This article provides a brief look at a fascinating bit of World War II history about which I’d previously heard nothing: Irish who deserted their own neutral army to fight against the Germans and Japanese, and who were then blacklisted when they returned to Ireland after the war.

They were formally dismissed from the Irish army, stripped of all pay and pension rights, and prevented from finding work by being banned for seven years from any employment paid for by state or government funds.

A special “list” was drawn up containing their names and addresses, and circulated to every government department, town hall and railway station - anywhere the men might look for a job.

It was referred to in the Irish parliament - the Dail - at the time as a “starvation order”, and for many of their families the phrase became painfully close to the truth.

The BBC will air a documentary — “Face the Facts: Deserters Deserted” — on Radio 4 next Wednesday and then make it available through the BBC iPlayer.

Robert Farley makes the case that desertion, even in this case, isn’t heroic … before concluding that an amnesty for these deserters is long overdue.

To my mind, the decision to fight alongside the British against the Axis powers rather than remaining neutral is a heroic one. These Irish soldiers, who recognized that the Germans posed a far greater threat to the world than the British posed to the Irish alone, both endangered themselves in the fighting and faced serious consequences for their decision. When they might have remained neutral, avoiding both the danger of war and the scorn of their countrymen, they seem to have felt — rightly, we probably all conclude from this historical remove — that the fight against fascism was worth the costs.