'For 60 years we were called traitors'

THE young priest's vestments were crumpled from his travel case and his uneven hem revealed runners wet and muddied from the Normandy shore.

From his bag he took two chubby candle stumps and a cupful of wine from a plastic Ballygowan bottle, arranging them on a plain white cloth.

His altar was a low table which earlier displayed tourist brochures; his church the small landing at the top of a twisting staircase on the first floor of the old railway station building, now the village hotel.

There were only a handful of borrowed chairs and no room to kneel but Fr John McCallion's Mass for the Irish veterans returning to the D-Day landing fields was observed with such reverence that it could have been St Peter's Square.

The sermon was shorter than usual but the sparse words said it all. "That the horrors of 60 years ago never be repeated and that the scourge of war be removed from the world," Fr McCallion prayed.

Then, reciting the words that are known to every World War II veteran who mourns a fallen comrade, he added: "At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them."

As former hospital chaplain in Drogheda and now curate in the Catholic parish of Portadown, Co Armagh, Fr McCallion has seen enough troubles to understand better than most the hardship endured by the veterans of D-Day.

But even he struggled to imagine the depth of fear of the 16 and 17-year-old soldiers watching their friends fall. "I only know one thing. There is never an atheist in a foxhole.

"When those young fellas were going into the field or fell into a bunker wounded, they wanted God's blessing and when the soul cries out like that, it is never closer to God, whichever God it is."

An estimated 150,000 Irish men from north and south of the Border were among those who fought to liberate the occupied territory.

Supreme commander of the Allied forces, US General Dwight D Eisenhower, sent them into battle with the words: "The eyes of the world are upon you" but for those present at the humble Mass in Normandy the eyes of Ireland would have been sufficient.

"I'm here for absent friends. For no other reason. Not for glory or ceremonies or presidents," reflected veteran Leo Caffrey with a mix of pride, sorrow and a little anger.

"For 60 years no one wanted to know the Irish men who died in the Second World War and now everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. We were called traitors. That's all right for me because I'm here to answer back for myself but there's no one to answer for the men who died. I'm here for them."