by Ultan Macken
I can buy fags here or anything I want on the line. I may as well spend my money, the little I get, otherwise it could get lost before I get home. There are many ways of losing money here, so I may as well spend it. Aggie, go to Leaper (is it he that is doing the photos?) and haunt him until he does them for you and tell him I have you annoyed over them, tell him anything so long as you get them from him. I will have a pain in my heart until I get them. I hope you get them. I hope you get them before you write again. I receive the ‘C. Bell’ all right [the local Galway newspaper of that time], also the ‘Galway Express’. I see that Kathleen [a neighbour] is doing secretary for you.
Tell Ursula, I’m glad she is out of hospital and getting well. Give my regards to all the Racquet Court. How are the pictures going? [The Racquet Court was probably showing silent movies.] Excuse the short note, Aggie, there is very little to say since I last wrote. Goodbye for the present, Aggie, heaps of love and kisses to your dear self and the kiddies. God bless all four of you and keep you safe for me.
Your devoted husband,
Walter
The next letter, dated February 1916, contains his first account of his experience of the trenches:
Dearest Aggie,
A line to let you know, I’m still all right. I had a letter from Ivy while I was in the trenches. I will answer it by this post if I can. It was so good of her to write to me. I thought I might have a letter from you. I need not tell you how it would have cheered me up, however, Aggie, I’m not vexed. I thought you might be waiting to send those photos. I hope I’ll have a letter from you before going to the trenches again.
Your devoted husband,
Wally
The next letter was directly about his experiences in the trenches:
Well Aggie,
I have had my first taste of trench work. I knew it was hard and heard a lot about it but no one can realise what’s it’s like until they experience it. I have had mine. The Germans did not give us much trouble while we were there, but the weather I never experienced anything like it. It started to snow one morning at six o’clock and did not leave off even for five minutes, until ten o’clock the next day, then it started to freeze. The snow came back the following day and this kind of weather went on for four days.
The trenches we were in, had been lately taken from the enemy, they were in a terrible state, in some places we were above our knees in mud although we had rubber boots up to our thighs. We prayed a few times that the Germans might make an attack so that we could warm ourselves. We could not light any fires and it was sudden and sure death to put your head above the parapet, their snipers are splendid shots, we were just beginning to have our own back with our snipers though when we were relieved.
I am sending you some souvenirs I found on a German that I had to bury. I found an illuminated watch, a purse of German notes, a penknife, a wallet, with photographs, and some letters and a diary. I gave up the wallet with the exception of one photograph; the chap whom I buried is sitting. I have his grave marked. I believe the officer and some of the men are prisoners of war. I want you Aggie, to keep those things for me. I think if you ask Arthur Clark, he would frame the photograph and the notes all in one frame, the photograph in the centre, he will know, but he will do it if you tell him I asked.
I will register the watch. I was offered a pound for it but I refused. Let me know immediately when you get these things. Did John get his leave yet? I have not heard from him at all, I wonder why doesn’t he write? When I was going up to the trenches, I passed within a short distance of where he was stationed, but could not get to see him unfortunately.
How are Mrs O and all at the Racquet getting on, remember me back to them. Are the pictures doing well? I wish the war was over and I was back home again, however, please God, I think it will not last that many months longer, something will have to break shortly. I think we have the better of the Germans now, but the devils will make a terrible fight of it before they give up. You want to hear our artillery when we start at them, it would do your heart good to see the wire fences and parapets going up in the air. The beggars begin to roar and squeal like rabbits, they get into a terrible state. I pity them when our fellows start a general bombardment.
Well Aggie dearest, I will now conclude, how are the children? I sincerely trust the little darlings are not catching cold. God protect you all and bring me back safely to you.
Goodbye, write immediately when you get this,
Your affectionate husband,
Walter
There are only two letters left in the collection of letters my grandmother kept. This, the first one, was written on Thursday 1 March 1916:
Dearest Aggie,
Your very welcome letter received a few days ago. I would have answered it sooner but I thought I would wait to see if I got those photos. I daresay that if you sent them on, I will hardly get them for a few days yet. I’m delighted to see by your letter that you are keeping your heart up.
As for me Aggie, I have nearly got used to the noise, at least I had, as I was not very long in the trenches. At present we are having a rest but I daresay we’ll be back there again and if I’m not greatly mistaken, there will be some lively doings, however, Aggie love do not fear, I will keep my heart up, I only hope we will be able to shift them out of France before the summer.
All the boys are in the best of spirits, one would think to look at them, that there was no such thing as a war on. All last week we had snow and frost out there. I have never felt colder in my life. I hope we are done with the frost for now.
In case I forget, my full address here is 18092 4th Battalion R.F.X Company, 7th Platoon, BE7 France. Put this address somewhere safe so that you won’t lose it, as if you forget to include the company and platoon numbers, letters are always delayed and I need not tell you how I fret when I don’t hear from you.
