“Nowhere in Christendom should honour be paid more readily to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary than here in England. In the days of united faith (that is, before the Reformation), her purity and her sorrows were ever held in loving veneration. Throughout the realm, Our Blessed Lady, God’s Mother, were terms and titles dear to every English heart. England was, in very truth, Our Lady’s dowry. It is, therefore, not with the idea of introducing any new devotion, but rather in order to give fresh meaning and greater force to thoughts long cherished by us all and deep-rooted in the history of our race that we desire to consecrate with renewed effort the prayer, which the special circumstances of the moment so urgently demand, to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary…
For these reasons, we desire and enjoin that in all the churches and public chapels of our diocese, Friday, September 15, the feast of the Seven Sorrows of Our Blessed Lady, or on the following Sunday, during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the Stabat Mater be sung, to be followed by the recitation of three Hail Marys and the invocation (repeated after each Hail Mary) “Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us,” in order that, by this public homage, all our dioceses, and, insofar in us lies, our whole country and empire may be solemnly consecrated and dedicated to Our Blessed Lady under this special title.” On August 15, 1917, Cardinal Bourne once more consecrated England to the Sorrowful Heart of Mary (This was repeated solemnly on Christmas day).
Finally after a most bloody conflict among the nations, and after ten million people had died and many more maimed and displaced, the greatest global war in known history at that time ended abruptly in favor of the British. It was at eleven a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 when the Armistice took place. On May 24, 1919, the Archbishop of Westminster again consecrated his country to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary in thanksgiving for the great victory in what was thought to be “the war to end all wars.”
The Royal Navy
At the outbreak of hostilities the situation in the Royal Navy was particularly dire. Letters flew about from Bishops to Winston Churchill, in the press and even from among the ranks to Cardinal Bourne. He ultimately had the responsibility to liaise with the admiralty and get matters resolved on the appointment of an adequate number of Catholic Chaplains. Bigotry in the royal navy existed long after it had been negated in the army.
A seaman wrote “…My Lord Cardinal, I hope by the help of our blessed Lady that you will let us have a Chaplain in our Squadron. It is sometimes five weeks and we cannot go to Holy Mass on Sunday…. It is not just that we should be deprived of what we hold and love most dear than life ‘Our dear Lord said if we did not eat His Flesh and drink His Blood we could not live forever.”
The Irish parliamentary party in the Commons eventually forced the Admiralty and Cardinal Bourne to a conference table in 1915 and an increase in the number of Catholic Chaplains followed. But further time was to elapse until these ‘dissenting chaplains’ as they were known, were commissioned and indeed it was not until 1942 they were declared as Roman Catholic Chaplains, Royal Navy.
The first Chaplain of any faith to perish in WWI was Canon Gwydir OSB of Douai Abbey and St David’s Swansea. He was on Home Fleet Hospital Ship Rohilla in October 1914 when she was shipwrecked off Whitby en route to Portsmouth. Fr Gwydir remained on board with the wounded and drowned with them. The C of E Chaplain, who may have been on deck at the time allowed himself to be rescued with many others. The admiralty was unforgiving of this action and he was not appointed to another ship, resigning his commission in December that year.
At the battle of Jutland in May 1916 Fr Pollen was in Warspite, Catholic chaplain to the 5th Battle Squadron. He threw himself into a cordite fire caused by enemy shellfire without a thought for his own safety to rescue two seamen. He rescued them both alive while becoming badly burned himself. Under normal circumstances of war it merited a VC. His CO recommended the Distinguished Service Order. Sir John Jellicoe refused to support this but awarded him the lesser Distinguished Service Cross. This prejudice will be found to be repeated more than once when it came to acknowledging the heroic behaviour of Catholic chaplains.
The Western Front
In general terms a Division was 10,000 men, a Regiment 2-5000, a Battalion 1-3000, a Company 300 and a platoon say 50 in number.
On the Western Front this same disorder over the appointment of Catholic Chaplains that took place in the Royal Navy was to plague the early years of the war for the army. The result was that men went into battle without the sacraments and absolution. In November 1914 the Adjutant General Sir Neville Macready began to sort things out. Msgr. Keating was appointed Assistant principal Chaplain for the Roman Catholics under the structure headed by a Presbyterian Minister Dr. Sims. This structure gave - a workable degree of autonomy on Catholic action. One especially important Chaplain appointment he made was of Father Rawlinson. This priest volunteered for active service in 1914 having previously served in South Africa with the Royal Irish Regiment. It was to him that Monsignor Keating entrusted the day to day affairs of the office. The structure set up was refused by the Protestants who organised their own independent Chaplaincy organisation. Meanwhile Father Rawlinson was nominated as the Catholic accredited advisor to Dr Sims.
