Cathal O'Shannon talks to Emmet Dalton at Guinchy where sixty years previously he had led his men in battle.

Emmet Dalton says it is impossible to say if Ireland's involvement in the war was too high a price too pay. He believes that the Irish men who fought were fighting for a cause they felt was fully justified, to preserve the freedom of the world.  He says that it is difficult today to understand how awful conditions were and he does not believe that today's generation would have survived.

Dalton says that jobs of the officers in field were incredibly difficult when you think that during the Battle of the Somme life expectancy was ten day.

'Emmet Dalton Remembers' was first broadcast following the death of Emmet Dalton in March 1978. The programme was made in the final eighteen months of his life.

Emmet Dalton had a remarkable life. At the age of seventeen he joined the Dublin Fusiliers and served as a Lieutenant at Guinchy and the Somme and was awarded the Military Cross.

Returning to Ireland he fought in the War of Independence and was with Michael Collins when he was killed at Béal n mBláth. An article in the RTÉ Guide noted that is this wasn't extraordinary enough then,

"Add further that Emmet Dalton became clerk to the first Irish Senate, a first class golfer and international selector, a whiskey and insurance agent, a movie-maker and the founder of Ardmore Studios and his own life assumes something of an epic quality."

(RTÉ Guide August 18, 1978 vol. 2 No 33. p9)

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