Courage Under Fire by Fiorella De Maria

Author:Fiorella De Maria [AUTHOR, FIRST]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spirituality & Religion
ISBN: 9781642292817
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

13

WAR COMES TO EUROPE

WHEN GAVRILO PRINCIP SHOT Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, his act of terrorism in the name of Serbian nationalism triggered the First World War. During that summer, few imagined that the conflict would escalate into a long, drawn-out war that would last four years and cost millions of lives. As soon as war was declared, young men all over Europe—in Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire—stood in line for hours to enlist as soldiers. “The war will be over by Christmas!” they called. “Best join the army soon, or we’ll miss the action!”

Some young men were little more than boys, who lied to the recruitment officers that they were over eighteen so that they could “take the king’s shilling” and show everyone how brave they were. All over the United Kingdom, recruitment posters called upon men to answer the call to war for the sake of the people of Belgium, which had been invaded and occupied by the Germans.

Thousands of the young men who volunteered to fight in the trenches were from religious backgrounds, and Catholic priests rushed to offer their services as chaplains. At the start of the war, there were already thirty thousand Irishmen serving in the British Army. Willie’s personal call to war was fueled by his desire to help working-class men find God. Many such men were joining the army, motivated by a desire to escape poverty and to be paid to have adventures as professional soldiers.

Willie volunteered to be an army chaplain in November 1914, just a few months after the outbreak of war. By the time he was called up the following year, all the excitement and dreams of glory had petered out in the mud and machine-gun fire of the Western Front. The conditions at the front line were horrific. Soldiers lived in squalid, mud-filled trenches crawling with lice and rats. Some were driven mad by the constant roaring of the guns and the artillery shells exploding all around them, while thousands more were killed trying to cross no-man’s-land, the stretch of ground that separated the opposing armies.

Willie was assigned to the Eighth Royal Irish Fusiliers and sent to Whitley Camp in England to train. Life in the training camp was hard, as the soldiers were being prepared for trench warfare, but the biggest source of pain for Willie was to be separated from the Blessed Sacrament. Things improved when, on New Year’s Day 1916, his regiment was transferred to Bordon Camp, where to his joy Willie found a Catholic church with the Blessed Sacrament reserved. In a letter to his family, he described it as “a New Year’s gift from Our Lord.”

Willie and his men needed that gift more than ever: on February 17, they were informed that they would be transferring to France, which meant that they would be joining the rest of the army at the front line. During the previous two months at the training camp, Willie had kept very busy preparing souls for the prospect of battle and death.

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