It was Cardinal Logue who first advocated sending Chaplains into the front line, to give wounded and dying soldiers the consolations of the Church, the all important confession and absolution. The Catholic Press was not always in unanimity on such matters and often added to the furore by their published views. At home in training camps all over England a similar state of confusion existed, boys wrote home complaining they had no priest. So this sorry state of affairs continued, Westminster pinning all its hopes on a sound and generous response from the War Office, belittled and overlooked the realistic and competent views coming from the Irish Bishops. Each commissioned Priest started with the rank of Captain and was contracted for a year, this followed his application in writing to be a chaplain sent to Westminster. The wheels ground exceedingly small.
Once in place the Catholic Chaplains strove to give extreme unction to the dying on the battlefield and before that confession, absolution and the Holy Mass . The commitment of these Catholic chaplains won the universal respect both from the troops and the Army Establishment for their courage, endurance and leadership in addition to their priestly devotion. One of the Chaplains, Fr Steuart wrote in his book March Kind Comrade
“…All ones recollections of the war on the Western Front are inextricably bound up with its roads and with the unsung heroes, the Labour Battalions who kept the roads repaired and the Traffic Men who ensured you got where you needed to get to. Who that has ever known could forget the Poperinghe Road, the Menin Road, the Zonnebeke Road, the Cambrai Road, the Amiens Road, the Eaucourt L’Abbaye Road, the road from Bray to Maricourt, or the ghostly road that winds in and out among the endless cemeteries of Montauban.”
…”When I first became acquainted with the trenches duckboards were not yet universal, and in many sections the conditions of life were horrible. There was mud everywhere, on clothes and hands and hair, and at meals teeth gritted shudderingly on particles of mud cooked into the food.” This book gave a detailed account of the war and the conditions for the men. His reference to his own actions is negligible but there can be no doubt that like his Chaplain comrades his actions were above reproach and more often than not heroic.
Others were to say “…. These Catholic priests never dropped a word of religion in my hearing but one felt a serenity and a certitude flowing from them such as was not felt from the Anglican chaplains. I found a growing dislike of these latter as they had nothing to offer but a cigarette and a word of consolation that could be given by the man next to you. This Church of Rome sends a man into action mentally and spiritually cleaned. The Catholic priests went into the line while the Church of England forbade its ministers to go forward of Brigade Headquarters”. This injunction was a fatal blunder and its publication disgraceful. Mercifully many Anglican Ministers ignored this injunction and came forward as the award of three VC’s demonstrates.
As the Catholic chaplains impressed the soldiers, the soldiers whom they moved among also impressed them. The priest spent his morning arranging for funerals and then in getting to the troops before they go up to the trenches at night, moving among them, drawing them aside to hear confessions. “All around the men gather their sacks for sand bags, filling large empty biscuit tins with water to make tea in the trenches , getting their trench tools ready, packing their kit, oiling their feet, socks and boots with whale oil to keep their feet warm in the trenches, laughing and smoking. I have never known Tommy like this before, it makes one feel proud to belong to such a race. There is no showy parade of bravery, but an earnestness and a light heartedness that touches one. He is always ready to do his bit and to give his life doing it. There is no foolish rush to the trenches at night, but just quiet and grim determination to do the best. The tales of the trenches are heart warming, my admiration for the Tommy grows with each passing day.
The faith of the men and the prayerfulness of their lives is almost beyond all credit. The English soldier, as someone said fights on his stomach. Well perhaps but there is no doubt that the Catholic one, and most especially the Irish one fights from the fullness of his faith, confession and communion. The example of the practical religion of the Catholic officers and men leads almost the whole army; and I am sure there are thousands and thousands who have turned to God and His protective Providence.”
Fr Willie Doyle had first hand experience of the immeasurable and eternal benefit to the dying men on the front by the appearance of the Priest.. “ One man was the bravest I ever met. He was in dreadful agony, for both legs had been blown off at the knee. But never a complaint passed his lips, even when they dressed his wounds, he tried to make light of his injuries. ‘Thank God Father I am able to stick it out to the end…I am much better now and easier…God bless you’ he said as I left him…sitting a little way off I saw a hideous bleeding object, a man with his face smashed by a shell, with one if not both eyes torn out. He raised his head as I spoke ‘Is that the priest? Thank God I am alright now’ I took his hands in mine as I searched for some whole spot on his face to anoint him..” Non Catholic troops were not slow in observing and appreciating the spirituality, devotion and fortitude of these priests. During the war, according to The Tablet there were 40,000 conversions to the Faith in France alone.
