No glory in the appalling waste of war

HEROISM has come back to the earth,” Pádraic Pearse wrote in December 1915.

“The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields. Such August homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives gladly given for love of country.”

James Connolly wrote in response: “We do not think that the old heart of the earth needs to be warmed with the red wine of millions of lives. We think anyone who does is a blithering idiot.”

Ninety years ago this issue was divisive even among people who otherwise agreed with each another. Even at the time of the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, then taoiseach Seán Lemass acknowledged he had questioned “the motives of those men who joined the new British armies formed at the outbreak of the war, but it must in their honour and in fairness to their memory be said that they were motivated by the highest purpose”.

My father — who was born in Valpariso, Chile, where his father was the US consul during the First World War — grew up in the United States. During the Second World War he served in the US army and was killed in action in Germany in January 1945.

He was in Europe more than two months before any of his post from home caught up with him. Then he wrote back to my mother on the back of her letters.

“I am writing this on your letters so that we can save them for Ryle to know what we were doing and thinking during these unusual days,” he wrote from the front in France in October 1944.

“I think some of them will give him something to think about — don’t you?

“I could kick myself when I think about some of the ways I had of getting out of this myself — and passed up. Well, when it’s over we can say we did our part and made our sacrifice for what we hold dear.”

While travelling in the US in the 1960s one noticed the number of servicemen in uniform.

But then at the Aer Lingus area at New York Airport, the most noticeable thing was the number of priests and nuns in black.

They were part of a veritable army of which we can be immensely proud. They went to preach the Gospel, to heal the sick, and to educate the underprivileged.

But they were shamelessly betrayed, not so much by a few misfits but by those in the hierarchy who sought to cover up the abuse of children by doing nothing, except exposing other children to similar abuse.

Closing the Irish embassy at the Vatican is really a symbolic gesture of disapproval at the behaviour of those hierarchical figures in Ireland and the Vatican, but it is also a cop-out. Our politicians are just as guilty, because they did not protect the children. They were too busy kissing the bishops on all four cheeks.

Last year I visited my father’s grave in the American war cemetery in Luxembourg for the first time. During the visit I met the man who was with my father when he died and was awarded the Bronze Star for trying to save his life. He directed me to the grave.

As I stood looking over the expanse of the cemetery I felt no sense of glory. The idealism that inspired those buried there had been shamelessly betrayed in Vietnam.

About 49,400 Irishmen died serving in British forces during the First World War. They were told they were fighting for the rights of small nations, but then the British foisted the Black and Tans on this country in trying to resist our democratic right to independence.

The poppy undoubtedly means different things to different people. To me, it symbolises the appalling waste of war, and that is something we should never forget.