by Joe Power
Postcard sent by prisoner of war, Cpl T. Kelly, Royal Munster Fusiliers, from Clare Castle to Miss R. Scanlan, Main Street, Clare Castle. He had been a prisoner in Germany since the Battle of Etroux in August 1914. The card is dated 15 June 1916. (Courtesy of Brian Honan)
In July Col Lynch sent the following appeal to Col Theodore Roosevelt, who as President of America had sent a special appeal to the English Government to reprieve Arthur Lynch in 1903, requesting his help in persuading young Irishmen to fight for the Allies:
Send me a word of encouragement, or better still, my great and splendid friend, come yourself in all your power and prestige and help me win the souls of young Irishmen to the Allied cause … When the Stars and Stripes was raised over the cause, when once Old Glory had blown out her folds, the emblem of liberty, a sign of protection to millions of Irish men, I had hoped that opposition to the Allied cause would cease. But the ancient wrongs and present resentment proved too strong … We must win the souls of these young Irish men to the Allied cause.
In August Col Lynch agreed that many motives that appealed to him ‘did not appeal to the hardy tillers of the soil in West Clare’, yet he asserted that the war should be of as much concern to the tiller in Clare as to the inhabitants of the invaded countries. But, he warned that if the Germans were victorious ‘there would be an end to the Irish question, there will be an end to Ireland, except as an outlying German province … In the event of a German triumph there will be an enforcement of an indemnity which will ‘bleed white’ not only France, but England and Ireland as well.’ Nationalist MPs such as Col Arthur Lynch and Capt. Stephen Gwynn toured the country, appearing at recruitment meetings in military uniform, but they got a cool reception, being shouted down by Sinn Féin speakers. According to a report in the Daily News, Col Lynch experienced ‘considerable difficulties’ at the hands of the War Office in Dublin, as they refused to allow him to spend any money for propaganda purposes. In Galway the MPs were refused permission to address a meeting of Galway County Council in August and the war ended on 11 November 1918 before he could realise the quixotic dream of raising Col Lynch’s Irish Brigade.27
Clare prisoners of war in a camp in Germany, May 1916. Sent by Cpl T. Kelly RMF to Miss Scanlan. (Courtesy of Brian Honan)
Advertisement for Col Lynch’s Brigade Saturday Record, 2 August 1918.
‘From Somewhere in France’
Councillor P.J. Linnane, JP, received another letter from his friend, Fr M. Moran, from Tulassa, Ennis, who was a chaplain on the Western Front. The letter strongly attacked the Germans for their atrocities in Belgium, referring to them as ‘Prussian beasts’, ‘Huns’ and ‘Prussian butchers’. This was rather intemperate language for a priest. Councillor Linnane released the letter to the Saturday Record for publication. It was published in two editions, the first called ‘Somewhere in France’ and the second entitled, ‘The German horror in France’. The letter was timely from a propaganda point of view:
Dear PJ
… I am splendid myself, thank God, except that my right hand gets suddenly weak occasionally, but not to the extent of incapacitating me from my work. I am very lucky to be alive, and the best thanksgiving I can make to God for preserving my life is to stick to my post until His holy will is accomplished in this war…
I have been anxious many a time to send you some fairly graphic accounts of life and experiences out here, but want of time chiefly and physical disability (owing to my hand), have prevented me from doing so. However, both obstacles are now removed, and so I’ll give you in brief my experiences for the week, which might prove interesting to you and your friends. I might say that no pen can possibly convey any idea of the grim realities we witness from week to week and day to day …
I have been resting in the village of … in France, from which the Germans have been driven out a couple of weeks ago … they had to ‘hop it’ as the Lancashire people would say. They had been here since the beginning of the war … The Germans mined the churches with intent to wipe them out …
On entering the village after the Germans left you find men thrown on all sides and in the most abandoned attitudes of violent death. The same scene meets your eye on going round the side streets of the village. Here and there you find cellars containing dead, wounded and dying. In some instances you see cellars mined and blown in and so all inside are dead.
