The British Army?

 

Recruiting Poster

     World War 1, The Great War, was an entirely different sort of war than the world had seen before.  The invention of  modern weaponry made old methods of fighting impractical, protection on the battlefield was now essential.  In September of 1914 the first trenches were dug to shield soldiers from gas and automatic gunfire; by war's end the landscape would be defiled by over 30,000 miles of them.  Life in the trenches was hellish, rains filled them with muddy water, latrines overflowed, rats and disease abounded.  Ever vigilant enemy snipers picked soldiers off with disturbing regularity, even in quiet periods death was always present as were the graves located within the flooding trenches.  

     It was in those trenches at the western front my second cousin twice removed, John White, fought in WW 1.  John was born in County Wexford on 24 April 1889, later living in County Kilkenny with his parents John White and Bridget Neville before moving to England where he was employed as a constable in Liverpool.  His photograph at right in uniform, his policeman's helmet resting on his leg, shows a confident, self assured, young man.

     At the outbreak of war John enlisted with the 1st Brigade of the Irish Guards in England (there was only one brigade then).  He landed in France the 13th of August in 1914, joining what would eventually total almost 140,000 other Irishmen. I found it difficult to understand why they chose to do that, and why John in particular?  After all, he was not in economic need as some of the Irish enlistees were.  A laborer in Ireland could easily double his income by joining up, making enlistment an attractive option for him, but John had a good job. Was it a misguided feeing of patriotism, or could it have been the words of John Redmond that inspired him?

     Ireland was deeply divided at that time between nationalists who wanted freedom for Ireland and unionists who demanded Ireland remain part of the British Empire.  John Redmond, leader of the nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party, encouraged Irish enlistment as a way to avoid the imposition of conscription in Ireland, improve relations between the opposing sides and bolster the Irish Home Rule legislation which had recently been passed, but suspended for the duration of the war.  Redmond's pro-enlistment declaration in September of 1914, supporting the British war effort, enraged the Irish Volunteers and Irish Republican Brotherhood, resulting in a splintering of Redmond's Irish Party.  Less than two years later, the IRB along with the Irish Volunteers, and the Irish Citizen Army staged the Easter Rising in Dublin. 

      John was no rebel, however.  I've seen no evidence he was a member of the Irish Party, indeed, his father and grandfather had both been members of the RIC in Ireland and John, in addition to sharing their names, seems to have followed in their footsteps; joining the constabulary and in his case, enlisting in the British Army.  In that way, John found himself at the western front.  The picture at right shows a very different man from the one above.  John's armband, bearing the letters SB, identifies him as a stretcher bearer.  The haggard, haunted expression on his face speaks to the trauma of war and the suffering he certainly witnessed as he carried the wounded and dying from the fighting, all the while doing his best to survive in the trenches with his health and sense intact.

     I don't imagine I'll ever know John's reasons for enlisting.  I admit to having mixed feelings about this branch of the White family. My sympathies lie with the Irish Brotherhood and the others fighting for Ireland's freedom, which is not to say I can't summon any for John and his comrades. They too suffered.  John lost his life the tenth of October 1917 in a rain soaked place called Poelcappelle in Flanders, Belgium.  The War Diary of the Irish Guards, in the British National Archives, recorded that on that day, "the enemy sniped our front line continuously and caused us casualties". That may well be how John was killed.  A fellow soldier who survived the battle left this description of it's beginning early on the morning of the 9th--

We stood in the rain looking towards the line.  It was still very dark...suddenly, on every side of us and above us a tremendous uproar arose, the ground shook beneath us; for a moment we felt battered and dizzy.  The horizon was lit up with a sheet of flashes; gold and red rockets raced madly into the sky...

     John was awarded the British Victory Medal and Military Medal, he was buried at Artillery Wood Cemetery in Belgium.  Records available online merely state he was killed in action.