William Bernard Hickie

Sir William Bernard Hickie (21 May 1865 – 3 November 1950) was an Irish born Major General of the British Army and an Irish nationalist politician.

His titles included C.B., awarded in 1912 and K.C.B. awarded 1918. As a member of the British Army he served in the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1902; A.Q.M.G., in the Irish Command from 1912 to 1914 and in World War I from 1914 to 1918. He commanded a Brigade of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 and was Commander of the 16th (Irish) Division from 1915 on the Western Front. [Thom's Directory (Irish Who is who) 1928]

Family origins

William Hickie was born on the 21 May 1865 as eldest of eight children of Colonel James Francis Hickie (1833-1913) in "Slevyre", Terryglass, Borrisokane, County Tipperary, and his wife, Lucila Larios y Tashara (d.1880) of Castile.Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, (2004)] He came from a long soldierly line and famous Gaelic stock, William Hickie’s name is best remembered as one of the notable Irishman who served during the Great War. Two of his other four brothers also served, one was a Major in the Royal Artillery before becoming a priest. Hickie was educated at Oscort College, Birmingham a renowned seminary for training Catholic youths of good family.

Military career

Being destined for a military career he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (1882-85). He was commissioned into his father’s regiment, the Royal Fusiliers at Gibraltar, in 1885 and served with them for thirteen years in the Mediterranean, in Egypt. and India. In 1899 he graduated as captain at the Staff College, Camberley and was selected when the Second Boer War broke out as a Special Service Officer in which capacity he acted in various positions of authority and command. He was promoted from captain of mounted infantry to battalion command, subsequently of a corps until eventually at the end of 1900 he was given command of an independent column of all arms. This he held for eighteen months.

Irish command

At the end of the war there followed various staff appointments, in 1907 regimental service in Dublin and Mullingar with the 1st Royal Fusiliers, where he was in command of the regiment for the last two years and from 1909 -1912 was appointed to the Staff of the 8th Infantry Division in Cork where for four years he was well known in the hunting field and on the polo ground. In May 1912 promoted Colonel, he became Quartermaster General of the Irish Command at Royal Hospital Kilmainham. The next two years which elapsed were devoted to preparation for war, which the War Office authorities had made known was now inevitable.

Great War

When war was declared the Staff of the Irish Command became automatically the Staff of the 2nd Army Corps and accordingly with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he was promoted Brigadier-General, and as part of the British Expeditionary Force in France took charge of the Adjutant and Quartermaster-General's Department during the retreat of the 2nd Corps after the Battle of Mons, to Paris, and during the Battle of the Marne. In the middle of September 1914, he relieved one of the brigadiers in the fighting line as commander of the 13th brigade (5th Infantry Division) and then commanded the 53rd brigade (18th Infantry Division) till December 1915, when he was ordered home to assume command of the 16th (Irish) Division at Blackburn.

Promoted Major General he took over from Lt. General Sir Lawrence Parsons. Hickie - one of a rare breed, a senior, Irish, Catholic officer - was a popular replacement. It was a politically highly sensitive appointment which required the professionalism and political awareness Hickie fortunately possessed as the division was formed around a core of Irish National Volunteers in response to Carson’s Ulster Volunteers. He was much more diplomatic and tactful than his predecessors and spoke of the pride which his new command gave him, ["Irish Regiments in the Great War" p. 119, Timothy Bowmann (2003) ISBN 0 7190 6285 3] but did not hesitate to make sweeping changes amongst the senior officers of the Irish Division. After putting the division through intensive training, it left under Irish command of which each man took personal pride. The 47th and 48th Brigade were in the trenches behind Abbeyville by Christmas 1915, the 49th Brigade reaching the Western Front in February 1916.

Distinguished service

In the next two years and four months during which General Hickie commanded the 16th (Irish) Division, it earned a reputation for aggression and élan and won many memorials and mentions for bravery in the engagements during the 1916 Battle of Guillemont and the capture of Ginchy, then during the Battle of Messines, in appalling conditions the Third Battle of Ypres and in attacks near Bullecourt in the Battle of Cambrai offensive in November 1917. In January 1918 he was knighted a Knight Commander of the Bath for his services in France and "distinguished service in the field".

During this period the Division made considerable progress in developing its operational techniques but at a price in losses. The growing shortage of Irish replacement recruits due to nationalist disenchantment with the war was successfully met by Hickie through integrating non-Irish soldiers into the division. In February 1918 Hickie was invalided home on temporary sick leave, but when in hospital the German Spring Offensive began on 21 March, with the result that his division was practically wiped out and ceased to exist as a division. Although promised a new command, this did not happen before the Armistice in November. Hickie had typified the army’s better divisional commanders, was articulate, intelligent and had been competent and resourceful during the BEF’s difficult period 1916-17, laying the foundations for its full tactical success in 1918.

Civil engagement

He retired from the army in 1922, when the five Irish territorial battalions based in southern Ireland were disbanded under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. He had identified himself strongly with John Redmond’s Home Rule, and expressed that its scrapping was a disaster, was equally outspoken in condemning the activities of the Black and Tans. He was elected with a record vote as a member of the Irish Senate, the Seanad of the Irish Free State in 1925. [Dublin Chronicle, 20 July 1929, p7: "Distinguished Irish General; His magnificent War Record" a biographical portrait by D. D. Sheehan]

Hickie held his seat until the Seanad was dissolved in 1936 (replaced by Seanad Éireann in 1937), devoting himself tirelessly with heart and soul, sparing neither labour nor expense, to the cause and interest of the Irish ex-servicemen and their Old Comrade Associations, acting as President of the Area Council (Southern Ireland) of the British Legion (ex-servicemen’s charity organisation) during 1925 to 1948. [British Legion Annual Journal 1935 and 1945 p5, National Library of Ireland (LO), Dublin] Although charming, good-looking and popular with the women, he never married. He died on 3 November 1950 in Dublin and was buried in Terryglass, co. Tipperary.

Notes

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External links

* [http://www.1914-1918.net/16div.htm The British Army in the Great War: The 16th (Irish) Division]
* [http://oireachtas.ie/members-hist/default.asp?MemberFirstName=&MemberName=Hickie&disp=src Oireachtas Members Database - Profile]
* [http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/index.asp?docID=2517 Department of the Taoiseach] - Irish Soldiers in the First World War