THE WOODEN CROSS
DEATH OF LIEUTENANT T.M. KETTLE OF THE DUBLINS
For all this glory and renown the Irish Brigade had to pay a bitter
price. Many a home in Ireland was made forlorn and desolate. The roads
of the countryside by which the men went off to the war will be lonely
and drear for ever to womenfolk, for never again will they be
brightened by the returning foot-steps of son or husband.
One of the most grievous losses which the Brigade sustained was the
death of Lieutenant-Colonel Lenox-Conyngham of the Connaught Rangers.
He came of an Ulster soldier family. He was the son of Colonel Sir W.
Fitzwilliam Lenox-Conyngham of Springhill, co. Derry, was born in
1861, and three of his brothers were also serving in the Army with the
rank of Colonel. He fell at the head of his battalion, which was
foremost in the rush for Guillamont. "I cannot imagine a more fitting
death for him," writes Captain Stephen Gwynn, M.P., who served under
Colonel Lenox-Conyngham since the days the battalion was formed at
Fermoy. "He was never in doubt as to how his men would acquit
themselves. To us officers he said things in private which would sound
a little arrogant if I quoted them--and yet they have been made good."
The welfare of the men was always his first concern. Captain Gwynn
relates that on the return of the battalion one night, after a dreary
day of field operations at home, the company officers, feeling very
miserable, were gathered about the door of their mess-room, waiting
for dinner, when the Colonel called out that their proper place was in
the cook-house, seeing that the men were first served. The incident
greatly rejoiced the heart of Captain Gwynn, for, having served in the
ranks, he knew that the officer who is best served by the men is he
who places their comfort and well-being before his own. In France,
whenever any compliment was paid to Colonel Lenox-Conyngham, he could
not be content until, with frank generosity, he passed it on to the
company officers. "It is you who have done it," he would say. "He was
right too," says Captain Gwynn. "We did the work, and no men were ever
less interfered with; but we did it as we had been taught to do it,
and because we were kept up to it at every point."
I can only mention a few typical cases of the officers of the Irish
Brigade killed at Guillamont and Guinchy. Lieutenant E.R.F. Becher, of
the Munster Fusiliers, was but nineteen, and the only child of E.W.
Becher, Lismore, co. Waterford. He was descended in direct line from
Colonel Thomas Becher, who was aide-de-camp to King William at the
Battle of the Boyne, and was on that occasion presented by the King
with his watch, which is still an heirloom in the family. Captain H.R.
Lloyd of the Royal Irish Regiment was descended from the ensign who
carried the colours of the Coldstream Guards at Waterloo. He was
educated at Drogheda Grammar School, and was at business in Brazil
when the war broke out. Lieutenant J.T. Kennedy of the Inniskillings
was editor of the _Northern Standard_, Monaghan. Lieutenant Charles P.
Close of the Dublin Fusiliers was a native of Limerick, and conducted
a teaching academy in that city. At the time he volunteered he was
the commanding officer of the City Regiment of National Volunteers.
Another officer of the National Volunteers was Lieutenant Hugh
Maguire, son of Dr. Conor Maguire of Claremorris. He was a university
student when he volunteered for service in response to the national
call, and got a commission in the Connaught Rangers, but was
temporarily attached to the Inniskillings when he was killed. Another
gallant youth was Lieutenant Thomas Maxwell, Dublin Fusiliers, son of
Surgeon Patrick W. Maxwell of Dublin, who was in his twenty-first year
when he fell while in temporary command of the leading company of his
battalion in the taking of Guinchy. Then there is Second-Lieutenant
Bevan Nolan. He was the third son of Walter Nolan, Clerk of the Crown
for South Tipperary. When the war broke out he was in Canada, and,
returning at once, obtained a commission in the Royal Irish Regiment.
He was a very gallant young officer, and most popular with his
comrades. In the camp the general verdict was: "Nolan is destined for
the V.C., or to die at the head of his platoon." He was only
twenty-one years of age, and a splendid type of young Tipperary.
The greatest loss in individual brain-power which Ireland suffered was
through the death of that brilliant man of letters and economist,
Lieutenant T.M. Kettle of the Dublin Fusiliers. He was a son of Andrew
J. Kettle, a Dublin farmer, one of the founders of the Land League,
and a member of the executive who in 1881, on the arrest of the
leaders, Parnell, Davitt and Dillon, signed the No-Rent Manifesto
addressed to the tenants. In the House of Commons, where he sat as a
Nationalist from 1906 to 1910, young Kettle made a reputation for
eloquence and humour of quite a fresh vein. He resigned on his
appointment as Professor of National Economics in the National
University of Ireland. He was married to Margaret, daughter of David
Sheehy, M.P., whose sister is the widow of Sheehy Skeffington, shot
by the military in the Dublin Rebellion.
In public life Kettle was a vivid figure, and very Irish. At first he
belonged to the extreme, or irreconcilable section of Nationalists,
noted for a cast of thought or bias of reasoning which finds that no
good for Ireland can come out of England. When England was fighting
the Boers he distributed anti-recruiting leaflets in the streets of
Dublin. To his constituents in East Tyrone he once declared that
Ireland had no national independence to protect against foreign
invasion. "I confess," he added, referring to the over-taxation of
Ireland, "I see many reasons for preferring German invasion to British
methods of finance in Ireland." But increased knowledge brought wider
views. As a result of his experiences in Parliament, where he found in
all parties a genuine desire to do what was best for Ireland according
to their lights, he approached the consideration of Irish questions
with a remarkably tolerant, broad-minded and practical spirit. When
the war broke out there was no more powerful champion of the Allies.
