Emmet Dalton

Dalton was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, to Irish-American parents James F. and Katharine L. Dalton (née Riley). The family moved back to Ireland when he was two. He grew up in a middle-class Catholic background in Drumcondra in North Dublin and lived at No. 8 Upper St. Columba's Road. He was educated by the Christian Brothers at O'Connell School in North Richmond Street. He joined the nationalist militia, the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and the following year, though only fifteen, was involved in the smuggling of arms into Ireland. ==Military career==

First World War Dalton joined the British Army in 1915 for the duration of the Great War. His decision was not that unusual among Irish Volunteers, as over 20,000 of the National Volunteers joined the British New Army on the urgings of Nationalist leader John Redmond. Dalton's father, however, disagreed with his son's decision. Emmet Dalton initially joined the 7th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers (RDF) as a temporary 2nd Lieutenant. By 1916, he was attached to the 9th Battalion, RDF, 16th (Irish) Division under Major-General William Hickie, which contained many Irish nationalist recruits. During the Battle of the Somme in September 1916, Dalton was involved in bloody fighting during the Battle of Ginchy, in which over 4,000 Irishmen were killed or wounded. Afterwards he was transferred to the 6th Battalion, Leinster Regiment, and sent to Salonika then Palestine, where he commanded a company and then supervised a sniper school in El Arish. he became close to Michael Collins and was involved in the Squad, the Dublin-based assassination unit. On 14 May 1921, Dalton led an operation with Paddy Daly that Dalton and Collins had devised. It was designed to rescue Gen. Sean McEoin from Mountjoy Prison using a hijacked British armoured car and two of Dalton's old British Army uniforms. Dalton was married shortly afterwards (on 9 October 1922) to Alice Shannon in Cork's Imperial Hotel. By December 1922 he had resigned his command in the Army. He did not agree with the execution of republican prisoners that marked the latter stages of the Civil War. After briefly working as clerk of the Irish Senate, he left this job to work in the movie industry. ==Film industry==

Over the following forty years, he worked in Ireland and the US in film production. In 1958, he founded Irish Ardmore Studios in Bray. His company helped produce films such as The Blue Max, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Lion in Winter, all of which were filmed in Ireland. His daughter is Irish actress Audrey Dalton. ==Death==

Emmet Dalton died in his daughter Nuala's house in Dublin in 1978 on his 80th birthday, never having seen the film that Cathal O'Shannon of RTÉ had made on his life. During the making of the film they visited the battlefields in France (including Ginchy and Guillemont on the Somme), Kilworth Camp in Cork, Béal Na Bláth, and other places that Dalton had not visited since his earlier years. He wished to be buried as near as possible to his friend Michael Collins in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, and was buried there in March 1978 after a military funeral. None of the ruling Fianna Fáil government ministers or TDs attended. ==References==

• • Turtle Bunbury, The Glorious Madness, Tales of The Irish and The Great War • Kettle, Tom & Dalton, Emmet, Mad Guns and Invisible Wands (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin 2014), pp. 99–115, • • Townshend, Charles, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (London 2006) • Townshend, Charles, The Republic: The Fight For Independence (London 2013) == External links ==