Here and there in the village you find a group of dead horses that have been killed by shells. Outside the village and in the open fields you find many horses and men who have been caught by machine gun fire.
The Germans try to get all the people to go back with them and when they refuse they have been severely dealt with. Some of the old people would rather die than leave the village … the priest in this village refused to go, but he escaped to the next village and hid in a cave until the Germans were expelled from that village also … Every single house was looted, anything they could not take was smashed to pieces … everything treasured by the people was destroyed.
In the farmyards your horses and cows have long since been removed, your wells are all mined, poisoned or else blown up. Your orchards, greenhouses are all blown up, everything you hold dear in a home or a farm is destroyed. Your house is reduced to a heap of rubble … Such is every house in the village I am resting in. Such is every village in France where the savage Hun has settled.
Even potato fields, orchards and vegetable plots have been mined … Heavy fines were placed upon the villagers … they had to be indoors by nine in summer and seven in winter …
Many of the villagers had to be brought to hospital suffering from many complaints, including starvation after the Germans had left, and some had gone mad after the terrible times they had gone through …
The first year in the village the Germans broke the church bells and took away all the brass fittings in the church … a poor baker was shot for refusing to bake bread for the Germans …
Now for the real hero, and saint of the village, the dear old cure [priest]. The Germans repeatedly asked him to leave the village under all sorts of threats but he refused. In all their dealings with him they were singularly harsh and diabolical. For refusing to salute a German corporal he was put into a dark room for ten days. During all this time he got very bad food and no meat. During all his persecutions he continually prayed for his enemies. For refusing to salute another officer he was spat upon and his biretta torn off his head. For hiding in a cellar and having a revolver to protect himself, he was sentenced to death, but he managed to escape. They took everything of value from his house and drank the altar wine in his presence.
The priest or cure of … a friend and neighbour of his was brutally murdered for giving some soup and milk to British soldiers. He was first struck in the back of the neck ten times, then stabbed in a dozen places and left unburied for two days. He was found later by some of the civilians about 200 yards from where he was killed having been dragged outside the village by those cruel butchers and allies of the devil. A bayonet was still stuck through his chest and an epitaph attached to the bayonet. I shan’t desecrate paper by translating it for you. This noble priest died the death of a veritable martyr.
… The treatment meted out to the women and girls in those villages I dare not refer to except to say that the vast majority of them will have their names inscribed as ‘Saints and Martyrs’ in the annals of the Catholic Church here …
That was a very tragic affair, the sinking of the SS ‘Leinster’ mail boat. I have travelled on it many a time … May God comfort those stricken families who have suffered from such a wanton crime … I have collected £7. 5s. for the Chinese Mission from my men in addition to £2. 15s. from myself to make it an even £10, which you will kindly hand over to whoever is collecting in the town for it. I am asking the chaplain with me to collect for the Irish Martyrs’ Fund, and we hope to send another £10 before the Holy Season of New Year comes in. Even amidst the din of war we must not forget the great work that is being done in I
reland for such noble causes.
I have scarcely any Irishmen with me at present … I heard some time ago that there were some aspersions cast upon our Irish soldiers in one of the Irish papers. It hasn’t been my privilege since August or September of last year to have anything to do with Irish soldiers, but even if I hadn’t that short experience, I make bold to say that their piety and bravery have been rarely equalled and seldom, if ever, surpassed. I say this with respect to the other brave fighting men of other nations out here. The writer of the letter should be out here and see the stuff the Irish are made of and then he wouldn’t be showing his colossal ignorance, or making himself a veritable ‘Hun’ by writing such vile and cowardly stuff. The iniquitous press deserves to be boycotted by every decent Irishman.