Yes, I think, Delia [Aggie’s sister] is more than good, God will bless her for it, I wish I had her letter, I will be only too glad to write to her. Sister Anthony [Walter’s aunt] is a very bad correspondent; I only had one letter from her since Xmas. I had a letter from Uncle Michael in Spiddal and he told me he sent on cigarettes and stockings. I’m afraid I haven’t received them as yet; perhaps like all my other parcels they will have gone astray altogether.
I wonder if John got his leave yet? I haven’t heard from him for a considerable time. It’s hard luck as where we are resting is only about 10 to 12 miles from where he is stationed. I might be able to manage a pass to go to see him, but not having heard from him for so long, I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed if I get a pass and go to visit him only to find he is gone on leave.
I’ll conclude this scribble for the present hoping your dear self and kiddies are all well. Goodbye for the present, write soon again and don’t forget to put the full address on your letter.
Your affectionate husband,
Walter
The next fragment is from a letter to my grandmother posted on 22 March 1916. This was the last letter my grandmother received from her husband:
My dearest Aggie,
Your welcome letter received yesterday with the photographs. They are lovely; the boys say that Eileen is the image of me. I received your other letter a few days back when I was in the trenches. I would have answered it straight away only I guessed you would send on the photos immediately you got them. I received Arthur’s [a friend] letter at the same time and answered it. I need not tell you how glad I was to hear from him.
I thought he was never going to write again. I have not received your shamrock yet. I had some from Uncle Michael a few days before St Patrick’s Day and I wore it in the trenches. I’m more than delighted he called to see you. He speaks well of little Wally. I daresay Mother has not called …
Of course, my grandfather was on her mind all the time and one night she had a particularly vivid dream, which my mother told me about. She saw her husband walking along the trenches, there was the sound of gunfire and a starburst o
ver his head and he fell down dead. The morning after that dream, she went to work in the Racquet Court. She went there most mornings to clean up and make it ready for business. It was very early in the morning and she was completely on her own. She heard a sound behind her and when she turned she saw her husband standing in his full Royal Fusiliers uniform: ‘Oh Wally,’ she said to him, ‘why didn’t you warn me you were coming home, I would be wearing my best clothes to meet you, will you look at me, I’m a mess.’
The figure said nothing and she knew then that he was dead – when she got the official letter, it didn’t come as such a shock to her:
My dear Mrs Macken,
I am writing to tell you that your husband, 18092, Pt W. Macken of this regiment was almost certainly killed on March 28th, though his name will appear as missing, I cannot give you any particulars. He met his death doing his duty and now his work is finished here but we can pray that he will rest in peace and I am sure that for a man who does his duty, well truly death is a passing to higher things.
With all sympathy,
Yours sincerely,
Noel Mellish, Chaplain, Royal Fusiliers
This was the letter that broke my grandmother’s heart.
2
WALTER MACKEN – CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL DAYS
Agnes Brady had to face a future without a husband and raise three children in 1920s Galway. Although my grandmother had very limited resources, she seems to have provided well for her children. She was in receipt of a soldier’s pension, and did various jobs: sewing, mending and laying out the dead. In my father’s book, Cockle and Mustard, the details appear to me to be almost identical to his actual life experience, although neither my father nor my mother ever told me whether the book was autobiographical or not. Despite this, I will draw on some of the material in that book, as I feel it provides an understanding of my father’s experiences as a child. The book was submitted to Macmillan & Co. for publishing, but was rejected – to date, it has not been published.
My grandmother was very keen on education and as the two girls were attending the Presentation Convent National School, which was about one hundred yards from his home, young Wally was also sent there at about the age of three or four. It was common for young boys to attend the first few years of their schooling at a girls’ national school. So my father was sent to the ‘Pres’ as it was called.
Early on in his school life, my father had an interesting experience, which he wrote about in an article for the Presentation Convent Annual celebrating their centenary in 1965. At that time, in all national schools in Ireland, children sat at desks that had a white inkwell containing blue or black ink on the right-hand side. Every child, with a simple wooden pen with a nib, used this ink. Every morning the teacher filled all the inkwells with ink from a large bottle. This was still the practice when I went to national school.
Imagine the scene: it is 1921 and my father is six years old, he is in Middle Babies. He has graduated from Infants and he is sitting in a classroom with thirty to forty other six year olds, most of whom are girls. There was at least one other boy, Jo Jo Keenan, and probably a neighbour, Danny Griffin:
It isn’t every male who can boast he was convent educated. I am one of them. In the 1920s there were quite a few boys in Galway who spent three years in the Presentation Convent School. Then it didn’t have such a high flowing title, it was just called ‘The Pres’. The Pres was up near Canon Davis’ house and frankly the canon was a bit of a hazard.
