Paul Malpas

For my sins and as General Secretary of the Connaught Rangers Association, I help to put together The New Ranger, an annual magazine for the Association members.  The Association’s purpose is to build up a data base of soldiers who served in the Regiment, one of the proudest regiments ever to serve in the British Army and to remember those men who died fighting for what they thought was their country.  The Regiment was disbanded along with several other Irish regiments in 1922 when Ireland gained its independance from England after having 2500 of its soldiers killed in the First War.

Whilst carrying out these duties just prior to the last edition going to press a strange thing happened to me.  I was editing a piece by a chap called Jack Fallon about the opening of a monument in a churchyard in Killure, near Ahascragh, in East Galway.  This monument was to the 12 men of the parish who gave their lives in the First War.  I thought I would tag their names onto the bottom of Jack’s report.   The last man on the list was Pvt. Matthew Wilson No7010 of 2nd Battalion Connaught Rangers and on the programme for the day it said the date of his death was 25th, 1915. No month, not sinister but just probably a typing mistake.  So I resolved to find out the month of his death.  By 1915 the 1st and 2nd Battalions, after both receiving a massive mauling in late 1914 had been amalgamated into one Battalion, yet the programme said he was with 2nd Battalion in 1915.  I noticed that he was buried in Guise Communal Cemetery, which was behind German lines for most of that war.  I googled Guise Cemetery 1915 and up came the graves of soldiers and a magnificent memorial to 11 English soldiers  who it said had been shot by the Germans on the 25 February 1915, and there on the list was Matthew Wilson, our man from Killure.

This started me thinking and I rooted through all the reports coming through for inclusion in the magazine and there was the story of these 11 men sent in by Hedley Malloch, who lives in Lille, in Northern France.  I felt as though fate had taken a hand and that I had to tell the story.  So with apologies to Hedley I will give my cut down version.

The party of 11 soldiers consisted of  five men from 2nd Connaught Rangers, five men from 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers and one man from 15th (Kings) Hussars.  On and just after the 26 August during the long and chaotic retreat from Mons in the first week of the war these soldiers were 11 of  literally hundreds of men who were cut off from the main Expeditionary Force and were captured by the Germans or escaped back through to their own lines or escaped back to England through routes opened up by Nurse Edith Cavell and her friends in Brussels.  These 11 had not succeeded in escaping but had followed the line of the German advance knowing this was going to be a quick war and as the saying went, “would be over by Christmas”.  They were sheltered by the people of Iron, a small village about ten kilometres north of Guise, from about 15 October 1915, having existed for the first two months by scavenging and living off the country  in a land of valleys, woods and great forests, a great place to hide.

Eventually as the winter progressed,  Vincente Chalandre, who had a mill in the village, brought them inside where they remained for some time.  Unfortunately as with every small community that had been sworn to secrecy there was a weak link in the chain and in a cauldron of envy, love, fear, and jealousy, this link broke, when an old man called Batchelet informed on the soldiers who were arrested on the 22nd February 1915.  No German records exist of what happened but early in the morning of 25 February after a night of beatings and general cruelty, the 11 soldiers and Vincente Chalandre were led out into the grounds of the Chateau at Guise and shot by firing squad, their bodies allowed to fall into a prepared ditch and they were covered over.

To be fair to the Germans this might not have been over-reaction.  Amnesties had been declared at least three times in their six months on the run and they had plenty of time to give themselves up, but it was on the top end of harshness by the Germans, however the women who were involved were all spared and given prison sentences. Bachelet the informer was arrested after the war but died in custody before his case came to court and to the end he was calling them deserters.  So these six Irishmen, three Yorkshiremen, one from Birkenhead and one man of Kent met their end through no fault of their own, perhaps they are still muttering and moaning like all soldiers do and wondering what to do next.  At least the people of Guise and Iron still remember them and Matthew Wilson has the added bonus of being remembered by the people of Killure.  An outstanding thing in Ireland where only now after 90 odd years are these brave Irish dead getting their sacrifice honoured.

