The dead of wars live on in the hearts and minds of those who knew them, and in the individual memorials which are constructed.2 But the complexities of memory arise in how societies as a whole, or in part, commemorate war. How could a state which had emerged from a war with the British appropriately commemorate the dead of a military against which it had fought?3 Part of the answer was in the collective acts of citizens of the new state who had been part of that army and had established rituals from the war’s end. They did not need state sanction to commemorate as they wished. The first opportunity for mass commemoration in Dublin came on 19 July 1919, ‘Peace Day’. This was a UK-wide event, though in Belfast it was marked a month later to avoid clashing with Orange events.4 The Irish Nationalist Veterans Association (which was active in Belfast into the 1920s but had little profile in Dublin after 1919) boycotted the event.