When I suggested to some Irishmen on the advice of an officer that we should change from the old stable where we had Mass, Confessions and the rosary, to a safer place (for we were under machine gun fire), one of them said, ‘Sure, Father, nothing will happen to us while we are praying and even so we couldn’t die better than having the name of Mary on our lips’. Could anything be more eloquently put, or with greater sentiments of faith and piety?
We are moving now, so I trust this attempt will make up for not having written to you more frequently. I may not have an opportunity again for the next twelve months. The weather is very wet these days and fairly cold and notwithstanding this we have a fearful amount of flies, due mostly to dead horses and corpses … and also due to the insanitary conditions of the village after the Germans.
I almost forgot to tell you the most awful thing they perpetrated in the village. It is really almost too bad to confine to paper, but it will show you and others what is meant by the Prussian element in the German army. They did the same with carpeted rooms. Too terrible for words. They actually used the church as a latrine or a closet, while holy Mass was being celebrated.
This is the element that disgraces the entire German army … The Prussian element is like a cancer in an organism. It must be eradicated … It is not right to say ‘that there is no good German except “a dead un’”, as they say in Yorkshire.
There are some good German regiments, but most of the German army have the Prussian beast mixed up with them.
Their satanic majesties who have condoned these most unnatural crimes in the history of any war previously fought, must go down and be got rid of for all time … The names of the Prussians butchers who took no steps to prevent such crimes as I have outlined the murderers of helpless women and suckling babes should be carved out in bold relief in every civilised country, town and village to be held in everlasting execration …
I feel and speak very strongly, for you must remember I was (were it not for God’s protection) dead many a time out here, and on 26th July this year there was a doubt whether I should have a right hand till the x ray photo relieved me of my worries. I know that shouldn’t enter into what I say, but there it is. I can’t get rid of it.
Yours, sincerely
M. Moran, CF28
Fr M. Moran from Tulassa, Ennis, was awarded the Military Cross (MC), for his bravery under fire. His citation read as follows: ‘During operations lasting ten days, he displayed conspicuous gallantry and unselfish devotion to duty in attending to the wounded, often under heavy fire. On one occasion he was wounded and severely shaken by the explosion of a shell, but he continued to work with an undiminished zeal. He was a splendid example to all about him’.29
‘Heroism at Guillemont and Ginchy’
As an inducement to promote recruitment there was a large article in the Saturday Record celebrating the anniversary of the heroic charge of the Irish Brigade at Guillemont and Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme in France. The paper printed a tribute from a ‘distinguished’ war correspondent Mr Philip Gibbs:
Guillemont fell on Sunday, September 3rd to a charge which was one of the most astonishing features of the war, with pipes playing and flags flying the Irish Battalion swept on like a huge avalanche, right through the first, second and third German lines with an irresistible rush till the village as a whole was in their hands … by Sunday night victory was overwhelming and complete.
Then on the afternoon of 9 September came the order to attack the village of Ginchy. Amid wild hurrahs and cries of ‘Up the Dubliners’, and “Up the Munsters” they swept forward. In eight minutes they had reached the first objective in the village across the German lines, 600 yards, a wonderful record … reckless of snipers and machine guns the Irish swept through the village seeking out Germans in concrete huts and cellars. They were Bavarians and fought savagely, but the Irish bayonet was too much for them. They were 600 yards ahead of the rest and both their left and right flanks were exposed … THEY DID IT!
The splendid success of the Irish Brigade from a military point of view, is their success of taking a hostile front of 900 yards in the depth of nearly a mile, with no supporting troops in either flank … from a non-military point of view the greatness of the capture of Ginchy is the valour of these Irish boys, who were not cowed by the sight of death very close to them, and who went straight on to the winning post like Irish racehorses … Shouting: ‘Up the Dubs! … Up the Micks!’
