The Night Before the Battle

[Stephen Callaghan]

Thought I would share this poster with everyone. I have had it for a while and never seen another one like it!

Stephen

[tommy mcclimonds]

Stephen

An interesting poster, I haven't seen anything like this before, especially about Guillemont. Given the journals it was published as a supplement for, I would have thought a relatively small print run as well, hence its rarity. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Regards, Tommy.

[MBrockway]

Stephen,

My GF was in 12/KRRC at Guillemont so this is especially poignant for me.

Thank you for posting this.

Cheers,

Mark

[Stephen Callaghan]

Stephen,

My GF was in 12/KRRC at Guillemont so this is especially poignant for me.

Thank you for posting this.

Cheers,

Mark

Your welcome Tommy and Mark! I had a relative there (or at Ginchy) too, so it is nice to have the poster, oddly enough poster came from other side of family, not the side who had the soldier their!

Stephen

[stephen p nunn]

Thought I would share this poster with everyone. I have had it for a while and never seen another one like it!

Stephen

Fascinating. Makes me think of the eve of the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May 1915. One of my Maldon men - Captain Frederick Grantham - was with the 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers and they met at a wayside shrine and received absolution from Fr. Francis Gleeson. The Munsters went on to lose 374 men and 19 officers.

SPN

Maldon

[ckop4]

I believe that this was described in Michael MacDonagh's 'The Irish At The Front,' (1916) - but the name of the chaplain was not recorded - JPC

'September 3 was a Sunday. On the night before the battle the Irish troops selected for the attack on Guillemont bivouacked on the bare side of a hill. They were the Connaughts, the Royal Irish, the Munsters and the Leinsters. The rain had ceased, but the ground was everywhere deep in mud, the trenches were generally flooded and the shell holes full of water. It was a bleak and desolate scene, relieved only here and there by the sparkle of the little fires around which the platoons clustered. Just as the men of one of the battalions were preparing to wrap themselves in their greatcoats and lie down for the rest which they might be able to snatch in such a situation, the Catholic chaplain came over the side of the hill and right to the centre of the camp. “In a moment he was surrounded by the men,” writes Major Redmond. “They came to him without orders they came gladly and willingly, and they hailed his visit with plain delight. He spoke to them in the simple, homely language which they liked. He spoke of the sacrifice which they had made in freely and promptly leaving their homes to fight for a cause which was the cause of religion, freedom and civilisation. He reminded them that in this struggle they were most certainly defending the homes and the relations and friends they had left behind them in Ireland. It was a simple, yet most moving address, and deeply affected the soldiers. Major Redmond goes on to say : “When the chaplain had finished his address he signed to the men to kneel, and administered to them the General Absolution given in times of emergency.The vast majority of the men present knelt, and those of other faith stood by in attitudes of reverent respect. The chaplain then asked the men to recite with him the Rosary. It was most wonderful the effect produced as hundreds and hundreds of voices repeated the prayers and recited the words, ‘ Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.’ At the dawn Masses were said by the chaplains of all the battalions in the open, and most of the officers and men received Holy Communion.'

[stephen p nunn]

I believe that this was described in Michael MacDonagh's 'The Irish At The Front,' (1916) - but the name of the chaplain was not recorded - JPC

'September 3 was a Sunday. On the night before the battle the Irish troops selected for the attack on Guillemont bivouacked on the bare side of a hill. They were the Connaughts, the Royal Irish, the Munsters and the Leinsters. The rain had ceased, but the ground was everywhere deep in mud, the trenches were generally flooded and the shell holes full of water. It was a bleak and desolate scene, relieved only here and there by the sparkle of the little fires around which the platoons clustered. Just as the men of one of the battalions were preparing to wrap themselves in their greatcoats and lie down for the rest which they might be able to snatch in such a situation, the Catholic chaplain came over the side of the hill and right to the centre of the camp. "In a moment he was surrounded by the men," writes Major Redmond. "They came to him without orders they came gladly and willingly, and they hailed his visit with plain delight. He spoke to them in the simple, homely language which they liked. He spoke of the sacrifice which they had made in freely and promptly leaving their homes to fight for a cause which was the cause of religion, freedom and civilisation. He reminded them that in this struggle they were most certainly defending the homes and the relations and friends they had left behind them in Ireland. It was a simple, yet most moving address, and deeply affected the soldiers. Major Redmond goes on to say : "When the chaplain had finished his address he signed to the men to kneel, and administered to them the General Absolution given in times of emergency.The vast majority of the men present knelt, and those of other faith stood by in attitudes of reverent respect. The chaplain then asked the men to recite with him the Rosary. It was most wonderful the effect produced as hundreds and hundreds of voices repeated the prayers and recited the words, ' Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.' At the dawn Masses were said by the chaplains of all the battalions in the open, and most of the officers and men received Holy Communion.'

Wow! - what moving stuff.

SPN

Maldon

[ckop4]

Seems to be another description in this topic -

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/i...last+absolution

[stephen p nunn]

Wow! - what moving stuff.

SPN

Maldon

Looking at this account again - this must have been another occasion. My Munster man (Captain Grantham) was KIA in the May and the Absolution was prior to the attack on Aubers Ridge.

