Fr Francis Gleeson’s bravery as a WW1 chaplain
is renowned, says James Fogarty
FRANCIS Gleeson was one of the thousands of
Irishmen who served in the First World War. But he did not go to fight. He
provided spiritual and physical comfort to the second battalion of the Royal
Munster Fusiliers. He was their chaplain, a role iconically in portrayed in the
painting, The General Last Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois.
“The scenes of enthusiasm are extraordinary,” he wrote on May 8, 1915, the eve of the Battle of Aubers Ridge. “I ride on my horse. Give absolution to [the] battalion during rest in [the] road...The men all sing hymns, ‘Hail Glorious St Patrick’. I go further up — near the trenches, and bid goodbye to all. So sad.”
Many of the men, recruited from Kerry, Cork,
Limerick, and Clare, were killed. The roll call was described as “the saddest
imaginable” by Fr Gleeson in his diary, which, along with his correspondences,
is housed at the Dublin Diocesan Archives. “Some had lost brothers, others cousins,
but all had lost good and faithful comrades.”
“What a day for all the Munsters,” he wrote in
his diary on May 9. “We lose at least 350 men, between killed and wounded and
missing. Spent all night trying to console, aid, and remove the wounded. It was
ghastly to see them lying there in the cold, cheerless outhouses, on bare
stretchers with no blankets to cover their freezing limbs... Hundreds lying out
in cold air all night at Windy Corner. No ambulances coming. They came at last
— at daylight.”
Fr Gleeson did not just provide comfort.
According to the book The Irish at the Front, published during the war, the
chaplain was not afraid to put himself in danger. During a bombardment of the
trenches, “Fr Gleeson stuck to his post, attending to the dying Munsters...
Indeed, if anyone has earned the VC, Fr Gleeson has. He is a credit to the
country he hails from, and brought luck to the Munsters since he joined them.”
Gleeson’s courage was mythic during his life.
In his biography, Goodbye To All That, Robert Graves, writer and WWI veteran,
wrote that “Jovial Father Gleeson of the Munsters, when all the officers were
killed and wounded at the first battle of Ypres, had stripped off his black
badges and, taking command of the survivors, held the line”.
This seems improbable and Gleeson does not
mention it in his diaries. One of 13 children, Gleeson was born on May 28,
1884, in Eastwood, Farrenderry, just outside Templemore, Co Tipperary, and he
was ordained in 1910. When war started he volunteered and was appointed chaplain
by the War Office in November. While romantic — he compared the Munsters to the
Wild Geese — he was never jingoistic. “If... advocates of war were made to be
soaked and caked and crusted with cold, wet trench mud, like these poor
soldiers, and to wear those mud-weighted coats,” he wrote in December 1914,
“they would not be so glib with their treatises on the art of war. These
militants should be made undergo a few nights in cheerless billets [and]
mud-river trenches to teach them a lesson. What is it all for at all?”
But he was committed to freeing Belgium,
although he was critical of what he considered the anti-clerical policies of
his allies, the French. Eventually, the daily horrors took their toll on him.
In November 1915, his contract expired and he was glad to leave the front. “I
am sorry to be leaving the dear old Munster lads,” he wrote, in a letter, “but
I really can’t stand it any longer. I do not like the life, though I love the
poor men so much. Will you please send me the papers regarding my discharge?”
After recovery, he rejoined the 2nd Munsters in
France in May 1917. The correspondence he received from the families of men who
were missing, wounded or killed gives some sense of his role. “He was the only
one left to me, but it pleased God’s holy will,” said Mrs E Thompson, from
Cork, who wrote in December 1917, to thank Gleeson for informing her of her
son’s death. “Father, I will ask of you to try and seek some firm account for
me and try to relieve the mind of a poor, broken-hearted mother.”
In the opening days of 1918, Fr Gleeson
received a letter from a Mrs Margaret Burke, from Kerry, whose husband was
missing. “Up to this, I was in great hopes of having good news, but now I am
beginning to despair, for I know that if he had only half a hand he would have
sent me some line long ago,” she told Fr Gleeson.
“Tis only God alone knows how I feel, for he
was an exceedingly good husband. But God knows best. I will be delighted to get
any further news from you.”
But not all the letters contained bad news. “I
also had notification from France, stating he was taken prisoner on the 10th of
the 11th at the Battle of Ypres and is unwounded...” wrote one relieved
relative. “I was troubled, but he is still living and well, but the poor
prisoners will not get much to eat from the Germans.”
In December 1917, Elizabeth Heaney, from
Dublin, informed Fr Gleeson that her son, a veteran of Gallipoli, “was taken on
the 10th just after the day the engagement took place and is in the best of
health, not having received a scratch in the encounter. He is all I have in the
world and the best and kindest creature God ever gave to anyone. He loved you
very much and spoke about you in every letter...”
Answering and receiving these letters was
upsetting for Fr Gleeson, as he confided in June 1915. “I got 12 letters today;
just after reading them. What answering they will take tomorrow. I like to give
these poor people all the solace I can, anyhow, but still there’s no limit to
the sorrowing inquiries. The tragedy of these letters....One letter was from a
broken-hearted girl... Then, the mothers! Oh!”
Father Gleeson left the Munsters in February
1918, before completing his tour with the British army in May 1919.
James Fogarty
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