CSM Martin Doyle, at Reincourt, France, took command of his company, extricated a surrounded group of men, rescued a wounded officer as well as the wounded crew of a tank, before which he had to destroy a machine gun firing on it and later drove off an enemy counter attack. About the only thing he failed to do was pick up the expended brass - CSM Doyle was awarded a VC to accompany his MM. CSM Doyle was a pre-war regular, joining the Royal Irish Regt in Kilkenny in 1909. He was a native of Co. Wexford. He went to France with the Dublin Fusiliers in 1914 and joined the RMF on promotion to CSM. He went on to join the IRA in the War of Independence and fought in the Civil War in the National Army, in which he served as a CS until 1937. He died in 1940 and was interred in Grangegorman military cemetery, Dublin. Martin Doyle, from Gusserane, New Ross, in the county of Wexford, was a soldier born in 1891 and at age 26, a recipient of the Victoria Cross military medal. Serving with the Royal Munster Fusiliers, he was awarded this medal for gallantry in the First World War while fighting at Reincourt, France in 1918. As a young man, Doyle enlisted in the Royal Irish Regiment and was soon drafted to India where he attended classes and training in order to better himself. At the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, he was called home and then with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers was dispatched to the French front where he was promoted to sergeant in 1915. After the Battle of Mons, now a Company Sergeant-Major and a military medal winner he transferred to the Royal Munster Fusiliers. Doyle earned his Victoria Cross at Reincourt in September 1918 by carrying to safety a wounded soldier and helping to free a group of his men pinned down by German forces. He returned to the scene and defended a tank which was under heavy fire, subsequently taking the enemy position. On his return to Ireland in 1919, Doyle received a warm welcome in his native New Ross. Soon thereafter he retired from the British Army and joined the IRA when the War of Independence was at its most vicious. He spent the next years fighting the crown forces in Ireland and was wounded in the arm during the Civil War – he was at the time serving with the Free State Army in the south east. He had during his military career served in the British Army, the IRA, the Free State Army and later, the regular Irish army. Having retired from the Irish Army in 1937, he went to work for Guinness’s but died of polio at the young age of 46. He is buried in Grangegorman cemetery in Dublin. Doyle is one of 159 Irishmen to receive the Victoria Cross and but one of 210,000+ Irish to serve. Approximately 35,000 of them didn’t come home.