As you raced from St Joseph’s Avenue, up the back of St John’s Terrace, across the canal bridge, down New Road and around the corner like an aeroplane, you would often bump into the canon, and shifting from foot to foot explain to him why you were a bit late, receive his rebuke, and then when you got into your classroom, almost breathless, use him as an excuse, saying, ‘the canon kept me’.
You made three changes in the Pres, from Infants to Middle Babies and then into First Class, which seemed to be the goal of all desire, almost the same as striving for heaven, although the bliss was tempered by the fact that Sister Ursula was reputed to have an eagle eye, so that some of our higher informants told us that First Class wasn’t really heaven, it was more like purgatory, a sort of anteroom to heaven, or the next best thing.
My memory of Infants is all about chalk. I remember trying to eat chalk, and somehow I still have the taste in my mouth. Also I remember building blocks, coloured ones with the letters of the alphabet on them, and I remember those coloured beads on wire frames that taught you how to count.
I seem to remember there was a partition between Infants and Middle Babies that could be folded back against the wall but already when you were in Middle Babies, you were feeling a sense of superiority over those poor kids in Infants. Middle Babies meant only one thing to me, ink. I sat at desks with a white ink-bottle stuck in a hole and one day, I drank the contents.
This action I remember brought me into the limelight. My sister was sent for from upstairs and she came down and had to wash out my mouth with the tap in the concrete yard outside the glass door. I think she took a dim view of my action as she was the one to suffer because of my actions. What a stupid thing to have a brother lunatic enough to drink ink! I often wonder if I got ink in my veins that day in Middle Babies and I’m still trying to use it up. It’s very difficult to give a logical explanation of why you should drink ink otherwise.
First Class meant Sister Ursula, who could wither a class with a look, and yet impress her personality on you so that you would never forget her and think of her in fondness. It meant that the rattling of the beads of Sister Magdalene as she came down from the room upstairs if we were unruly and under the care of a daunted pupil teacher. The sound of the big beads was enough to induce peace and apprehension, without the (to us from our small desks) enormously tall commanding no-nonsense presence of the Sister herself.
While my father wrote about his childhood, he rarely talks about deprivation, but they must have been very poor. Two of the young fellows he hung around with talked to me about him: the late Jo Jo Keenan told me how they spent their free time: ‘We played endless games in the street. You could take a simple thing like an old car tyre and we would roll it all up St Mary’s Road round by Nilodge and then around by the Crescent and back by Sea Road home again.’
As young fellows they always kept their ears open for the possibility of earning a few bob: ‘At that time,’ Jo said, ‘there were a whole range of small shops all around Lower and Upper Dominick Street. We used to deliver messages for them. One day the shop man asked your father to deliver something to Lower Salthill. When he came back, he offered your father some fresh grapes, but your father said no, he wanted money so he paid him 1/– (one shilling). With this your father was able to buy us five Woodbines and bring us both to the pictures in the Racquet Court.’
Danny Griffin was another neighbour and lived in a house right opposite my father in St Joseph’s Avenue. He told me how he and his family ended up living there. They grew up in the Gaeltacht area between Barna and Spiddal. His father was the second son and he was running the farm as the eldest son had emigrated to seek his fortune in England. However, the eldest son returned and Danny’s grandfather then insisted that his father leave the farm as it was the eldest son who would inherit the property, so the family moved into Galway: ‘We were much poorer than your father’s family. We kept chickens and even had a pig in our back garden.’ Danny had great memories of playing games with my father and all the children in the street.
Cockle and Mustard gives us further insight into life as a youngster growing up in Galway in the early part of the twentieth-century:
The boy learned to read, Sister Ursula insisted on that. Sister Ursula’s main purpose in life was to instil the penny catechism into his thick irreligious head. There were some shocking big words in the catechism. He’d want two tongues to get around some of them but eventually he was able to gabble them off, so that he was ready to face his First Confession. H
e had to learn how to examine his conscience and see what he had done wrong according to the Ten Commandments.
Had he been stealing? When his Mammy sends him to get a message at the shop and there is three half pennies left and the boy keeps them instead of returning them to his Mammy, is that stealing?
So he waits with the others, trembling as his time comes to go into the Confessional Box. He is all alone in there entirely, for the first time in his life. It is dark and the shutter is closed. He can hear the priest whispering to the client on the other side of him. It is very dark. He hopes that the grill on his side will never open but it does and he is so terrified that the priest has to prompt him and then he starts telling him about his sins in a run.
He starts off with the formula Sister Ursula has taught him and that he has learned: ‘Bless me father, for I have sinned’. And he goes on from that. He tells the priest about his sins and wonder of wonders the priest doesn’t faint, he listens and absolves him from his sins using the Latin words, while the boy says his act of contrition. Then he gives the boy his penance and he tells him to say three Hail Marys and an Our Father. He doesn’t really understand what is going on but he feels different when he comes out of the box.