100th anniversary ceremonies heal old war wounds for Irish soldiers

Last week, Glasnevin cemetery had a ceremony for Irish service men and women who served in World Wars 1 and 2, and for WWI’s 100th anniversary.

4,500 Irish nurses served in WWI. A cross was unveiled, at the graves of 200 WWI Irish servicemen, by the Glasnevin Trust and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which looks after the war graves and cemeteries worldwide of those who served in the British, New Zealand, Australian, and Canadian armies. The War Graves Commission represents all faiths and none. Ireland left the Commonwealth in 1949.

President Michael D Higgins spoke of how we, today, can eliminate all the barriers that have stood between those Irish soldiers who died in the war, for whose remains we have responsibility, and whose memories we have a duty to respect. We cannot give back their lives to the dead, he said, nor whole bodies to those who were wounded, nor repair the grief, nor undo the disrespect shown to those who fought, but we can honour them now.

Patrick Arnold, whose father, William J Arnold, from Dublin, was a career soldier with the Dublin Fusiliers in the British army in WW1 and 2, said, after the ceremony, that although his father died of natural causes, he was very psychologically and emotionally wounded by the wars. He never mentioned them because the memories, noise and stench were too powerful, and he lived with guilt that he survived. Patrick Arnold said he hoped that the cross would give a central point, spanning all religions and all classes across the island, and he also hoped that in 10, 50, or 100 years people would gather together in their memory.

Ceremonies in Ireland on WWI’s 100th anniversary are seen as remembering Irish men and women who died, or who survived and returned to a different Ireland after the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence. They believed WWI was moral, as they were told this, with reports of atrocities in Belgium in 1914, which had been invaded by Germany en route to France.

Nine million men were killed in four years, sent by leaders who were not at risk, with the exception of Russia’s Tsar and family, who were tragically executed in July 1918. They had thought the war would be a short one.

M Sullivan,

College Rd

Cork