An Irishman's Diary: Tom Kettle at the battle of Ginchy
Nationalist Ireland's forgotten Battle of the Somme, 16th (Irish) Division
Poetry: To My Daughter Betty, The Gift of God
The Ancient Order of Hibernians in America
Some Links
-- The 16th Irish Division from WWI
-- Private Horace Parker, died in battle 1918
by Kevin Myers
From the Irish Times opinion section, Wednesday, September 11, 1996
The sun shone on the glorious Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge last Sunday, a million miles and a thousand years away from the mud of the drab beet-field around the sucrerie outside Ginchy in September, 1916. Those who survived that day, and all the other days history despatched them to, are gone, and the memory of what they did that day is all but forgotten.
Perhaps it is just as well. Perhaps people raised to memories of war tinge those memories with false notions of glory, heroism, decency and the abiding virtues of the martial way. Certainly, the Irishmen who emerged from eight days' fighting on the Somme were to be in no danger of being the subject of heroic memory. Quite the reverse; the very historical processes which were to raise the 36th Ulster to pious and immortal memory, were to obscure completely the fate of the nationalists of the 16th Irish Division 80 years ago this week. Was their sacrifice in vain? Yes, we can say with reasonable certainty, it was, as was the sacrifice of the Germans they killed and of the countless millions of other nations called from hearth and field and mill to perish as empires collapsed, old orders vanished, and European civilisation fell upon itself and devoured its children.
Vast Conspiracy
The point is, of course, that they did not know this. They did not know they were part of some vast fraternal conspiracy which reached around the world; they assumed that what they did counted and would in due course secure for them and their nation a freedom which had been granted in law, but not execution in 1914.
According to the moral dilemma of the in-vain school, to have done nothing would have been reprehensible. To have allowed the militaristic oligarchy to have conquered and held France and Belgium in permanent subjection would have been intolerable; to have resisted, we know, was intolerable. The human condition creates repeatedly creates problems to which there are no solutions; and the only outcome is suffering. We know the reason for this. It is mentioned in Genesis. It is The Fall.
Nobody advancing upon the sucrerie outside Ginchy 80 years ago last Sunday would have been in any doubt of the fallibility of mankind, nor of the lunacy in which he can engage. Empires were lined up facing one another over a crust of mud and steel and human flesh, and were repeatedly trying to break that crust with the skin and tissues and bone of their subjects. Many of these subjects were volunteers, impelled by a sense of duty or desire for excitement, or because they were simply professional soldiers.
Reprimanded for Drinking
Tom Kettle was there because he chose to be there. An alcoholic, he could easily have been discharged from the British Army because of his appalling personal record. He was drunk so often that his commanding officer in Dublin reprimanded him, and warned him of the likely consequences. "There's no place for you in this army while I'm in it," he told Kettle. "In that case, we'll be sorry to lose you, general," he replied.
Kettle had volunteered for service in France after his brother-in-law, Francis Sheehy Skeffington, was murdered on the orders of a British Army officer after the 1916 Rising, which was of course to dominate Irish nationalist mythology in the coming decades. There was no way Kettle should have been allowed near the Front. Only the extraordinary political circumstances of the time could have justified Kettle's posting on active service. How much he might have contributed to the Ireland that lay ahead is, of course, a matter of useless conjecture. The Easter Rising caused him to go to France, and the Easter Rising caused him to be forgotten, alongside the other thousand Irishmen who were to die on the beetfield outside Ginchy.
Some of these men were gentry, and their deaths would hasten the end of a demographically and economically doomed caste. Some were middle-class Catholics, officering their men in war as they had officered the National Volunteers in their determination to secure Home Rule. Most were the small-town and urban poor of Ireland, working-class lads from every county in the land. Total casualties, killed and injured, in the bloody assault across the fields before Ginchy came to nearly 4,500. The youngest I have been able to trace was James Rathband, of Gloucester Square, Dublin. He was 15 years of age. His young bones were laid to rest in Delville Wood Cemetary, not far from where he died.
Desperate to live Tom Kettle, the day before he died, wrote to his brother saying how desperately he wanted to live. He died on the wretched beetfield beside the sucrerie, cradled by a fellow-officer of the Dublin Fusiliers, Emmet Dalton. His duty done, Dalton proceeded to other duties, and was to win a Military Cross that day - one of the 300 awards for gallantry the Irish were to be awarded. But Kettle's body was lost in the mincing machine which traversed the land where he had fallen, and unlike young Rathband, he has no known grave.
Twenty years after his death, friends sought permission to erect a bust to him in St Stephen's Green. The Office of Public Works did its utmost to prevent this, finally agreeing to the bust provided it made no mention that Kettle was a British soldier, or that he had been killed in France on active service. Visitors even now must guess at the meaning of "Died, Ginchy, 1916."