The 11 soldiers were:-

Pvt Denis Buckley No 6240  2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers.  Born Cork.  Age 25

Pvt Daniel Horgan No 9582  2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers.  Born Cork.  Age18

Pvt Fred Innocent No 7845  2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers.  Born Bradford Age 27

Pvt John Nash  No 10084   2nd  Royal Munster Fusiliers, Born Sneem, Kerry Age 21

L/c James Moffatt No 7925 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers Born Birkenhead Age not known

L/c John William Stent No 6943 15th(The King’s) Hussars Born Bromley, Kent Age 24

Pvt George Howard No 9381 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Sheffield.  Age 28

Pvt Terence Murphy No 8713 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Ballisodare, Co. Sligo Age 29

Pvt William Thompson No 9472 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Sheffield Age 24

Pvt John Walsh No 6594 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Tullamore, Co. Offaly Age 33

Pvt Matthew Wilson No 7010 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Ahascragh, Co. Galway Age 37

MAY THEY REST IN PEACE

Well fate definitely did take a hand, Hedley Malloch wanted to erect a monument to these forgotten men and worked tirelessly for a number of years with the townsfolk of Guise and the villagers of Iron and helped by donations from our Association and the Royal Munster Fusiliers Association, the stage was set. Land in the centre of Iron was granted and our own in house team of stonemasons Feelystone of Boyle designed, exported and erected this beautiful monument in time for the opening ceremony on Saturday 17^th September 2011

Twenty members of the association flew over for the ceremony and to a man/woman were moved/ amazed/shocked/delighted and flabbergasted at the kindness/generosity and welcome we received from the local French people.  Hedley Malloch had done everybody proud with the attention to detail and management of the whole day and the invitations he had prepared for all the right people.

We flew into France on the Thursday and visited the spot on the Marne River at La Ferte sous Jouarre about 40 miles from Paris where the German advance through France was stopped in September 1914.  On the banks of the river is a magnificent memorial to 3800 who died in those first few weeks of the war who have no known grave, including 50 Connaught Rangers.

The next day we were at Soupir on the River Aisne where the 2^nd Battalion got knocked about a bit when pushing the German Army back after their progress was arrested at the Marne but for every punch the Rangers took they gave ten blows back and the German casualties were a massive, 3000 plus.  It was here on 14th September 1914 that Acting Lieutenant Colonel Charles O’Sullivan, father of film star Maureen O’Sullivan, was badly injured and his brother in law Lieutenant John Irwin Fraser from Knockvicar, Boyle was killed.

Saturday was a lovely sunny autumn day when we assembled in the car park at Guise.  To our surprise three Scottish pipers in full  uniform jumped out of a car next to us, complete with bearskin hats, kilts and sporrans and started warming up there and then, the pibroch waking the town from its Friday night slumber.  It was as well that these pipers were not Scots but from Albert on the Somme and were big enough to fend off any shouts from the rudely awakened. Led by Hedley we marched to the bottom of the hill leading up to the Chateau where we were joined by the town’s brass band and about 100 townsfolk.  A quick hike up the hill with pipers and brass band taking it in turns to keep us in step brought us to the gates of the chateau where a contingent of Light Dragoons, which the King’s Hussars had morphed into and who were preparing themselves for Afghanistan after Christmas, were waiting with another 100 more townies.  Along with them were five Essex Regiment re-enactment men in 1914 uniform complete with standard issue Lee Enfield rifles and the standard bearers from 12 French military associations.