Fr Mullins Fr. Willie Doyle
Fr Doyle was to lose his life on August 16 1917 after nearly three years at the Front. Of all the gallant chaplains he is the one, that by all accounts should have been awarded a VC. General Hickie wrote on 18 November 1917 “… He was one of the best priests I ever met, and one of the bravest who ever fought or worked out here. He did his duty and more than his duty, most nobly, and has left a memory and a name behind him that will never be forgotten. On the day of his death he had worked in the front line and indeed ahead of it, he knew no fatigue or fear. He was killed by a shell towards the close of the day, and was buried on the Frezenberg Ridge. …He was put forward for the VC by his Commanding Officer, by his Brigadier and by myself.” History has shown that the threefold barrier of being Irish, a Catholic and a Jesuit was too much for the establishment – to their everlasting shame.
The last absolution of the Munsters being given by Rev. Fr. Gleeson 8 May 1915. After this the Regiment sang the Te Deum, in the subsequent battle 19 officers and 374 men were lost
Gallipoli
It is sadly ironic that just over 60 years had passed since the Crimean war and it seems that here, 200 miles to the West of Constantinople, the same sad state of affairs existed with regard to the organisation of the allied troops. Thousands were to die from mismanagement and frost bite. Catholic Chaplains were present from the first landings in April 1915.
Fr T A Harker chaplain to the 1st Munster’s was an eyewitness to the first landing and wrote of it:
…” We had lighters with us but even with their assistance it was difficult to reach land, men went out to fasten them but were shot. About 6 in the morning we began to land, and for three hours we had immediate sight of deeds of heroism and of such a shambles as I never hope to see again. Men drowned, men dying without any hope of being assisted and the only passage to the shore was over the bodies of both the living and the dead. The machine guns of the enemy had the easiest job in the world to range themselves upon our boys…” “… Little boras were trying to land but as they met the shore they were annihilated by withering rifle and machine gun fire. The slaughter was appalling. Fr Finn was in one of the first boats and out of 45 in the boat 40 never made it alive. He was hit in the boat and then four more times as he crawled ashore, I was later to bury him myself.
Fr Leighton was with the Warwickshire battalion of the 13th division, it was written of him “…He exposed himself freely in the discharge of his duties, he was in the great attack on Hill 871, when he was the only one left in his regiment. He went out to a wounded engineer lying under fire, bandaged him up and carried him to the Indian Hospital halfway down Aghyl Dere. I saw him later wade through machine gun fire to attend to a man of the Connaught’s named Cullen, who lay mortally wounded in open ground.” Fr Leighton wrote himself “I can bear testimony to the noble manner these men went to their deaths. You have heard of the thin red line, well there was a thin khaki line, a line of dead heroes leading up to the crest of the hill, men sitting dead, lying dead, standing against each other dead.”
Towards the end of that year the infantryman was subject to the winter weather, a great storm broke over the Balkans and like their forefathers from the Crimean war they were to suffer terribly from this. Fr Cosser on board a supporting hospital vessel wrote: “ After dark the sick began to arrive. Lighters arrived in steady succession until 3.30 am by which time we had 750 men on board, nearly all suffering from frostbite. Two other similar vessels were also taking on the men and by the next morning there were still 1400 men left on the beach. The ships headed for Malta and Fr Cosser was able to administer the sacraments to the 200 Catholics on board.
They were also on hand at the receiving stations for Hospital ships, A Jesuit Chaplain wrote from Alexandria in Egypt of the sight that greeted him when a hospital ship arrived from Gallipoli – it had no chaplains on board.
