Anonymous

My Granda never talked about his war and after his death we have pieced together what we can of his story. Similarly, he never talked about his family background, or mentioned his parents- he was born near Strabane at the end of the nineteenth century and we believe the 'aunt' who looked after him in his nearly childhood was, in fact, his young, single mother. By his teens he was living independently and travelling about, getting seasonal work on farms. He was caught 'bilking' the railway in Scotland (travelling the trains without a ticket) in 1914. The police arrested another youth on the same train and the two appeared in court. The other lad's case was heard first. After he;d been convicted, the magistrate asked him what he was going to do with his life- was he going to waste it or was he going to do something useful for his country, like- join the army? He escaped punishment on the grounds that he enlisted immediately. Alone and unrepresented, my Granda followed suit and was taken straight to enlist- because he was Irish he joined the Inniskillings. He was 16 or 17, at most.

He never spoke of what he saw and experienced on the Western Front and would spend long periods of silence, lost in thought or memory. He DID tell us about what happened when he was demobbed. He-and hundreds of other Irish soldiers- were each given a sealed envelope which it was implied was a reference and told to take it to the shipyard, Belfast factories, anywhere that might be recruiting manual workers. He had an impeccable service record. Yet time and again prospective employers opened the letter, read it, re-sealed it and sent him away. Months later, still out of work,he opened it himself. It contained a single sheet of paper and a single sentence:

"This man is a Catholic;do not employ; send him on his way." He kept it among his things till he died.

In time he got work with the Post Office and worked there until his retirement. He never supported nor condoned violence and never showed religious prejudice but was deeply resentful of the British establishment. His silent act of protest was to file off the British crown from the top of his Post Office ID badge.