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

Friday, April 28, 1916

"Dawn, in fact, had lighted on a scene of destruction and desolation paralleled up to that time only by the ruined towns and cities of Northern France. To those familiar with newspaper photographs, Dublin overnight had become a second Ypres. Here rose up the same sliced, skeleton buildings, here spread the same acres of flattened and obscene rubble. Directly opposite the G.P.O. stood bare, blackened walls, smoke still wreathing around them. It was no longer possible to see as far as O'Connell Bridge. Now and then yet another wall would fall with a stupendous crash, shooting up a fresh shower of burning fragments and clouds of billowing smoke. Debris was scattered halfway across the street; steel girders hung twisted and blackened. The heat still remained and a heavy smell of burning cloth hung in the air."

Quotation Context

Dublin, Ireland, Ypres, General Post Office (G.P.O.), shelled by British artillery and the gunboat Helga on the Liffey River. The Easter Rising

Source

The Easter Rebellion by Max Caulfield, page 304, copyright © 1963 by Max Caulfield, publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, publication date: 1963

Tags

1916-04-28, April, 1916, Dublin, Ireland, Easter Rising, insurrection