Need help finding this war casuality

[Barry Russell]

Hi All,

 

I was given this document by Guinness stating that my 3rd Great Grandmother was in receipt of a Military pension because her son was killed in the ''Great War''.

 

Her son (My 2nd Great Grandfather and my profile picture) William Byrne survived the war and died in 1943.

 

This is obviously a reference to his brother but I have no idea which one.

 

The parents of this man are John & Anne Byrne.

 

Most likely address during the war would be Bow lane or Kennedys Villas, Dublin.

 

Sons are William (Who survived) John, Joseph, Thomas, Christopher (RIR, Discharged in 1915), Edward & Patrick.

 

Any help narrowing down the son Killed would be great.

 

Thank you.

 

 

Edited 20 December , 2017 by Barry Russell
Spellcheck

[museumtom]

Byrne, John. (Dublin).

Rank: Private.

Regiment or Service: Irish Guards.

Unit: 1st Battalion.

Service No: 3849.

Date of death: 02/11/1914.

Age: 22.

Born: Dundrum, County Dublin.

Enlisted: Dublin.

Death: Killed in action.

Next of kin, etc: Son of John and Anne Byrne, of 291, Farranboley Cottages, Dundrum, County Dublin.

Grave/Memorial: Panel 11.

Cemetery: Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Belgium.

[ss002d6252]

Here's a link to a copy of his soldier's will

http://soldierswills.nationalarchives.ie/search/sw/results.jsp?surname=byrne&firstname=john&wo_number=&service_number=&wod_dd=&wod_mm=&wod_yyyy=&dd_dd=&dd_mm=&dd_yyyy=&search=Search

 

Craig

[PRC]

From "The Irish Guards in the Great War: Volume 1" by Rudyard Kipling

 

On the afternoon of the 31st October, Lord Ardee arrived from hospital, though he was in no state to be out of it, and was greeted by the information that the Gordons on the left, heavily shelled, had been driven out of their trenches. The Oxford L.I. and also No. 1 Company of the Battalion which was in touch with them had to conform to the movement. The section of R.F.A. had to retire also with the Gordons and, after apologies, duly delivered among bursting German shell, for “having to look after their guns,” they “limbered up and went off as though it were the Military Tournament.” There was a counter-attack, and eventually the enemy were driven back and the line was re-established before night, which passed, says the Diary “fairly quietly.” The moonlight made movement almost impossible; nor could the men get any hot tea, their great stand-by, but rations were distributed. The casualties among officers that day were Lieutenant L. S. Coke killed, and buried in the garden of the farm; Captain Lord Francis Scott, Lieutenant the Earl of Kingston, and Lieutenant R. Ferguson wounded. There were many casualties in the front trenches, specially among No. 3 Company, men being blown to pieces and no trace left. The depressing thing, above all, was that we seemed to have no guns to reply with.

 

Bombardment was renewed on the 1st November. The front trenches were drenched by field-guns, at close range, with spurts of heavy stuff at intervals; the rear by heavy artillery, while machine-gun fire filled the intervals. One of the trenches of a platoon in No. 3 Company, under Lieutenant Maitland, was completely blown in, and only a few men escaped. The Lieutenant remained with the survivors while Sergeant C. Harradine, under heavy fire, took the news to the C.O. It was hopeless to send reinforcements; the machine-gun fire would have wiped them out moving and our artillery was not strong enough to silence any one sector of the enemy’s fire.

 

In the afternoon the enemy attacked—with rifle-fire and a close-range small piece that broke up our two machine-guns—across some dead ground and occupied the wrecked trench, driving back the few remains of No. 3 Company. The companies on the right and left, Nos. 4 and 1, after heavy fighting, fell back on No. 2 Company, which was occupying roughly prepared trenches in the rear. One platoon, however, of No. 1 Company, under Lieutenant N. Woodroffe (he had only left Eton a year), did not get the order to retire, and so held on in its trench till dark and “was certainly instrumental in checking the advance of the enemy.” The line was near breaking-point by then, but company after company delivered what blow it could, and fell back, shelled and machine-gunned at every step, to the fringe of Zillebeke Wood. Here the officers, every cook, orderly, and man who could stand, took rifle and fought; for they were all that stood there between the enemy and the Channel Ports. (Years later, a man remembering that fight said: “’Twas like a football scrum. Every one was somebody, ye’ll understand. If he dropped there was no one to take his place. Great days! An’ we not so frightened as when it came to the fightin’ by machinery on the Somme afterwards.”)⁴ The C.O. sent the Adjutant to Brigade Headquarters to ask for help, but the whole Staff had gone over to the 2nd Brigade Headquarters, whose Brigadier had taken over command of the 4th Brigade as its own Brigadier had been wounded. About this time, too, the C.O. of the Battalion (Lord Ardee) was wounded. Eventually the 2nd Battalion Grenadiers was sent up with some cavalry of the much-enduring 7th Brigade, and the line of support-trenches was held. The Battalion had had nothing to eat for thirty-six hours, so the cavalry kept the line for a little till our men got food.