And as they strode proudly along to the rest they had earned so well, and as the pipers played them out, now with a march of triumph, and now with a lament for the boys who would never march behind their flag again, each man felt sure in his heart that his countrymen at home would see to it that the dead would not be un-avenged, or the living be deserted by their brother Irishman. WILL THEY?30
This glorified version of the success of the Irish at the engagements of Guillemont and Ginchy in France bore little relationship to the actual reality of these battles. Tom Johnstone describes the scene at Ginchy:
Up to their knees in mud … on a tour of duty of forty-eight hours … conditions were terrible … trench latrines were non-existent and diarrhoea was common in the cold, wet, slime and filth of trench life in Ypres … Rifles had to be carried all the time … on the journey up to the trenches the men were overburdened with kit, ammunition and entrenching equipment … there were dead bodies of humans and horses everywhere and rats were common … there was little rest for the men who were suffering from fatigue …31
There is not much evidence that many young men in County Clare were persuaded by appeals or by propaganda to volunteer and to join the services in 1918. The Saturday Record, however, noted one man who had enlisted – ‘Mr M.F. Hassett had resigned his job as petty sessions clerk at Killaloe and had joined the army early in October’.32
Gaelic Sunday
Earlier in the year in July, because of the unrest in the country, the Dublin Castle authorities prohibited the holding of any public meeting, including sports events, without a special permit. This outraged the GAA and, as an act of defiance, the Central Council instructed all county boards to organise as many matches as possible on Sunday 4 August at 3 p.m. More than 1,800 games were organised throughout Ireland on this day, in a national protest, which they called ‘Gaelic Sunday’. The GAA publicly challenged the government and when tens of thousands of Gaels, men, women and children, turned out to play and watch Gaelic games, the government was unable to do much about the massive public opposition to the unpopular law.
There was only one report of this public defiance in County Clare in the Saturday Record. The paper carried a report that visitors and locals celebrated ‘Gaelic Sunday’ at Kilkee: ‘It was truly a Gaelic revival. Instead of the usual cricket, tennis, golf, etc., a splendid and keenly contested game of hurling was enjoyed on the strand. The competing teams were made up of visiting clergy, the Priests vs the Brothers. After a well-fought contest the former were declared winners by 11 goals 3 points to 3 goals 2 points. The enthusiasm of the hundreds of spectators as either side scored gave much evidence that the “game of the Gael” is, notwithstanding trying times, holding its own’.33
The SS Leinster
There was one ot
her major tragedy of the war which had a significant effect upon Ireland and County Clare, and which almost delayed the peace – that was the sinking of the mail boat, the SS Leinster, without warning in what the Saturday Record noted as ‘ANOTHER HUN HORROR’. The Leinster sailed from Carlisle pier Kingstown, (now called Dún Laoghaire) County Dublin around 9 a.m. on 10 October 1918. She was bound for Holyhead in Wales. There were 705 passengers and a crew of seventy-six aboard the merchant ship. The majority of passengers were military personnel either going on or returning from leave. There were also 180 civilians aboard, men women and children.
Shortly before 10 a.m., about 16 miles from Dublin, the ship was hit by two torpedoes fired from a German submarine UB-123. There was a huge explosion and the ship sank quickly before many of the passengers and crew could be saved. The sea was rough after some recent storms, which made it difficult for rescuing the passengers.
Obituary Card for the Davoren sisters.
(Courtesy of the Peadar McNamara Collection)
There were at least 529 casualties of that sinking. At least 115 out of 180 passengers died either from injuries caused by the explosion, or else by drowning or hypothermia. Among those who died were nine people associated with County Clare: Head Constable Ward, RIC, Ennis, (who had recently transferred from Portumna); Pte John Coyne, Raheen, Scarriff; two sisters, both of whom were nurses returning to duty, Nurse Nora Davoren and her sister Delia Davoren from Claureen House, Ennis; another couple of sisters, Ms Margaret O’Grady and her sister Ms B. O’Grady; from Newmarket-on-Fergus, also nurses; Miss Nellie Hogan, a nurse from Ralahine, Newmarket-on-Fergus; Mr Hynes, from Tulla and his daughter Ms Clare Hynes also from Tulla.
