners in Hyde Park on 10 July. He was also the subject of much patriotic writing, including a poem in the Daily Mail and the short play O'Flaherty V. C. by George Bernard Shaw. His reception was repeated in Macroom when he visited Ireland, with crowds turning out to applaud him. Daniel O'Leary was interviewed in a local newspaper regarding his son's exploit but was reportedly unimpressed, commenting: "I am surprised he didn't do more. I often laid out twenty men myself with a stick coming from Macroom Fair, and it is a bad trial of Mick that he could kill only eight, and he having a rifle and bayonet." According to one eyewitness account, Daniel caused public embarrassment when he confused his son's German opponents for the English. O'Leary was further rewarded for his service, being advanced to a commissioned rank as a second lieutenant with the Connaught Rangers, and he was also presented with a Russian decoration, the Cross of St. George (third class). Despite his popularity with the crowds in London and Macroom, he was jeered by Ulster Volunteers at a recruitment drive in Ballaghaderreen during the autumn of 1915. This treatment caused such a scandal that it was raised in the Houses of Parliament in December.

Leaving his wife Greta and their two children in Britain, O'Leary returned to Canada in March 1921 with the purported intention of rejoining the RNWMP, newly renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For unknown reasons, this plan came to nothing and after some months giving lectures on his war service and working in a publishing house, O'Leary joined the Ontario Provincial Police, charged with enforcing the prohibition laws. In 1924, with his family recently arrived from England, O'Leary left the Ontario police force and became a police sergeant with the Michigan Central Railway in Bridgeburg, Ontario, receiving £33 a month. With his health in serious decline, the British Legion arranged for O'Leary to return to Britain and work in their poppy factory. By 1932, O'Leary was living in Southborne Avenue in Colindale, had regained his health and found employment as a commissionaire at The May Fair Hotel in London, at which he was involved in charitable events for wounded servicemen. With the mobilisation of the British Army in 1939, O'Leary returned to military service as a captain in the Middlesex Regiment. O'Leary was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force but had returned to Britain before the Battle of France due to a recurrence of his malaria. He is also remembered in his birthplace, the macroom online website listing him as a prominent citizen and states that "while many might consider he was fighting with the wrong army, in the wrong war, he was nevertheless a very brave, resourceful and capable soldieer who deserved the honours bestowed upon him."