Headstone of an unknown soldier of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Delville Wood Cemetery. Union of South Africa troops began the assault at Delville Wood on July 15, 1916. It was finally taken in September. On the headstone is superimposed the poem 'To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of God' by Lieutenant Tom Kettle of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, killed in action on September 9, 1916 at Guillemont, France, in the Battle of the Somme. He has no known grave. © 2013 John M. Shea

To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of God

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown

To beauty proud as was your mother's prime,

In that desired, delayed, incredible time,

You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,

And the dear heart that was your baby throne,

To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme

And reason: some will call the thing sublime,

And some decry it in a knowing tone.



So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,

And tired men sigh with mud and couch and floor,

Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,

Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,

But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,

And for the secret Scripture of the poor.



— Tom Kettle

In the field, before Guillemont, Somme, 4 September 1916

Other views: Front

Wednesday, April 26, 1916

"The real Battle of Dublin began on Wednesday morning, April 26th, the third day of the Rebellion. British troops had been arriving hourly in great numbers during the preceding night and a naval gunboat, the Helga, had pushed up the Liffey River, opposite the custom House, ready to co-operate with the infantry forces. A circle of steel now encompassed the rebels."

Quotation Context

Writing of the third day of the Irish Easter Rising, Wednesday, April 26, 1915, Irish poet and novelist James Stephens tried to determine where citizens stood on support for or opposition to the rebels. 'Men met and talked volubly, but they said nothing that indicated a personal desire or belief.' Women were more forthcoming and 'actively and visciously hostile to the rising.' (The Insurrection in Dublin, pp. 35 and 36.) Fighting went on at Mount Street Bridge, Ringsend, and the Canal that encircles Dublin. The gunboat Helga shelled Liberty Hall, home to the Irish Citizen Army. Buildings along Sackville Street were bombarded and machine-gunned. Realizing the rebels could move from one building to the next, and that the British would find each ruin empty and turn to destroying the next, Stephens realized that Sackville Street, Dublin's main street and site of the rebels' headquarters at the General Post Office, 'was doomed.'

Source

King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 246, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922

Tags

1916-04-26, April, 1916, Easter Rising, Dublin, Ireland