Though I say it myself, we made a fairly impressive sight as we marched through the gates of the chateau to the spot where the 11 soldiers and M.Chalandre were shot on that February morning in 1915.  It was from here that the remains of the soldiers and M. Chalandre were exhumed and reinterred in Guise Communal Cemetery in 1923.  There was a simple service and short speeches over a memorial stone, set in concrete and a last post was played by a member of the band.  We then marched off in true army style with pipers and brass band blowing their heads off, the French standards and ours carried by the indomitable Willie Beirne, fluttering in the Autumn breeze and about 250 people tripping along with true military precision at about 120 steps to the minute.  The music and the march were that impressive I felt like enlisting in some regiment there and then. Right down the main street of the town and through the well thronged market place with crowds cheering and clapping us all the way, we soon completed the mile march to the cemetery, where there were two more remembrances, one over M. Chalandre’s grave and one over the soldier’s tomb.

After the ceremonies, speeches and renditions of Les Marseillaise and Last Post, it was back to town in the same style and at the same pace, to L’Hotel de Ville, where the mayor and various civic dignitaries greeted us with a champagne reception and more speeches and exchanges of gifts.  It was an amazing and generous affair and it shows these people, whose families lives over several generations were ravaged by war, will not forget.  It was very emotional and I will always remember the streets of this little town, lined with people clapping and giving vent to loud hurrahs as we passed.  We really felt we were special people.

Then it was off to Iron, a little hamlet about five miles away, where the soldiers were protected and fed by the villagers and M. Chalandre for some months, before being captured by the Germans after a tip off from a cuckolded old man.  There was a similar array of talent with slightly more civilians than at the morning ceremony in Guise.  Assembly at the mill where the soldiers hid and then a sprightly march to the memorial in the centre of the village, past the site of M Chalandre’s house, which was burnt down as a German reprisal.  Many speeches and thank yous from various guests impressively translated by Hedley Malloch and then the memorial and a very impressive one at that erected personally by father and son Feeley, was unveiled by the very decent Barry Manilowe look alike, Mayor of  Iron.  Four rounds were fired over the monument as a mark of respect from the Essex Regiment and then into the village hall for another reception, this time with savoury pasties, local cider and pastis.  The villagers had got together a little museum of articles and photographs showing what the village was like under the German fist, all very interesting.  The highlight for us was meeting M. Chalandre’s grandson who was overcome with emotion to think that we, who had come so far, were remembering his grandfather.  The privilege was ours with the locals turning up in force to honour men of the Connaught Rangers.  They will never forget. Adieu a Guise et a Iron et les peuples de Picardie.

The following day we went to Verdun which is a story in itself and the trip finished with a quick trip around the Somme taking in Guillemont church where the Connaught Rangers are honoured for retaking the village and winning a Victoria Cross in the process and we finished off at Ronsoy Wood where the 6th Battalion were massacred on the 21^st March 1918 at the start of the Kaiserschlact, Germany’s last throw of the dice, which nearly succeeded except for the fact that they ran out of ammunition and then home to England, Ireland and Portugal after a very emotional and special experience.

Today I have been stung into action by one of my oldest correspondents, a man who originally came from Boyle, where I now live and who likes to be reminded of the old place.  However he is getting no reminders from me this Sunday morning, as I look out of my kitchen window and watch 40mph howling westerlies blowing the heavy rain horizontally across the garden in an unimpressive 12 degrees centigrade temperature and this mid-July.

My correspondent has not liked my feeble, choleric attacks on the Salford Diocese and my alma mater, St. Bede’s College.  He, I fear, is one of the old school, I suggest, and does not want the boat rocked in any way.  So my subject this morning, brought on by another correspondent from British Columbia, where I, also have relatives, is ancestry.

This ex-Mancunian, but now British Columbian has briefly explained her ancestry of English ascendency, turned Irish patriotism, with solid religion both sides of the brush and always verging on celebrity status, which explains the stunning intellect that runs through all her siblings.  Her ancestors volunteered for everything, the army, the priesthood, the medical profession and the IRA.

