Galway In Days Gone By

1915

Tale from the front

Lieutenant Lee, of the Royal Field Artillery,Galway in a letter from the front, gives a graphic description of the fighting, and tells pathetic stories of the scenes on the battlefield.

Lieutenant Lee is a son of Mr. J.W. Lee, of Newcastle, Galway, and a brother of Mr. George Lee, B.E., Assistant Co. Surveyor for the East Riding of County Galway.

His father, who served abroad as a Police Inspector, was mentioned in despatches for good work in connection with a colonial campaign.

“I am with a Howitzer Battery, and we have been in action ever since I joined it. It would be useless for me to attempt to describe all the weird things one sees here, and also the thrill of coming under fire for the first time.

“The unceasing rat-tat of bullets and machine guns, and the boom of big guns, one gets used to, but the sight of dead and dying is something that cannot soon be forgotten and always makes one sad and dejected.

“When I first acted as forward observing officer, and saw the terrible destruction of our guns; saw houses blown to atoms, men running for their very lives, while others lay dying and wounded, I used to feel quite sorry for our enemies, but then, when I witness the melancholy sight of the tiny crosses all round the place, marking the resting places of our own brave fellows, I used to feel cross with myself for such feelings.

“The German artillery has not been effective since I got here; they usually shell unfortunate little villages, and it is usually poor, harmless civilians that fall victims to their fire. I was coming through a little village some days ago that the enemy were shelling, and a shell fell right on the roof of a little cottage.

“I got my men to see if we could be of any assistance, and we discovered that the only occupant of the house had been a little boy of six years, who lay dead on the floor, with his poor head bleeding fearfully.

“Just then his mother returned, and the scene was awful. Her husband and son were in the army; her husband was killed and her son was wounded, believed to be a prisoner.

“As we heard this, I noticed one of our huge big gunners, who had gone through absolute hell since early in the war, turn awkwardly and draw his sleeve across his eyes.”

1940

Salthill a disgrace

“When the Galway Corporation have stopped expending money on the Salthill Park, it will have cost £2,200 and still it will never be really finished; it even stands a chance of being bombed some day in mistake for the sandpit of an ammunition works,” said Mr. T. Kenny, Salthill, at a meeting of the Salthill Development Committee.

Mr Walsh: The park as it is is a disgrace to Salthill and the residents should protest about it; there should be some seating accommodation in it.

Very Rev. P. Canon Davis, P.P., presiding: I think the best thing to do would be to send in the memorial protesting about the condition of the Park, which has been signed by so many people, to the Corporation. We could also send a deputation before the Corporation.

We’ll ask them to do up the back part of the park to make it suitable for an amusements show, and to put seats in as well.

Library books ban

In making the allegation at the monthly meeting of the Galway County Libraries Committee that theirs was the most imperialistic library in Ireland, Mr. C. Magennis said he could put forward many reasons for that statement.

He made the allegation during the course of a discussion on a motion calling on the committee not to stock any books containing insults to the German Reich Chancellor. He explained that he was neither Hitlerite nor Anglophile, and would move for the cutting out if anti-Chamberlain books were such stocked.

Mr. Magennis expressed the view that nothing should be done in this country to portray violent feelings one way or another as far as the warring nations were concerned.

An awful lot of books were written by British warmongers, scribblers and pen-pushers for the purpose of getting a certain amount of propaganda over on the Irish and other neutral peoples. Such books should get no place on the shelves of the library.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.