Lest we forget - January 2015 article

Michael Fennely recorded amongst the missing
of Ypres on the Menin Gate Memorial  

As we continue to remember the 100^th anniversary of the Great War, which started in 1914 and ended in 1918, it is easy to overlook the contribution of the tens of thousands of young Irish men who served in the British and other allied armies during this traumatic era of European history.

It is estimated that around 200,000 Irish born soldiers fought in the war. Around 30,000 died fighting in the British army and a further 20,000 died fighting in the Australian, United States, New Zealand and Canadian armies. At the outbreak of the war, it is said that most Irish people, regardless of political affiliation, supported the war and both nationalist and unionists backed the British war effort.

John Redmond MP, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party pledged his support to the Allied cause in return for the government’s support for Home Rule. Within the first 12 months of the war, 80,000 Irish men enlisted, half from Ulster and half from the south.

Michael, William and James Fennelly were typical of young Irish men who enlisted at the start of the war. Perhaps driven by a combination of idealism, adventure and poverty (a strong incentive for men from poor backgrounds was that their family back home would receive their army pay), the brothers would have believed that they were defending Ireland’s interests when they signed up at Birr garrison in 1914. The three young brothers were from the rural village of Kilminchey near the Midland town of Maryborough (now Portlaoise) and volunteered to join the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment at the outbreak of war. Before leaving Maryborough, the last thing the three brothers did together was have a drink in Shelly’s pub opposite the town courthouse.   

William fought at Gallipoli, the horrors of which are well documented and made memorable in Eric Bogle’s song The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. James and William survived the war, William joined the merchant navy and eventually took work on the canal barges carrying the black stuff between Dublin and Tullamore. James became a cobbler in Bull Street, Portlaoise.

The Menin Gate Memorial, Belgium

But on 12 May 1915 their brother Michael was killed in action at Frezenberg, his regiment violently bombarded in their trenches as they were choking to death in the most horrific circumstances due to the German use of poisonous chlorine gas in the Second Battle of Ypres. His name is listed in a roll of soldiers from the Leinster Regiment entitled to the Victory Medal and / or British War Medal and next to his name are just two words – ‘presumed dead’. The name of Private Michael Fennelly, 2^nd Leinster regiment is also inscribed on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ypres, Belgium. Michael was my grandfather’s cousin.

Less than a year after Private Michael Fennelly’s death, news began to reach the Irish regiments in France and Belgium that Patrick Pearse had issued the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin and that whilst they were fighting and dying in the trenches, other men in British uniforms were shooting fellow Irish men and women back home. The Germans were quick to reinforce the message with placards raised opposite the Irish trenches reading “Irishmen! Heavy uproar in Ireland. English guns are firing at your wives and children!”

Irish soldiers were undeterred and the commitment of battalions like the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the Leinster regiments were vital in capturing heavily fortified German positions - sacrificing their lives to bring about the end of the war.

Sadly though, for most of these brave soldiers returning home to Ireland, they were not given a hero’s welcome by any apart from their wives and mothers. Many were even treated with hostility. According to Irish author Dr Elaine Byrne:

“The Irishmen who fought in the first world war were officially forgotten in post-independence Ireland. The end of the war coincided with a changed political climate. Redmond’s call at Woodenbridge was rewarded with just six seats from 105 for the Irish party at the 1918 election. Home Rule was dead. The militant nationalism expressed by Eamon de Valera’s Sinn Fein was in the ascendancy. All had changed, changed utterly.”

The few war memorials that were allowed in Ireland were hidden away and it was not until 1988 that the Irish National War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge on the outskirts of Dublin was officially opened. First world war history was not taught in Irish schools and history books were silent about the 50,000 Irish men who died, like young Michael Fennelly, in the mud, blood, shrapnel and chlorine gas of the trenches of northern Europe.

Perhaps it is high time for all of us with Irish heritage, regardless of faith, flag, politics or historical perspective, to remember the young Irishmen who fought bravely in the Great War, especially the 50 thousand who lost their lives. Also the thousands of Irish women who worked as nurses or made dressings and munitions across Ireland for the war effort. What better tribute than the words and melancholic tune of that other classic ballad by Eric Bogle, made famous by The Fureys and Davey Arthur, The Green Fields of France:   

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?

Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?

Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?

And did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?