However my ancestry is far from that, we Malpi were the dumb strugglers, who never raised a voice in anger, accepted what life threw at us and just got on with it and with the small amount of education we received, made the best of our meager talent but learnt enough not to volunteer for nowt.  We  were people, who when told to jump, bloody well jumped but we had enough devil in us not to jump too high.  Not for us posh colleges and velvet gloves, but village schools and no gloves at all and for a long time no bloody shoes either.

My maternal side I have spoken with relish about before, so I will not bore you with too much detail.  The four great grand-parents from Queen’s County, or Laois as it is now, Kildare and two from Galway all lived through the Famine and carried on regardless.  Their fathers and the fathers before them had lived all their lives paying unjust rents for scraps of land to absentee, in the main, landlords.  These four are proof to scotch that old wives tale, that England set out, with genocide in mind, to remove the Irish nation from the face of the earth and use the vacated land as an agrarian idyll, where they could holiday in peace, drinking Red Barrel beer and riding home on the backs of asses with beautifully manicured hooves.

These four great grand-parents eventually bore stock that decided to come to England, to haunt the religious anglicans, who were by now ashamed of their previous demographic fumblings.  None of the four made it much further than the first rung of the ladder.  They preferred to shovel coke all day into gas retorts or wheel around fruit and vegetables by the tonne.  This way they built up a thirst and met lots of people.  They were there in the latter part of the 19th century, working hard and turning Manchester into one of the main armament exchanges that was channeling weapons into Ireland and making it  into the boiling pot it became in the first quarter of the 20th century.

However my maternal grand-father, who survived the Fenian War, the Sudanese War, the Boer War parts 1 and 2, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Mau Mau and Cypriot Uprisings and the Suez Crisis without bothering his arse to fight in any of them, gained victory in his old age and retirement by living to the ripe old age of 84, astounding for a man who had worked at the blunt end of a gasworks all his life.  He took a weekly amount from the Manchester Gas Board as a pension on retirement instead of the lump sum and gained great satisfaction from living in profit for his last nine years.

My fraternal great grand-parents were made of exactly the same metal but totally different, dissimilar in style and outlook.  For a start they were of Protestant lineage, who only saw the inside of a church when it mattered ie. for marriages and deaths as opposed to my maternal side who more or less lived in church.  These Protestants put their faith in hard work and kept at it.  On my father’s fraternal side, they were a  Cheshire species, saddlers from Poynton, on the Stockport/Macclesfield road.  They were an important part of the community.  A saddler in those days, was like a Mercedes dealership nowadays, only without the suits, free drinks, showrooms,  money and limousines.  The youngest son, my great grand-father, broke away and got himself a bit of land on the Bredbury/Denton border and began breeding shire horses for Robinson’s Brewery stables in Stockport, amongst others.  He is probably the most successful commercially of my forebears, he bedded two sisters and the two families became entwined like a can of spaghetti.  He died a happy man in the 1920s with his remarkable saying ringing in his ears.  “There is always room for one more”.

On my father’s maternal side, I come from generations of hard rock miners, hewing scraps of tin out of the hard Cornish sub-strata.  Henry Allen was married to Avis John, the daughter of a courageous Cornish woman, Grace John, courageous in as much as she had five children in her first three years of marriage.  They came from Ludgvan, just outside of Penzance.  When the Cornish tin mines were exhausted in the 1870s, he had two options, go to Bute in Montana, where the money was good and the danger greater or head up north to Cumberland, where seams of tin were opening up.  He chose the short distance and took with him Avis and five children, stopping off for a few years on the way at Llantrisant, in South Wales, to mine iron ore and siring another three children, before settling in Arlecdon, near Whitehaven.

So there we have it, all hard workers, never put a foot out of line and never volunteered for nowt.  I suppose that is what they all had in common.  That must be where my life’s maxim was bred.

HEAD DOWN AND KEEP PLOUGHING.