Ginchy has returned to what it was before armies of foreigners camped before it and died before it 80 years ago; a dreary, nondescript place. The beetfield is still a beetfield, nourished by the blood and bonemeal of strangers. Nearby, at the village of Guillemont, there is a memorial to the slain Irish of 1916. But here at home these men are finally being remembered.
Last Sunday, members of Óglaigh Náisiunta na hÉireann for the first time joined others to commemorate the deeds and deaths of their fellow-Irishmen. We cannot heal the wounds of four score years ago; but we can apply the salve of tolerance to our shared but different histories.
To My Daughter Betty, The Gift of God
In wiser days, my
darling rosebud, blown
To beauty proud as was your mother's prime,
In that desired, delayed, incredible time,
You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,
And the dear heart that was your baby throne,
To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme
And reason: some will call the thing sublime,
And some decry it in a knowing tone.
So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,--
But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,
And for the secret Scripture of the poor.
Thomas M. Kettle was born at Artane County, Dublin, in 1880 and was educated at University College, where he won the Gold Medal for Oratory. Kettle fell in action at Ginchy, leading his Fusiliers in September, 1916. The uplifted poem to his daughter was written shortly before his death.
In Flanders fields the
poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on
row
The larks, still bravely
singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns
below.
We are the Dead. Short days
ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw
sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now
we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the
foe:
To you from failing hands we
throw
The torch; be yours to hold
it high.
If ye break faith with us who
die
We shall not sleep, though
poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
The name of John McCrae (1872-1918) may seem out of place in the distinguished company of World War I poets, but he is remembered for what is probably the single best-known and popular poem from the war, "In Flanders Fields." He was a Canadian physician and fought on the Western Front in 1914, but was then transferred to the medical corps and assigned to a hospital in France. Sickened by what he had seen during the Boer War, John McCrae nevertheless signed up in August 1914, and headed for France with his horse, Bonfire, in tow. He would have found few opportunities for riding in that hell on earth. Knee deep in mud and freezing water, men's feet rotted where they stood, waiting for the next attack of gas to insinuate its way down the trenches, or the signal to go "over the top", often into direct machine gun fire. McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" the day after presiding at the funeral of a friend and former student. McCrae was to number among the 9,000,000 fatalities that vicious, fratricidal war of attrition would claim. His asthmatic condition, exacerbated by poison gas, eventually led to pneumonia and meningitis in January of 1918.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians is a Catholic, Irish American Fraternal Organization founded in New York City 4 May 1836. The Order can trace its roots back to a parent organization, of the same name, which has existed in Ireland for over 300 years. However, while the organizations share a common thread, the North American A.O.H. is a separate and much larger organization.
The Order evolved from a need in the early sixteen hundreds to protect the lives of priests who risked immediate death to keep the Catholic Faith alive in occupied Ireland after the reign of England's King Henry VIII. When England implemented its dreaded Penal Laws in Ireland, various secret social societies were formed across the country. These groups worked to aid and comfort the people by whatever means available. Similarly, the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America was founded May 4th, 1836 at New York’s St. James Church, to protect the clergy, and church Property from the "Know Nothings" and their followers. At the same time the vast influx of Irish Immigrants fleeing famine issues in Ireland in the late 1840's, prompted a growth of various social societies in the USA - the largest of which was, and continues to be, the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
Active across the United States, The Order seeks to aid the newly arrived Irish, both socially, politically. The many Divisions and club facilities located throughout the U.S. traditionally have been among the first to welcome new Irish Americans. Here, the Irish culture -- art, dance, music, and sports are fostered and preserved. The newcomers can meet some of "their own" and are introduced to the social atmosphere of the Irish-American community. The AOH has been at the political forefront for issues concerning the Irish, such as; Immigration Reform; economic Incentives both here and in Ireland; the human rights issues addressed in the MacBride Legislation; Right-To-Life; and a peaceful and just solution to the issues that divide Ireland.
The Order has also provided a continuing bridge with Ireland for those who are generations removed from our country. The AOH sponsors many of the programs associated with promoting our Irish Heritage such as the IRISH WAY PROGRAM.
You may further seek admittance to the FINEST Irish Catholic Organization in the World -- all we would ask is for you to live our motto of:
"Friendship, Unity, and Christian Charity". Dia 's Muire Dhuit!
May the roof over us
never fall in,
and may we friends gathered below never fall out.
Irish Anonymous
May the road rise to
meet you.
May the wind be always at your back,
the sun shine warm upon your face,
the rain fall soft upon your fields,
and until we meet again
may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.
Irish Anonymous