An Irish Chaplain in the First World War
Reposted from Costing Not Less Than Everything - for Remembrance Day
“Prayer…..more than anything else
consoles me. And every fellow is the same. So the war has been the cause
of making us all an army of saints.”
“On the lonely, dark road-side…..lit
up now and then by flashes from our own or German flares, rose to Heaven
the voices of 800 men singing that glorious hymn, ‘Hail, Queen of
Heaven.’ There were no ribald jests or courage buoyed up by alcohol;
none of the fanciful pictures which imagination conjures up of soldiers
going to a desperate charge. No, there were brave hearts without fear,
only hoping that God would bring them through, and if the end came –
well it was only a little shortening of the allotted span. Every man had
his rosary beads out, reciting the prayers in response to Father
Gleeson, just as if at the Confraternity at home, instead of having to
face death in a thousand hideous forces the following morning.”
Words of Father Gleeson’s altar server in World War One, Sergeant-Major J. T, Leahy, of Monkstown, County Cork - from the Cork Examiner, May 10, 1918.
Father Francis Gleeson was born in 1884
in Tipperary. On the outbreak of war, he volunteered for service and was
appointed chaplain to the Royal Munster Fusiliers serving in Western
France. Giving aid and comfort to the soldiers, writing letters to
bereaved families (each letter ending with the words ‘a great
sacrifice’) and making handmade crosses for the burials he conducted, he
was known for his kindness and attention to the troops. At one time he
took command of the Regiment when the officers were incapacitated. On
another occasion, he celebrated Christmas Day Mass in a trench on the
front line. Of his service to the men, one of them said: “He’s a
warrior and no mistake. There’s no man at the Front more brave or
cooler. Why, it is in the hottest place up in the firing line he do be
to give comfort to the boys that are dying.”
He famously gave the 800 men of the Regiment
a general absolution before the Battle of Aubers Ridge, while still on
horseback. Most of the men were mown down by machine-gun fire in the
first few yards.
Here are his words inscribed on a tablet at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Belgium:
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