The Great War: A Ballyconnell soldier’s letters from the trenches

Times Past with Jonathan Smyth.

Just over 30 years ago, I started my studies in Liverpool when there was no such thing as Facebook or snapchat and the internet was on the verge of becoming the next big thing. At university I was fascinated as I explored the early internet, and I remember when Lotus launched the world’s first commercially web-based electronic-mail service, called cc:Mail. Of course, there was less to search on the information highway in those days, never-the-less it opened a whole new world to me.

However, only a few people had computers, never mind having the internet. The most economical way for me to stay in touch with my family at home in Cavan was by posting a handwritten letter. Nowadays, in 2024, we tend to take so many modern methods of communication for granted. People can rediscover old school friends online, should they want to, and yet, it must be remembered how in days past, a carefully crafted letter was once the only practical means of communication. Over a century ago, during the First World War, this was especially true for the soldiers trapped in trenches, surrounded by nerve-shattering slaughter.

So many forgotten aspects of its history re-emerged for me when I began to sift through the volumes on my bookshelf chronicling the First World War. The study of warfare is a lifelong adventure for military historians and there are many good books to get you started. I would like to acknowledge Michéal Smyth for material he offered to me in 2014 when I delivered a talk about the Great War to the Virginia and District Historical Society, at Virginia Parish Church. The same information was useful to me while writing this column.

In August 1914, the Great War erupted, and this year will mark the 110th anniversary of its outbreak. Irishmen joined British, Canadian, Australian, and later, the American forces. Approximately 35,000 Irishmen died in the conflict.

Stationed on the frontline, Private Jack Fitzmartin wrote a series of letters to his old friend and former employer, James McCabe, a ‘boot merchant’ in the soldier’s hometown of Ballyconnell. The arrival of news from the trenches, coming from a local man, must have helped to bring the horror of the battle home to the ordinary person in the street. Mr McCabe submitted his friend’s letters to this newspaper.

On November 28, 1914, Fitzmartin’s second letter was published with the note that he was still fighting in the trenches, presumably in France. He thanked his old employer for the papers (most likely copies of The Anglo-Celt) which he gratefully acknowledged and said they were ‘appreciated in the trenches, where we have nothing now to occupy our spare hours’.

On March 20, 1915, Private Jack Fitzmartin wrote: ‘My Dear James, - I have received another very welcome gift parcel from Mrs Arnold in which I was remembered by a whole lot of people in the town… Miss Yeates, Mrs A.E. Clancy, Mr Tom McAlister, Miss Lottie Henderson, Miss Jones and Mr Hussey’s children, who all sent me presents. We are in billet again but, by the time you get this, we will be in the trenches. The prospect is not a very pleasant one, when they are in such a state, up to their knees in mud, but somebody must do it, and we are left only a few days at a time.

‘The weather is not quite so cold now as it was, but it is very wet yet, and the country which is very flat and low-lying is in a puddle. We often are billeted in farmhouses here… lots of barns with plenty of straw and a pump near every house, so that the water is plentiful. Every farmer has a whole lot of machinery for the working of his land… They are very civil and obliging to the troops here, and they nearly all have big families …

‘There has just been put into my hand a letter from you with little daughter’s Christmas card, so it has travelled a good deal since it was posted. I hope this will reach you enjoying good health… As for myself, I am in the pink of condition.

– I remain, Dear James, yours sincerely, Jack Fitzmartin’

On June 26, 1915, the Belfast Newsletter reported that Jack had suffered serious injuries in the field and from Netley Hospital they quoted him as saying: “When I was hit of course I fell and could not rise again. I think our lads were successful in the task, for they did not come back, but the French on our left must have failed, for the Huns still held their trenches.”

Having fallen on the ground, Fitzmartin then received five more bullets. “One of the devils must have picked me out,” he said.

Anytime he moved a fraction they fired on him again. He fainted and lay there until he woke up to the sound of “shrapnel bursting” above him and “maxims sweeping the whole ground”.

Darkness fell and he called out, but his voice again drew enemy fire. Time went by. Then some figures dimly appeared. Again, he called, and two men came over. They could do nothing for him. It was too dangerous. German light balls had the ground lit up like a Christmas tree. They turned poor Jack over on his front and told him to crawl. There was an old building “some hundred yards away” and it was his only hope. If Jack could not move, it was ‘Finis’ meaning the end.

Wracked with excruciating pain, he dragged himself forward, laying still, when the light went up. Two hours later, Jack had reached the building, and it was empty, so he slept. He recalled that a “native Indian soldier” woke him and carried him on his back because of the injuries; Jack wrote that both his arms were damaged. A French officer eventually summoned the help of officers who carried Fitzmartin for two miles on a stretcher to a clearing station. By a miracle, the Ballyconnell man had survived what can only be described as hell on earth.