I have just returned after a couple of days in Dublin and I am amazed at what I saw. By nine o’clock at night there was not a shop doorway or office block entrance available or vacant. The homeless were in command and sleeping in niches that offered only the scantest protection from the incessant rain. There must be some remedy for this disgraceful scene, especially with the thought that there are 300,000 vacant dwellings in Ireland. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the Health Service Executive to put two and two together and make four, somehow.

When daylight comes to the streets, the pavements fill with beggers of all nationalities and I am not sure there is a link between the doorstep dwellers and the beggers, they appear different in terms of age and nationality. It is disturbing and sad that such a situation exists. It was always to some extent there, with the women and children of the travelling community but the begger’s numbers have increased tenfold these past few years and it is not just women and children of the travellers now, it is man woman and child of most nationalities known.

A walk down Talbot Street or up O’Connell Street will show you the problem, grotesquely deformed cripples and other limbless unfortunates litter the pavements, saying nothing, but holding up empty plastic coffee cups for us rich or not so rich, to fill up with loose change. Not only is it very uncomfortable to witness and so perplexing to deal with, it can also do no good for the lifeblood of Dublin, it’s tourist industry.

Obviously all these poor people are supported by the state and if not you would wonder how they came to the country. Some will be mentally impaired and somehow or other should be cared for by the authorities. The country cannot wash it’s hands of them and allow them to die like dogs in the street. This is not Ireland of 100 years ago. I might have the whole thing wrong and it might be that the State is falling over itself in caring for these people but I am only expressing the thoughts of the occasional visitor who has this problem thrust in his face.

But enough of rant, I came to Dublin at the invite of O’Brien Press to attend the launch of a new book by a young writer, Neil Richardson. I was interested in attending such an occasion because I had watched a performance of a play by Neil entitled “From the Shannon to the Somme” in March this year in the Little Theatre in Athlone. See my blog of that title posted on 27th March 2010. I was then so impressed not only with the acting and the direction of the play but also with the script and how well it was researched by one so young. Neil is in his mid-twenties.

So I was pleased and proud to attend this launch having spotted the writers talents some months ago. It is his first book and it has taken three years of research and is entitled “A Coward If I Return, A Hero If I Fall” which is a line in the poem “Lament” by the Donegal writer, Patrick McGill, who fought the whole of the First World War with the London Irish Rifles. It tells the same story as the play but this time in facts and figures and explains the anguish of the families on receiving the dreaded telegram and paints pen pictures of the Irish men and boys who volunteered to fight in this atrocious conflict and describes the dichotomy faced by the 200,000 returning Irishmen at the end of the war.

They had enlisted in 1914 into what was then their army and what had become the enemy’s army, by the time they were demobbed in 1919. They were coming home to hatred, social ostracization, unemployment and having to live with this and the inevitable post traumatic stress brought on by the war. Nationalistic zeal was running high and they were shunned and forgotten. We are not talking about a few thousand men here, but something like 30% of the 17-35 year old male population, a vast amount of people. Faced with these difficulties is it any wonder so many of them did not return but chose to try and make a go of it in England, America, Canada and Australia. To quote Yeats, everything was “all changed, changed utterly”

The evening commenced with a eulogy on the writer by Michael O’Brien, the publisher, who was amazed that one so young could write with such maturity. Dr. Tom Conan, former Lt. Colonel in the Irish Army and now Defence Correspondent for The Irish Times amongst other things, followed up, reporting some of the startling facts gleaned from the book. There were 50,000 Irishmen killed in that war, roughly the same amount as Americans killed in Vietnam. Vietnam is seared into the American psyche, these 50,000 Irishmen were forgotten in that surge of nationalism in the 20s and 30s. In Easter Week in Dublin 450 civilians, rebels and British soldiers were killed, in that same week in Loos in Northern France 538 Irish soldiers, mainly from Dublin, met their death, mostly by chlorine gas, a horrible killer. The world knows about the dead in Dublin but nothing about the dead in Loos. His talk was emotional and serious and explained the soldiers lot in conflict.

