‘GREATER COURAGE’ OF KERRY SOMME HERO[
KERRY CLERIC FR DONAL O’SULLIVAN PAID THE ULTIMATE CHAPLAIN’S SACRIFICE IN THE FIRST WEEK OF THE SOMME WHILE TENDING TO THE WOUNDED, DÓNAL NOLAN WRITES
IMAGINE, if you can, the scene: Bombs more lethal than had ever before been fired exploding all around; soldiers getting ripped apart by machine gun bullets and shrapnel no sooner than going ‘over the top’ and the whole acrid stench of a terrifying new method of waging war thick in the air.
This was the start of the Battle of the Somme – 100 years ago this week – when the Allied High Command unleashed hell on Earth against the German army; firing more than 1,700,000 shells in an opening week-long artillery bombardment in the hope of breaking the German defence and taking the Somme Valley.
In the midst of all this carnage was the figure of a young Kerry priest, bravely making his way through the terrifying chaos to minister to the dying and the wounded in a duty he considered sacred, a duty that was just about the only bit of comfort to be had for many in the deathscape.
Even though he was just 26 years old Killarney native Fr Donal O’Sullivan had already made quite a mark on the world.
A son of Dan and Hannah O’Sullivan of High Street in the famous tourist town, he had been ordained in Maynooth just two years earlier, before returning home to work in his alma mater of St Brendan’s Seminary as ‘professor’, as listed in his biography in the Royal Army Chaplains Department Seventh Brigade records.
Incredibly, he was not the only one of Hannah and Dan’s offspring caught up in the World War.
His older brother Dr J Ivo O’Sullivan had been in service as a medic with the Fifth Connaught Rangers for two years by the time the Somme assault was launched, described in dispatches as a Lieutenant with the Royal Army Medical Corps; and the eventual recipient of a Military Cross for his bravery in the field.
Dr O’Sullivan’s deeds partly inspired his younger brother to enlist, as did the urging of the Bishop of Kerry at the time - who appealed for a chaplain to accompany the many Catholic men from south Kerry, in particular, then joining the British Army.
Fr O’Sullivan would display every bit as much bravery as his brother did in action.
“He was well respected by his men and quite fearless and would give the sacraments to the wounded and dying,” the annals of the Royal Army Chaplains Department chronicle.
But while Dr O’Sullivan would go on to a life beyond the conflict, returning to Kerry where he would later pioneer ground-breaking methods in containing disease, Fr O’Sullivan would not see the end of the opening week of the Somme.
On July 5, 1916, five days into the notorious battle he was cut down by shrapnel while ministering to a wounded English soldier.
Of all the Somme stories that resonant in this county, his is perhaps the most extraordinary - for the bravery of his sacrifice and for what would come later.
“We could tell 100 stories about what happened in the war, but when we focus on one story it really brings all the pain, suffering and grim consequences to light and there’s no story better than Fr O’Sullivan’s,” historian Maurice O’Keeffe - of Irish Life and Lore - told The Kerryman.
Fr Donal and Dr J Ivo’s stories stand out among all the Kerry-related WW1 research Maurice has compiled over the years. Thanks to interviews he conducted with Fr Donal’s nephew Billy and Dr J Ivo’s son, also named Ivo - both of whom still reside in Killarney - he’s gleaned a very deep understanding of their lives and times.
“It is extraordinary to think that two brothers from Kerry were caught up in the conflict as they were. Dr J Ivo getting wounded in Gallipoli, earning the military cross and being invalided home before returning to the front line in France and his brother Fr Donal going off with the men of the Royal Irish Rifles in the Somme.”
It was at Bozincourt in the Valley of the Somme where Fr Donal met his death. In further evidence of his bravery, the records of the Royal Army Chaplain show how it was a fate he might have escaped but for his own determination to be with his men:
“At first he was denied by his Commanding Officer permission to accompany the assaulting wave, but eventually his CO relented and he was allowed to be with his troops for the assault. Four days later, on the fifth of July, Fr O’Sullivan was killed by a German shell-fire. They like Fr O’Sullivan went into battle with greater courage, but like Fr O’Sullivan half were fated not to return.”
Extraordinary turn of events
And it was his final act of mercy that gave rise to one of the most extraordinary parts of the whole story as Maurice O’Keeffe recounts.
“Incredibly, the English soldier to whom Fr O’Sullivan was tending when he was killed survived the War and, having saved up enough money afterwards, made the trip to Killarney in 1918 along with Fr O’Sullivan’s suitcase which he had kept. He presented it to his mother Hannah and was able to tell her about the circumstances in which her son had been killed.”
For many years afterwards the O’Sullivan family kept the suitcase exactly as a memento in exactly the same state it had been when presented to them in 1918: closed.
It wasn’t until decades later that his nephew Billy first peeked inside.
“What he found was incredible. There was Fr O’Sullivan’s rosary beads still encrusted with the mud from the trenches of Somme as well as chalices for the Mass and the diary he kept of his time on the front!”
The diaries are among the most valuable of all firsthand evidence relating to the War, but with a difficult, shorthand script required very careful translation, something Fr O’Sullivan’s nephew Billy has been doing these past years.
“One fascinating entry Billy uncovered from July 1 shows that the soldiers were only then being shown how to fix bayonets to their rifles and use them.”
Historian Noel Grimes has also taken a keen interest in the life of the KIllarney cleric, obtaining the loan of one of the chalices from the O’Sullivan family for a special Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral commemorating the outbreak of the First World War two years ago.
Fr O’Sullivan would enjoy a distinction even in death, historian Tom Dillon told The Kerryman. Mr Dillon has twice been to the cleric’s grave at the Bozincourt Communal Cemetery in France.
“Fr Donal is buried in his own private plot in Bozincourt, which is pretty unusual as I know of only three instances of this recorded, and I presume it was because he was a chaplain. The plot is located right inside the gateway to the cemetery, just opposite the Calvary Cross.”
Maurice O’Keeffe pointed to another distinction for the Killarney man –it is believed that he may have been the youngest chaplain to have been killed in the war.
ST Brendan’s College is honouring its former teacher with a special commemoration this Tuesday - the very anniversary of Fr Donal O’Sullivan’s death of July 5.
Following the 7.30pm Mass, two lectures will be given in the college; a memorial lecture Catholic Chaplains in World War 1 will be given by Canon Gerard Casey, Mallow PP.
Fr Tomás Ó Luanaigh will meanwhile deliver a lecture entitled ‘Kerry Clergy in the National Movement’.
Organised by Coiste Cumann na Sagart Chiarraí on its own centenary nationally, the commemoration will undoubtedly shed even more light on the life and times of the man as well as the greater political circumstances of the time that robbed him of his life at such a young age. “We offer all a naoi gcéad mile fáilte to our gathering in St Brendan’s and hope you can join with us on a historic anniversary,” Coiste Cumann na Sagart member Fr Tomás Ó Luanaigh said.