The doctor who refused to leave h is post as the battle of Ieper raged loudly....
LYSSENTHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY IS SIMPLY A MASS OF WHITE HEADSTONES. AND IT IS HERE THAT RICHARD WELLINGTON SHEGOG IS BURIED. LIKE IN LIFE, HIS GRAVE IS AT THE FRONT, LEADING THE REMAINING 10,000 SOULS WHO PERISHED NEARBY DURING WWI AND LIE HERE, LOOKING INTO THE BRIGHT FLANDERS SUNSHINE. RICHARD SHEGOG WAS A SKERRIES DOCTOR, A CAPTAIN IN THE ROYAL MEDICAL CORPS, AND IN THE PAST THE FINGAL INDEPENDENT WAS FORTUNATE TO GET FIRST HAND EVIDENCE OF HIS LIFE AND DEATH FROM HIS SON, RICHARD JUN, WHO HAS SINCE, SADLY, JOINED THE FATHER HE NEVER HAD THE CHANCE TO EMBRACE. TODAY, THEY MAY EVEN WALK HAND IN HAND ACROSS THE FIELDS OF FLANDERS. HUBERT MURPHY VISITED LYSSENTHOEK TO TELL THE STORY OF ONE OF WWWI’S BRAVEST MEN....
RICHARD Wellington Shegog refused to stop while there was a chance. Around him shells exploded, spreading death and injury on a great scale. It was 1917 near Ieper in Belgium. Hell on earth. ‘Bring him over,’ he urged as another blood splattered uniform was presented in front of him, a cursed river of crimson drained off the makeshift operating table. He shook his head in disbelief. How many more would die in this cruel war?
Just days later gravediggers stopped to say a silent prayer over the grave of Richard Shegog at the cemetery near Poperinge, 12 km from Ieper. It was full of freshly dug graves. Within a year, almost 10,000 wooden crosses would grace its sacred soil.
Richard Shegog was a Skerries man who would lay down his life, not in the act of killing young men from Bremen, Berlin, Munich or Hamburg but trying to save the lives of soldiers from Rotherham, Rochdale, Balbriggan and Lusk. At times, war is universal. But when it comes to helping the wounded and dying it doesn’t matter where you were born, just that you don’t die here and now.
Richard Shegog’s story begins years before. He was born in 1886 and went to Mountjoy school and attended medical school after that. His father, Richard was the Rector at Holmpatrick, Skerries and was married to Mary B.Shegog. Often Richard would sing in the choir at Holmpatrick church and walk on the glorious beach, many miles from the rat infested trenches and the madness that would consume and finally kill him.
His sister, Ina, was one of the first female graduates at TCD and she married a South African who died shortly afterwards of the great flu that hit Europe in 1918/19. She lived in the 1920s and 30s in Skerries with her mother at ‘Lindisfarne’.
Richard’s wife was the daughter of a Dr Symes who worked in the midlands and once had a horse shot from under him after he, allegedly, diagnosed the source of a cholera outbreak from a local holy well!
A granddaughter of his practised in Skerries for 40 years up to the end of the 19th century, using a famous home-made ‘doctor’s buggy’ drawn by a horse.
Richard’s mother was a Johnston from Hacketstown and her aunt, Licretia, was also one of the Hacketstown Johnstons.
The birth of Richard jun came as Richard Shegog headed off with the Royal Army Medical Corps to battle.
How the 31-year-old died is known thanks to a letter to his wife, written by a chaplain who served alongside the brave doctor.
At his home in Surrey, Richard junior, cherished the words, written in pencil and signed Fr Leonard B Caley.
He wrote, touchingly, of his partnership with Dr Shegog. ‘ The doctor and the chaplain usually
get flung together,’ he remarks. ‘It helps when they get on and I got on well with Richard.’
He revealed that on the night of July 29/30th 1917, the pair were pushed up to the battery position HQ near Ieper. They got some sleep in a farmhouse before heading off with a company to the trenches.
‘We went via Ypres to the assembly trenches. It was absolutely quiet, except for a little mustard gas, and we arrived at midnight, the chaplain wrote with a faint, blunt pencil. Zero was the name used to describe the first barrage of fire for the day. It started at 3.50am.
‘We had it pretty hot for a while,’ he adds. They then moved on to a new aid station at Iberian Farm, the doctor dressing a German’s wounds, and at about 1pm, with the doctor hard at work, the place went black.
‘I wondered what had happened and guessed that a shell had hit. I forced my way out of the pile blown on top of me and found the doctor close by. He had been hit.’
The chaplain struggled to another trench and sought a doctor who came back and tended to Richard’s wounds. He was dazed, shocked and bleeding.
‘About 1.30pm I came across a few men who acted as stretcher bearers but we found it hard going over the rough ground.’
The chaplain always carried a hip flask and
Richard asked for a drink of brandy. They arrived at an aid station by 4.30pm. But his time had come.
‘We were all fond of him in the mess. He was always so cheerful and full of fun,’ the chaplain added. ‘ He showed me photos of you and the baby. He kept them in his Bible. He asked me if anything happened to him to send home his pocket book. I pray God may bless you and the boy and that your son may grow up worthy of his father.
‘Your husband was one of the coolest men I have been with. On zero day we both felt ordinary. I felt this proved the presence of Christ with us more than any extraordinary sense of peace,’ he wrote.
Ultimately, another man to be at Richard Shegog’s bedside, chaplain HSS Clarke, would also write to his wife. ‘I hear from different sources of your husband’s great bravery and devotation to duty. An officer in the ward at the time he died told me that he saw him at work at his dressing station in a heavily shelled position, sticking to his work. You may be assured that your husband died a hero.’