“Everywhere was to be seen the sick and wounded and dying all huddled together, the blood and dirt of battle upon them and too few doctors and nurses to tend to them. But the ship - what a sight… what horrors! What a scene it recalls! Shall I ever forget it? Literally the Red Cross ship with its ghastly burden of mangled humanity appeared to be more like a phantom vessel emerging from Stygian darkness and regions of horror than an English Hospital Ship carrying its precious freight of wounded men into a haven of healing rest”.Gallipoli was by no means purely an ANZAC affair; in fact, both the rest of the British, and the French army contingents on Gallipoli outnumbered the ANZACs in terms of men deployed and casualties lost. It has proven to be very difficult to determine the losses of both sides in this most appalling and costly theatre: perhaps the most realistic estimates are that the Turkish army suffered 300,000 casualties (including the many sick) and the Allies, 265,000. The consequent effect of diverting troops and supplies sorely needed on the Western Front, particularly for the assault at Loos, is impossible to quantify. Conditions on Gallipoli defy description. The terrain and close fighting did not allow for the dead to be buried. Flies and other vermin flourished in the heat, which caused epidemic sickness. In October 1915, winter storms caused much damage and human hardship, and in December, a great blizzard - followed by cataclysmic thaw - caused casualties of 10% (15,000 men) throughout the British contingent, and no doubt something similar on the Turkish side. Of the 213,000 British casualties on Gallipoli, 145,000 were due to sickness; chief causes being dysentery, diarrhoea, and enteric fever. The disaster that was Gallipoli ended with evacuation by the allies completed by mid-January 1916.
The Holy Land
In November 1917 the Allies were successful in pushing back the Turkish forces from the land around Jerusalem. During this advance Fr. Bernard Kavanagh C.S.S.R was mortally wounded being hit by a Turkish sniper while going to the aid of a wounded soldier He was ordained priest at St. Mary's, Clapham, in 1890. For over twenty years he laboured as a Redemptorist missioner, and in this capacity he travelled, giving missions at various times to nearly all the industrial centres of Great Britain. He was a gifted speaker, and his facile eloquence never failed to arrest attention and move the hearts of his hearers. Shortly after the outbreak of war Father Kavanagh was asked by his religious superiors to offer himself as army chaplain. Such work demanded no small sacrifice in a man of over fifty years of age but he gladly volunteered. He died on 21 November and lies in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery on Mount Olivet.
On December 8 Jerusalem was taken and defended against a counter attack by the Turks on December 26. On 15 August 1918, with Samaria and Galilee still held by the Turks a great pilgrimage took place. Selected Catholic troops from all Allied formations attended from as far afield as Upper Egypt. The parade assembled by the Jaffa Gate – through which General Allenby had entered only eight months before. Looking around as far as the eye could see were rank upon rank of soldiers marshalled by Father Parisotti on his white charger and commanded by Colonel Byrne of the Rifle Brigade.
Carried at the head of the pilgrimage was the great silver crucifix from St Stephens and a Dominican lay brother acted as guide. The rosary was recited as they processed and mingled with the troops were Catholic Chaplains. Five divisions were formed to facilitate orderly entry to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Within the basilica the pilgrims were met by the Franciscan guardians who conducted them to the rotunda, as they entered the Franciscan Friars burst exultantly into the Te Deum. The first part of the procession filed into the Greek choir, facing the Sepulchre, and filled the rotunda surrounding the tomb. All knelt and Fr. Bede Camm OSB led the devotions. After the prayers all rose and filed out by another aisle while the next division entered. During change overs the Franciscans again intoned the Te Deum. All could see the Column of Flagellation ( half of it as the other part is in Rome) exposed by the Franciscans in honour of the occasion.
Eventually the pilgrimage came to a halt at the ancient crusader church of St Anne, the crypt is cut into a rock which local tradition states is the place where Our Lady was born. Here the Holy sacrifice of the Mass was offered. The throng of men was so great that the priest had extreme difficulty in gaining the altar! Familiar hymns were sung during Mass and the ‘faith of our Fathers’ burst forth with intense energy and thanksgiving from fifteen hundred hale men was a memory for a lifetime. Even more wonderful was the hush and stillness that fell when the bell rang out and Host was raised. The celebrant, Austrian though he was, burst into tears and could hardly go on. He later stated that he had never been so moved in his life and his detailed report sent to Rome had delighted the Holy Father.
The day closed with the Stations of the Cross which lasted two hours and ended back in the Holy Sepulchre Basilica. The Franciscans offered Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and gave a papal blessing, which had been granted by telegraph from Rome. Canon Sibley OSB played the organ and once more those mighty voices were raised in the concluding hymn ‘faith of our Fathers’.
The following morning, a Requiem Mass was offered for all who had fallen in the war. A debriefing took place and it was found that not a single incident of bad behaviour had been reported!. The Catholics of the E.E.F (Egyptian Expeditionary Force) had proved themselves worthy of the privilege which had been so generously given to them.
Rev Father Barnard Kavanagh C.S.S.R © IWM
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