The invasion of Belgium, which he had witnessed as a newspaper
correspondent, moved him to an intense hatred of Germany, and,
throwing himself with all his energy into the recruiting campaign in
Ireland, he addressed no fewer than two hundred meetings, bringing
thousands of his countrymen to the Colours. One of his epigrammatic
and pointed sayings--suggested by the ill-favour of absentee
landlordism of old in Ireland--was: "Nowadays the absentee is the man
who stays at home."
In a letter written to a friend on the night his battalion was moving
up to the Somme, Kettle said he had had two chances of leaving--one on
account of sickness and the other to take a Staff appointment. "I have
chosen to stay with my comrades," he writes. "The bombardment,
destruction and bloodshed are beyond all imagination. Nor did I ever
think that valour of simple men could be quite as beautiful as that of
my Dublin Fusiliers." On the eve of his death he wrote to his wife
another fine tribute to his battalion. "I have never," he says, "seen
anything in my life so beautiful as the clean and, so to say, radiant
manner of my Dublin Fusiliers. There is something divine in men like
that."
Kettle fell in the storming of Guinchy. His friend and comrade,
Lieutenant James Emmet Dalton, M.C., states that they were both in the
trenches in Trones Wood opposite Guillamont, on the morning of
September 8th, discussing the loss of two hundred men and seven
officers which the battalion had sustained the day before from German
shell fire, when an orderly arrived with a note for each of them,
saying, "Be in readiness. Battalion will take up A and B position in
front of Guinchy to-night at 12 midnight." Lieutenant Dalton
continues: "I was with Tom when he advanced to the position that
night, and the stench of the dead that covered our road was so awful
that we both used some foot-powder on our faces. When we reached our
objective we dug ourselves in, and then, at five o'clock p.m. on the
9th, we attacked Guinchy. I was just behind Tom when we went over the
top. He was in a bent position, and a bullet got over a steel
waistcoat that he wore and entered his heart. Well, he only lasted
about one minute, and he had my crucifix in his hands. Then Boyd took
all the papers and things out of Tom's pockets in order to keep them
for Mrs. Kettle, but poor Boyd was blown to atoms in a few minutes.
The Welsh Guards buried Mr. Kettle's remains. Tom's death has been a
big blow to the regiment, and I am afraid that I could not put in
words my feelings on the subject." In another letter Lieutenant Dalton
says: "Mr. Kettle died a grand and holy death--the death of a soldier
and a true Christian."
Lieutenant Kettle left his political testament in a letter to his wife
and in verses addressed to his little daughter. The letter, written a
few days before his death, with directions that it was to be sent to
Mrs. Kettle if he were killed, says--
"Had I lived I had meant to call my next book on the relations
of Ireland and England _The Two Fools; A Tragedy of Errors_. It
has needed all the folly of England and all the folly of Ireland
to produce the situation in which our unhappy country is now
involved. I have mixed much with Englishmen and with Protestant
Ulstermen, and I know that there is no real or abiding reason
for the gulfs, salter than the sea, that now dismember the
natural alliance of both of them with us Irish Nationalists. It
needs only a Fiat Lux of a kind very easily compassed to replace
the unnatural by the natural. In the name, and by the seal, of
the blood given in the last two years I ask for Colonial Home
Rule for Ireland, a thing essential in itself, and essential as
a prologue to the reconstruction of the Empire. Ulster will
agree. And I ask for the immediate withdrawal of martial law in
Ireland, and an amnesty for all Sinn Fein prisoners. If this war
has taught us anything it is that great things can be done only
in a great way."
The lines, "To my daughter Betty--The Gift of Love," were written "In
the field before Guillamont, Somme, September 4, 1916--
"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 breast that was your baby's throne,
To dice with death, and, oh! they'll give you rhyme
And reason; one will call the thing sublime,
And one 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 shed
And for the secret Scripture of the poor."
These young leaders have won the wooden cross--the symbol of the
supreme sacrifice they made that others might live; the symbol, also,
of eternal peace for themselves--the wooden cross which marks their
graves. From north, south, east and west of Ireland, of differing
creeds, of opposing political opinions--these men of the Irish Brigade
and the Ulster Division--they lie, as they fought, side by side,
comrades in a noble cause. It is sad to think of the many rare
intelligences, ardent and glowing spirits, which are quenched for ever
in the little cemeteries that have sprung up along the Allied Front.
The loss to Ireland is incalculable. But gain might come from it,
which, weighed in the balance, would not be found wanting, if only the
solemn lesson which it teaches were brought home to all: that one in
Irish name, as one in Irish fame, are the northerners and southerners
who died in France for the liberation of humanity.
Major-General Hickie--as mindful of the memories of those of his men
who have fallen as of the well-being of those still in the fighting
ranks--erected as a memorial to the dead of the Irish Brigade a statue
in white marble of Our Lady of Victories in a town of the district.
Another striking proof of his esteem for the men is afforded by the
following Order which he issued on December 18, 1916--
"To-day is the anniversary of the landing of the Irish Division
in France; The Divisional Commander wishes to express his
appreciation of the spirit which has been shown by all ranks
during the past year. He feels that the Division has earned the
right to adopt the motto which was granted by the King of France
to the Irish Brigade, which served in this country for a hundred
years: 'Everywhere and always faithful.' With the record of the
past, with the memory of our gallant dead, with this motto to
live up to, and with our trust in God, we can face the future
with confidence."
GOD SAVE THE KING.