Regards

SPN

Maldon

[MBrockway]

Pals,

I've added a link in this Topic: 11(S) Bn Rifle Brigade at Guillemont 3 Sept 1916, Sherwood Trench

which allows you to do a "virtual" tour of modern-day Guillemont.

Anyone researching the 20th (Light) and 16th (Irish) divisions will be likely to find it interesting.

Cheers,

Mark

[ckop4]

Pals,

I've added a link in this Topic: 11(S) Bn Rifle Brigade at Guillemont 3 Sept 1916, Sherwood Trench

which allows you to do a "virtual" tour of modern-day Guillemont.

Anyone researching the 20th (Light) and 16th (Irish) divisions will be likely to find it interesting.

Cheers,

Mark

Excellent, thanks for the link! Just spent the past while 'driving' towards Ginchy.

Maldon, as a collector of RMF biographies, I am very interested in your Captain Grantham as I have very little about him. Would you be able to tell me something of his career before he appears in the history of the 2nd Munsters? Regards, JPC

[stephen p nunn]

Excellent, thanks for the link! Just spent the past while 'driving' towards Ginchy.

Maldon, as a collector of RMF biographies, I am very interested in your Captain Grantham as I have very little about him. Would you be able to tell me something of his career before he appears in the history of the 2nd Munsters? Regards, JPC

Pleased to JPC.

Frederick William Grantham was born in South Norwood, Surrey, on 10/7/1870. He was the son of Sir William Grantham, an eminent judge of 100 Eton Square, SW London and Barcombe Place, Sussex. Frederick trained as a lawyer and was called to the bar in 1894. Whilst at Trinity, Cambridge, he joined the volunteers (in about 1890). He served with the Post Office Rifles (in 1893) and the Munster Militia (in 1899). He was appointed Clerk of Assize in the Oxford Circuit, was a great traveller in the Far East and an authority on eastern philosophy. He married Alexander von Herder (who was 3 years his senior) and they had Hugo (born 1895), Alexander (born 1899) and Godfrey (born 1912). The family leased Beeleigh Abbey from 1912.

Any good?

I feel really fond of the Munsters. Frederick's memorial in All Saints is very impressive and I managed to buy a Munsters cap badge a couple of months ago. I also had a really good time at the Ulster Tower recently, talking to the curators about the Munsters.

Best regards.

SPN

Maldon

[ckop4]

I feel really fond of the Munsters. Frederick's memorial in All Saints is very impressive and I managed to buy a Munsters cap badge a couple of months ago. I also had a really good time at the Ulster Tower recently, talking to the curators about the Munsters.

Great stuff SPN, thank you very much. There is a somewhat dark photo of the 2nd RMF officers taken about late 1914 which shows him as a thin sensitive looking man, somewhat detached looking from his fellow officers. But there is only the briefest mention of him in the histories and I have always wondered about the men who were killed on the 9th of May 1915.

The Munsters seem to have that effect on people, before you know it know it, you'll be chasing the Bengal Tiger yourself

Regards and thanks again, JPC

[Seamusmac]

Liked the picture of the Irish Brigade on the eve of Guillemont - thought that on the anniversary of the battle,the following information from the Irish Times, on Father Willie Doyle was apt.

Father Willie Doyle, the Catholic chaplain to the 16th Irish Division, was a legendary figure among the men of the 16th (Irish) Division, and his courage, exhibited in the giving of absolutions to the dying at risk to himself, was widely recognised.

To General Hickie, the Division's commander-in-chief on the Somme, he was "one of the bravest men who have fought or served out here," and for his bravery during the assault on the village of Ginchy in September, 1916, Doyle was awarded the Military Cross.

An avowed abhorrence of war and a deeply-felt compassion for the Germans (in his letters home, they were not "the Boche" but "Brother Fritz") cohabited with a sense of patriotism: his sermons at the front would appeal to the Irish regiments with the reasoning that the soldiers were fighting for Ireland's cause as well as Belgium's - fighting for Ireland through another, as a fellow padre put it.

Though it was never awarded, Fr Doyle was to be recommended for a posthumous Victoria Cross on the day he was killed, on August 16th, 1917, at Ypres.

That day, with the Allied offensive resuming all along the line, the two Irish Divisions - the 16th (Nationalist) and the 36th Ulster - attacked together. But they could not resist the German counter-attacks and their losses were heavy. Amid the carnage that ensued, Fr Doyle spent the day going back and forth over the battlefield, bullets whistling around him, seeking out the dying and kneeling in the mud beside them.

"His familiar figure was seen and welcomed by hundreds of Irishmen who lay in that bloody place," wrote the Morning Post's correspondent, "walking with death with a smile on his face, watched by his men with reverence and a kind of awe until a shell burst near him and he was killed".

Among the innumerable tributes he received in death was that of a Belfast Orangeman who had encountered Fr Doyle at the front. "He didn't know the meaning of fear, and he didn't know what bigotry was," said the rifleman. "The Ulstermen felt his loss more keenly than anybody, and none were readier to show their marks of respect to the dead hero priest than were our Ulster Presbyterians."

Fr Doyle's remains were never found.

[stephen p nunn]

Saw this on the wall of our hotel in Ypres.

Regards

SPN

Maldon