 

A French regiment (Territorials) on the right also took over part of the trenches of our depleted line. Forty-four men were known to have been killed, 205 wounded and 88—chiefly from the blown-up No. 3 Platoon—were missing. Of officers, Lieutenant K. R. Mathieson had been killed (he had been last seen shooting a Hun who was bayoneting our wounded); Captain Mulholland died of his wounds as soon as he arrived in hospital at Ypres; Lieut.-Colonel Lord Ardee, Captain Vesey, Lieutenant Gore-Langton and Lieutenant Alexander were wounded, and Lieutenant G. M. Maitland, who had stayed with his handful in No. 3 Company’s trench, was missing. Yet the time was to come when three hundred and fifty casualties would be regarded as no extraordinary price to pay for ground won or held. One small draft of 40 men arrived from home that night.

 

On November 2 the Battalion was reduced to three companies since in No. 3 Company all officers were casualties and only 26 men of it answered their names at roll-call. They were heavily shelled all that day. They tried to put up a little wire on their front during the night; they collected what dead they could; they received several wounded men of the day’s fight as they crawled into our lines; they heard one such man calling in the dark, and they heard the enemy turn a machine-gun on him and silence him. The regular work of sending forward and relieving the companies in the front line went on, varied by an attack from the enemy, chiefly rifle-fire, on the night of the 3rd November. On that date they received “a new machine-gun,” and another draft of sixty men (under Captain E. C. S. KingHarman) several of whom were killed or wounded that same afternoon. The night was filled with false alarms as some of the new drafts began to imagine crowds of Germans advancing out of the dark. This was a popular obsession, but it led to waste of ammunition and waking up utterly tired men elsewhere in the line.

http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/IrishGuardsv1/1914monslabassee.html

 

There is no obvious file held by the International Red Cross.so it doesn't look like his death was reported by the Germans or that enquiries were made by the family, etc, via them. Bear in mind given the situation that unless colleagues could directly account for him, the 2nd November may simply have been the first day he was officially posted missing - note the reference to a roll-call of No.3 Company taking place on that day.

 

The Army Service Number blog has:-

3504 joined on 2nd March 1910
3933 joined on 1st November 1911

http://armyservicenumbers.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/irish-guards.html

 

I had a look for him on the 1911 Census of England and Wales but it doesn't look like he had joined up when that was taken at the start of April. There was a 22 year old John 0'Byrne from Seren, Sligo serving with the 1st Battalion, but that's it.

 

Worth checking the local papers - particularly from that period of the war it may include reports received from his comrades as to his fate - and there's always the possibility of a photo.

 

Hope some of that helps,

Peter

[ss002d6252]

To narrow the enlistment further

 

#3841 attested 26 Jun 1911

#3866 attested 25 July 1911

 

Craig

[Barry Russell]

6 hours ago, ss002d6252 said:

To narrow the enlistment further

 

#3841 attested 26 Jun 1911

#3866 attested 25 July 1911

 

Craig

 

Thanks for the help folk but this isn't who I'm looking for, the Family never moved away from Dublin city centre, Their father worked in Guinness on James street from 1884 to 1921 and his address never changed away from the James street area, Nor did some of the brothers.

[ss002d6252]

Have you looked through the other Wills on the link I gave ? Any man who was killed and ordinarily resident in Ireland should have a soldier's will in the Irish archive so he may be one of the other Wills listed.

 

Craig

[Barry Russell]

15 hours ago, ss002d6252 said:

Have you looked through the other Wills on the link I gave ? Any man who was killed and ordinarily resident in Ireland should have a soldier's will in the Irish archive so he may be one of the other Wills listed.

 

Craig

Its none of those, I'm not sure if its John.

[PRC]

As you know that his mother was receiving a pension have you tried checking for WW1 army pension records. I don't have a subscription to Ancestry but using their public search facility I came across 7 pensions records for an Anne \ Ann \ Annie with a Dublin connection and no spousal reference. There was also one Service Record for an Anne Byrne which may be all that remains of one servicemans records or could be for a woman of that name. There are some more pension records with an Anne from Dublin with a husband, so it is a question of sifting those out. Of course the ones you are after may not have survived, but if the parents were alive into the nineteen-forties the relevant papers will at least have come through the space-saving destruction in the inter-war years.

 

Good luck,

Peter