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JOINING THE BRITISH ARMY

Matt was three weeks in his job when one day a few of his friends from the hill, Micheal Mitchell, Eddie and Jimmy Foley, on thier way to Barnane to play football called for him. Matt was mad about football and could not resist the temptation, so when the foreman left the yard some on bussiness, off he went to enjoy two hectic hours of bliss. Matt ,as he says himself,must have been the oridginal 'Drop-out'. After the game they sat on the verdant grass near the glistening Blackwater and one of the boys said something that would change all thier lives. It was spoken quitely, almost as a joke,'Come here lads, what about going up and joining the army? 'Strange that a small jocose suggestion could have such an effect.The four boys gathered thier belongings togeter and without another word, started out from Barnane and walked to Cork. This in itself was a geat feat for the eldest was sixteen and a half and Matt, the youngest, was only fourteen. When they finally climbed the steep hill to Victoria Barracks and entered to the guard room, they gave their ages as eighteen and a half and no one questioned the veracity of the combined statement. A few hours later they were fully fledged members of the British Army and Matt with his comrades were sent to a boarding house near the Barrack gates. It was owned by a Mrs o'Reilly, and Matt says that he was more frightened on the night that he spent there, than on any other occasion in the great war or indeed 'The Troubles'. 'I went there that night 'says Matt,'with four other young fellows and in came a crowd of tinkers from Limerick, the Quilligans, and they really terrified us. There were about seven brothers and they had also joined the army that day. The Quilligan's had got their signing-on pay of two shillings and ninepence and they all came in drunk. We were all in this big room and we were afraid for our lives. Nice soldiers indeed, but of course we were very young and inexperienced'.

After that Matt and his camrades were sent to Tralee,then on across the Irish Sea to the South Shields and they came back again to Fermoy. So it was a round trip and of course when he arrived back at the New Barracks his family were considering claiming him out. Then they were shifted to Beresford Barracks in the Curragh and here he was trained as a Machine Gunner.In France the fighting was gaining in fury and soon Matt was to be actively engaged.

It was the great Battle of the Somme and the date was 7th September 1916. Matt was firing his vickers machine gun down the road. The gun was being fed by a Private Murphy, who hailed from Blackpool in Cork and they were sowing havoc among the retreating Germans. Thier shooting was so accurate that Matt says they must have got everyone in range. The machine gun section was part of the 16th Irish Division,and the infantry pressed on to take their objective, the town of Guillement. The Irish fire was up and before the day ended the Irish had advanced ahead of their objective and taken Guinchy as well. Then the German guns got the range of the machine-gun section and scored a direct hit.

'Murphy was lying in the prone position feeding the gun. He was lying sideways, shoving in the belt, when we were hit.That's why he was nearest to the explosion and he never knew what hit him. I looked around after the terrible crack and tried to pull myself together.I looked across at where Murphy lay and I saw that his head was gone...Were you ever out in the garden and saw the earthworms coming out of the ground...? That's what it was like on poor Murphy's neck. They must have been veins or something but I could see them moving and there was no head there. The stretcher bearers came up and I was taken to a hospital in Boulogne near the French coast. From here I was sent to Glasgow and discharged as medically unfit from the wounds. I arrived in Fermoy on the last of Aaugust 1917 and here's a peculiar thing. I was wounded on the 7th september 1916 and I joined the Irish Volunteers on the 7th september 1917'.