Neil then spoke of his early interest in the war, his long years of research and his pleasure at seeing so many people at the National Library for this occasion. It was obvious from his easy speech on the subject, while he rattled off names and numbers, facts and fables that his research had been deep, accurate and unique.

I brought the book home and started reading and finished the last of its 350 pages in two days. It is a compelling, eye-opening and easy read. It explains the problems it set itself in its title, in a way that, as far as I know, has never been tried before. It’s uniqueness in this genre is a main reason for buying the book. I was so pleased to have accepted the invitation on behalf of the Connaught Rangers Association and so proud to have been at such an august occasion.

Best of luck Mr. Richardson with this work and may you have continued success throughout your career.

First of all I would like to apologize to anybody who reads this blog on a regular basis.  I have been very busy and have only managed to squeeze in one blog in the last week.  A cousin of mine died  a week ago, trgically young at 54 years of age and I went over to England last Thursday to a very emotional but lovely funeral.  A funeral is a very necessary and cathartic experience for all that have been  touched by the deceased’s life.  The tentacles of humanity, stretching out and gathering in all those people, who have at some stage  had their spirit lifted by the finished life-force, for one final celebration.  It is happy and sad and necessary and this particular celebration was made all the greater by the beautiful panegyric of the priest, Father Bernard Sparks, a great and longtime friend of the family.

I left the gathering after a couple of hours and went back to my daughter’s house in a very contemplative mood.  For reasons I will not bother you with, I had not seen the lady, my first cousin, for a number of years.  As you all grow up and move around and settle into a path of life, touch can easily be lost and this is what made this death all the harder for me.  At one time I was so close to her and her family and now I would not have recognized her in the street.  She died before I knew her and yet at one time I knew her well.  Somehow I had missed out on a good life and that is a big miss.

Away I came and the following morning was more than pleasantly surprised from a comment I received on a blog I wrote  on 12 January 2010 called The Importance of Blogs. I had just heard that Catherine, who has just died, was terminally ill and I dedicated this blog to her and her family.  It traced her mother’s  family tree back to the Famine in Ireland, it was a piece of their history they were unsure of because of their mother’s premature death, nearly 50 years ago.

This comment was from a lady who had just read this blog and realized that she was a second cousin of mine and Catherine’s, her grandfather and my grandmother were siblings.  She was from a branch of the family that had gone their separate ways in the 1930s and for whatever reason  touch had been lost.

That is why the blog is such an amazing and powerful tool if used properly.  You often think that once a piece has been posted, that is it, gone and forgotten, but the internet and blog field leaves it there like a bright shiny cherry on a tree waiting to be picked and eaten by passing strangers.  It is there for evermore, hopefully to be appreciated by everyone and that is what happened.  So now as one cousin goes another comes to light and hopefully will not disappear as quickly.

As I was writing these words this morning, there came news that  will only double my efforts in this field.  My daughter, Katy, has entered the final stages of pregnancy with the anticipation of twins.  She is slightly premature but the experts say that this is normal with multiple births and that mother and foeutuses are fine, with estimated weights of 5lb with still four weeks of cooking  to go.  However she will now have to go into hospital for their delivery,  a thing she dreads.  She was looking forward to a home birth and had an army of midwives lined up to take care of any eventuality.  She will have to be forthright and clear minded and not let these tinkerers of mortality, the doctors, try to bully her into treatment she does not want, just to suit the timetable of the maternity suite.

My wife has flown the coop and is now in Dublin boarding the Holyhead boat with a rolling pin in hand.  God help the doctors at Stepping Hill Hospital.   I am left with the young fellah, a mop and bucket and various dusters and told to make sure the house is perfect on her return.  That might not be until these twins are weaned so I have plenty of time.  The male’s station in life as with all things historic is a lonely one, but I suppose I have the pub and my blog and all the interesting things that both these channels deliver, but I must get on, the mop is doing a lonely dance in the bucket of hot water I prepared earlier.