Departures of note

In the weeks after the Freikorps quashed the Marxist revolution in Munich in February 1919, Michael Keogh was the officer on duty at the Turken Strasse barracks. When a riot broke out in the gymnasium after a political address, he broke up the attack with the aid of a sergeant and six soldiers. Keogh later recalled in his memoir recognizing one of the attacked soldiers: 'The fellow with the moustache gave his name promptly: Adolf Hitler. It was the Lance Corporal of Ligny. I would not have recognized him. He had been five months in hospital, in Passewalk, Pomerania. He was thin and emaciated from his wounds.'

Keogh was born in 1891 in Tullow, County Carlow, the son of a Royal Irish Constabulary policeman. He emigrated to New York in 1907, joined the National Guard, and became a member of Clan na Gael, developing a friendship with Roger Casement. After serving against Mexican guerrillas and working on the Panama Canal, he returned to Ireland in 1913 and joined the Royal Irish Regiment. He was deployed to France at the outbreak of World War I, received the 1914 Star for service during the retreat from Mons, and was captured and sent to Sennelager Camp, Westphalia.

While a prisoner of war, Keogh resumed contact with Casement, who was in Germany attempting to build an Irish Brigade of Irish POWs to fight on the German side. Keogh led the recruitment drive, which intended to enlist 1,500 Irish POWs, but by early 1915 only 56 men had joined. The plan ended with Casement's arrest and execution in 1916. Keogh had joined the Imperial German Army by 1918 and was placed in command of a machine gun company with the 16th Bavarian Infantry Division at Ligny, where he first briefly met Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler, who was recovering from a groin wound. Keogh was discharged from the German army in September 1919 and returned to Ireland, where he was involved in smuggling Mauser guns from Hamburg and met with Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, and Erskine Childers.

Keogh's story came to light after the rediscovery of his memoirs, which he was working on at the time of his death in 1964. He brought the papers with him to the hospital, keeping them under his pillow. His son found him in a distressed state, claiming his papers had vanished; a nurse stated the only other visitor had been a 'priest', and Keogh assumed this man had removed them. The papers were rediscovered by Keogh's grandson in 2005, found bound with those donated by Moss Twomey, former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army. Some have been critical of Keogh's account, with the Director of the Bureau of Military History prefacing his Witness Statement with: 'his claims to importance, which he parades on every occasion, are regarded by those who have come into official contact with him as grossly exaggerated and completely unreliable.'