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The tradition of remembering those killed in war is relatively recent. Until the American Civil War 1861 – 1865, in the aftermath of battle, a large trench was dug and the dead of both sides were buried together. Because of technical advancements in weaponry the Battle of Gettysburg was for its time a particularly bloody battle. The battle also coincided with the availability of photography and photos of the battle field in all its gory detail were published. The publication of these photos had a profound effect. The dead and wounded ceased to be statistics, they became real -flesh and blood people someone’s husband, father or son. So an order was made that efforts should be made to identify individual soldiers, and that their graves should be marked. Following the Civil War, people were encouraged to hold services to remember those who had died on both sides of the conflict; this was to encourage healing between citizens who had fought against one another with great bitterness. Services to remember the war dead began in Great Britain following the First World War. The First World War was different from the wars that preceded it. In fact, there are many firsts associated with it: it was the first World War; the first war to use tanks, airplanes, poison gas, and trench warfare; it still holds the record for the numbers of soldiers killed. Britain had just begun its policy of giving each dead soldier an individual grave, so for the first time Europe has war cemeteries. France also hosts a number of memorials listing soldiers who died but whose bodies were never recovered. One of these is at Thiepval. This single monument has 72,000 names inscribed on it – 72,000 soldiers who died at the Battle of the Somme – their bodies shelled and bombed beyond recovery. 72,000 soldiers: one monument one battle in a war that lasted four years. The formula for remembering the dead of two world wars works; it has stood the test of time; but that is in Britain. What about the Republic of Ireland? History as we know is written by the victors. Irish history of the early 20th century has been the cause of a rather significant case of amnesia/schizophrenia in the population of Ireland. I studied history up to Leaving Certificate; it was a subject that was of genuine interest to me; the history books we used stopped in 1916 with a vague reference about the Redmondites going to fight in WWI, while the real Irish patriots fought in the GPO. The numbers fighting in Europe were glossed over to say the least. My impression was that it was perhaps a few thousand at most. I certainly got my figures wrong. 49,400 Irishmen are recorded as having died in the First World War. This figure does not include those who were wounded. There was never conscription in Ireland and we must recognise that poverty would have been a reason for some to join the British army. Rory our chairman told me that someone has analysed the figures of soldiers killed by address, and the more working class the address the higher the numbers killed. So poverty was one reason to enlist. However a good proportion of men and women volunteered to fight and gave their lives for causes they respected and believed in. Some who fought believed that their participation in the war would hasten Home Rule for Ireland; some fought because they identified with the belief that this was a war concerned with the freedom of small nations. The Poet Thomas Kettle, whose statue is across in St. Stephen’s Green, anticipating his probable death in the war, wrote a poem to his young daughter in which he gives his reason for enlisting and fighting . “Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, Died not for the Flag, nor King nor Emperor But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed. And for the secret Scriptures of the poor”. There is no element of imperialism in his reasons for enlisting; his was almost a religious calling. We can only speculate about the motivation of the majority of those who joined the forces, but what is without question is that every one who fought – especially in the First World War - experienced a living nightmare, sheer hell on earth. Most of them were changed forever by their experience and most of them could never speak about the horrors that they had witnessed. After the war they returned to a country where the political landscape had completely changed and their experiences of the war were airbrushed out of Irish history. I revisited the War Memorial Gardens while writing this address, and I found it supremely ironic that the central inscription on the Memorial reads “Their name liveth for evermore”, The memorial to Thomas Kettle was sculpted in 1919, and was erected in the Green in 1937 without any public display. The delay in erecting the monument was due in part to objections from the Office of Public Works, who objected to the words “Killed in France”. The Statue now reads “Killed at Guinchy”. It is only very recently that the participation of these thousands and thousands of soldiers is being acknowledged, and that there is even some revival of poppy wearing among the general public. Perhaps this change in attitude reflects a more mature confident Republic; or a more cynical interpretation may be that it is a political move to establish a more positive relationship with our Northern neighbours, who have always remembered the sacrifices made by the young soldiers especially in the killing fields of the First World War. In this church, at the top of the stairs, there is a monument to five members of this congregation who died in that war. To make these young men more real I will speak their names. I will give them in order of the dates that they died.
27thJuly; 2nd Lieutenant W.W. Fitzgerald age 22; 16thAugust ; 2nd Lieutenant George Falkiner age 19, five days later 21st Aug. his Brother 2nd Lieutenant Frederick Falkiner aged 22;
1918
The First World War was not as some believed it would be “the War to End Wars” but some lessons were learned from the carnage. In the next World War they did not make the mistake of getting stuck in trenches; each side developed their armoury of tanks and airplanes with new additions like U-boats. This war was far more technically advanced. This allowed the Germans to blitz London and Coventry and Belfast, and when the British got up to speed they were able to send their bombers to Berlin and Hamburg, and by the 1945 humanity had progressed to dropping the Atom bombs over two cities in Japan. There were fewer soldiers killed in the Second World War compared with the First World War, but the numbers of civilians killed increased greatly. And so it goes on: each new war results in more and more sophisticated weapons and a corresponding increase in the numbers of “civilian” casualties. To-day, as we speak, soldiers still die in conflict and civilians still suffer and die as “collateral damage”; to use the official term. There is a belief in the West that the wars that we pursue are honourable, and that enemy combatants are destroyed in surgical strikes from our sophisticated weapons. This is the picture regularly presented to us on news programmes: we in the West are non aggressive, totally honourable and have the good of humanity at heart. We are the good guys! We need to remind ourselves that what we are told by our politicians comes to us deeply biased. We need to remind ourselves that everyone killed in war is a human being just like us- someone’s child, husband/wife, father or mother. They have their share of virtues and vices just like each one of us. We need to know that war brutalises everyone involved in it; and given the right circumstances that our thin veneer of civilisation melts away and we are all capable of committing the most violent of acts. So to-day let us remember them. Let us recall the sacrifice they made, and let us remember all those who have died in conflicts since that war that is called the Great War. Let us remember W.W., Frederick, George, Walter and Sydney, but let us not forget the Helmuts, Gunters, Wolfgangs, Vladimirs. They too were the victims of war.
Archibald Macleish wrote these beautiful words: Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses. Who has not heard them! They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts. They Say We were young. We have died. Remember us.
They say, our deaths are not ours; So to-day let us remember them.
Amen
Rev.Bridget Spain |