Celtic Engagement Rings

Irish Stick Fighting

Irish Stick Fighting

Joe's box

 

JOE'S BOX 

 

  I had always known of my Uncle Joe of course, but I knew very little about him and what he was like.  It was only at my Mum’s funeral that I first learnt a lot more.  He was the second eldest of all the seven children born to my Nan and Granddad and had been killed in the First World War. My Mum had worshipped Joe and called him the “Gay Cavalier”, because of his carefree manner and his devil may care attitude.  She used to say “Sure he had a bit of the dIvil in him”.  My Granddad, who was a poulterer, had come over to Liverpool from Dublin in 1910 to look for work.  Nan and all the other kids followed a year later.  Joe was the second eldest; he was 17 at the time; so it was he and my Mum who kept the smaller kids in line for my Nan during that journey. 

  According to my Mum, he had a wild streak in him and after a couple of years in Liverpool, disappointed that unlike my Granddad he couldn’t find work, very much against Granddads wishes he just upped sticks and went down to Kent where he joined the British Army.  The Royal Irish Fusiliers to be exact. 

  In the August of 1914 at the age of 20 he was amongst the first of the British expeditionary force to be shipped off to France.  Granddad wrote a letter to the War Office asking to be informed of his whereabouts.  They just returned his letter with a handwritten note on the back fobbing him off with another address to direct his enquiry to.  Consequently I have made it my business to research his short path through life to find out all about him.  I did this mainly through a comprehensive history of his regiment in the Great War, which traced his battalion’s path throughout its history and particularly the years of 1914-1918, in which I was interested

  That first Christmas at war, a truly wonderful thing happened in the trenches.  It is well documented, that on Christmas Eve of 1914 the soldiers in the trenches stopped fighting and met each other across no-mans land to wish each other well and have a drink; they also sang carols together and played a game of football against each other with a makeshift ball.  Sadly, that “truce” didn’t last long and the next day they were back to the business of killing each other. . 

  I can’t say for certain whether Joe himself ever actually played in that game of football.  I do know however, from my research that Joe’s outfit, No 1 Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, were there and part of that Christmas “Truce”.   From what I have been told about him, I firmly believe he would have been one of the first to offer a hand in friendship to his “enemies”.  He would also have shared a glass, or billycan of beer with them and sung a few carols  

  He went on to fight right through the War with his regiment, through France and into Belgium.  He survived some of the most famous of battles, The Somme twice, where literally hundreds of thousands were slaughtered, the first and second battles of Ypres, Paschendale and the battle of Kemmel Mont, where in May of 1918, he was wounded and sent home for recuperation. . He spent some time in a hospital in England, but in the June of that same year, he was returned to the front.  He was tragically killed in what was called “The final Push”, within a few weeks of the end of the War on 2nd September 1918

  Because of his affinity to her, he named my Mum as his next of kin and it was she, that they sent all his belongings to on his death.  Mum had always said that when she died I was to be given his bits and pieces, as she called them because I looked so like Joe as a boy and as a young man had reminded her of her favourite brother.

  I still have his possessions in what I call “Joes box” and it is one of my most prized possessions.  They are in the box that he kept them in, a Cadbury’s chocolate box; which has marked on the lid ”½ Gross chocolates, ½ p each”.   It contains all his medals, the death medal, a huge heavy bronze thing that all soldiers killed in action got.  The Victory medal, the British War medal and the most precious to me because of its reverence amongst military men, The Mons Star.  They are there with his pipe, his rosary beads, playing cards and an army issue bible, containing an inscription from Lord Roberts War Minister of the time. 

  The box also contains various items of correspondence amongst which is the telegram sent by the War Office to inform Nan and Granddad of his death.  Also contained in the box are documents with details of his grave and where he is buried.  On the notification of his grave, they had spelt his name wrongly as Hylands instead of Hyland; the reply back from Granddad was terse and very much to the point. Telling them in no uncertain terms what the correct spelling was.  Also in the box is a letter to him written by Nan; which I don’t believe he actually received. 

  In 1995 I felt an irresistible urge to go Belgium and find his grave.  It originally crossed my mind to make the trip as he did, by going from Dover to France on the ferry and traveling through the battlegrounds where he fought and on into Belgium where he was killed.  This really was a bit of “A pie in the sky” idea, as it turned out, because it would probably have taken weeks, which I didn’t have because of my job and also neither my wife Bren, nor I really fancied making such a journey. We would almost certainly have had to do it by car and I have an aversion these days to driving on the wrong side of the road.  So we settled for flying over to Brussels and traveling up to Antwerp where a good friend of ours, a Belgian lad by the name of Rene Masquille found us a small hotel and showed us around for a couple of days. 

  We were staying in Belgium for four days so on the third day after sampling some of Rene’s hospitality, we caught a train from Antwerp station to Ieper, which is the anglicized name for Ypres; a town down near the French border.  It was a really rotten, miserable, rainy day and the journey took us about two hours.  It was spent in the main, staring out at a very wet and for the most part, flooded landscape.  What I hadn’t taken into account though was that because it was a Sunday, there would be no public transport when we got to Ieper. 

  One of the many things I like about the Belgian people was their willingness to help a stranger.  This trait showed itself when we got there and were told there were no buses running.  I went onto the concourse of the station and was phoning a taxi from one of the adverts by the telephone, when the stationmaster followed me out and said, “No, no, they will be too expensive” and gave me another number to try.  I tried number he had given me and a guy turned up in a people carrier type taxi.  He took a look at the directions to the cemetery that I had been given by The War Graves Commission, nodded and said, “Yes, I know it”. 

  We set out following these directions and fairly soon I recognised the name of Lindhoek road; which I knew to be the road the cemetery, was on.   We had traveled a couple of miles along this road when up in the distance I saw rows and rows of little white crosses and said to Bren, “There it is”.  “No its not that one” the taxi driver said as he had overheard me.  Disbelievingly I said, “How many military cemeteries can there be around here”?  “Oh, about two hundred” he replied.  Now that just gives you a small idea of the slaughter that took place in that war and the utter futility of it. 

  On reaching the cemetery, we found it to be relatively small and the surrounding countryside bleak. We soon found Joe’s grave from the details given on the documents in his box.  It was a pleasant surprise to see how well it had been looked after and how the inscription and his name still stood out proudly after all these years.  Granddad would have been pleased.  It is sad really, to think that I remain the only member of our family who has ever stood at Joe’s graveside and said a prayer for him.  I also laid a wreath of poppies, I had brought with me and made an entry in the book of remembrance; which was kept in the gatehouse of the cemetery, on behalf of Nan and Granddad   I felt that by doing this, somehow I had brought them to see their son at last. 

  Collectors of military memorabilia have offered me money recently for its contents, but Joe’s box is precious to my family and I would dearly like to see it remain within our ranks.  Which is why when my Grandson Keagan showed an interest in the box and its contents some time ago when I showed it to him and explained Joe’s story to him, I was delighted.  Consequently I have promised the box to him when I too eventually shuffle off this mortal coil.   

About the Author

Chas Hyland

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