Irish family heads to the Somme to honour ‘luckiest man in the war’
THREE generations of an Irish family will travel to the Somme this week to commemorate a family member who – aided by considerable luck – managed to survive World War I.
The Molloy family, who are from Patrick Street, Dublin 2, have told how Officer Henry John Molloy survived a gunshot wound in the Battle of Ginchy and had a lucky escape when a number of his comrades were killed by a shell.
On the hundredth anniversary of the war’s end, the family will travel to northern France to commemorate Mr Molloy, who fought in the Battle of the Somme.
Some 3,500 Irish soldiers died in this battle alone, with around 49,000 killed throughout the war.
Among those travelling to the Somme next week will be Mr Molloy’s two grandchildren, Henry (78) and Kevin (70), his great-grandson Shane (44), and Seán (15) of the youngest generation.
They attend Armistice Day commemorations at the Islandbridge war memorial every year, but this is their first trip to the Somme. The family said if they didn’t travel over this year, they would never go.
“We’re following in our grandfather’s footsteps,” Kevin said, adding that they were going on behalf of all the Molloy family.
Henry explained that his grandfather was wounded in the shoulder but recovered and continued with the Leinster Regiment – then had another fortunate escape.
He and a number of soldiers
Some 3,500 Irish troops died at the Somme
were on the frontline in the Somme and wanted to make a cup of tea.
“One guy only had three or four matches and had struck two or three of them out and grandad took the last match and said, ‘I’ll light this one.’ So he moved off from the area they were in and he sheltered in a shell hole with a piece of paper and lit the match.
“While he was away in the shell hole, lighting this paper, a German shell landed in the area where his comrades were and they were all annihilated.”
The family also told of how Mr Molloy managed to avoid death in the sinking of the RMS Leinster.
Their grandfather agreed to swap rostered weeks with a colleague, who needed a week off in order to tend to his sick wife.
As a result of the switch, Mr Molloy was off when the ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat.
Mr Molloy’s home, at the Iveagh Trust on Patrick Street, is preserved as a museum and as it was in the early 1900s, having been vacated by the family in 2002.