3 minute read
A priest in the First World War
Fr David Smith RAChD Priest of East Anglia Diocese and serving Army Chaplain remembers Fr Francis Gleeson
When I joined the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department in 2002, just before the Second Iraq War (2003 - 2011), I was given a framed picture of one of our heroes in the faith – one Fr Francis Gleeson (1884- 1959) – astride his horse with his hand raised in General Absolution over the Officers and Men of the 2nd Battalion The Royal Munster Fusiliers.
The picture was commissioned by the widow of Lt Col. Rickard (the Battalion’s Commanding Officer, killed in that battle along with more than 150 of his officers and men, tog ether with nearly 240 wounded) when the Battalion faced the Germans at Rue du Bois on the eve of the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May 1915. The painter w as the official War Artist, Fortunino Matania. The picture captures well both the horrible anticipation of battle and the simple devotion of the Munsters as they received sacramental absolution the evening before so many of them were to give their lives in the service of their country.
aFr Gleeson was one of the many Catholic Priests w ho selflessly went with their flock through unimaginable privations and danger to bring the comfort of our Holy Catholic Faith to the wounded and dying, always at great personal risk. “The scenes of enthusiasm are extraordinary,” wrote Fr Gleeson on 8 May, 1915, the eve of the Battle of Aubers Ridge. “I ride on my horse. Give absolution to [the] battalion during rest in [the] road...The men all sing hymns, ‘Hail Glorious St Patrick’. I go further up — near the trenches and bid goodbye to all. So sad. ” In his diary of 9 May 1915, Fr Gleeson recalls how he “spent all night trying to console, aid, and remove the wounded. It was ghastly to see them lying there in the cold, cheerless outhouses, on bare stretchers with no blankets to cover their freezing limbs... Hundreds lying out in cold air all night at Windy Corner . No ambulances coming. They cme at last — at daylight.”
Fr Gleeson’s courage was legendary even during his life. In his biography, Goodbye to All That, the War Poet Robert Graves noted that “Jovial Father Gleeson of the Munsters, when all the officers w ere killed and wounded at the first battle of Ypres, had stripped off his black badges and, taking command of the survivors, held the line” . There ma y be slight poetic-license on the part of Graves here - but it captures the huge respect in which the Munsters held their Chaplain!
War was (and remains) a dirty business. Fr Gleeson surely speaks for all British Toms and their chaplains when he reflects on how seemingly easy it is for our political masters to send other peoples’ young men and women to their deaths: “these militants”, he wrote, “should be made to undergo a few nights in cheerless billets [and] mud-river trenches to teach them a lesson. What is it all for at all?” Fr Gleeson left the Munsters in February 1918. He died in June 1959 and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
To those Catholic Priests who have served in the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department since, Fr Gleeson remains one of our dearest and most powerful role-models of what it means to serve the People of God in HM Forces. Whether it is at the Rue du Bois in 1915 or in a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan in 2012, Catholic Priests have done their best to bring the love of Christ to their flock through the Sacraments of our Holy Church and the care and compassion of one human being to another. As we mark the Centenary of the end of the Great War, please pray for all military chaplains, whether alive or already gone to God – and pray too for the soldiers, sailors and airmen whose lives have been touched by Christ through their ministry. Requiescant in aeternam.
