I'm new here, and I am trying to research my grandad before I run out of time myself. When I was a boy, I used to ask him lots of questions about his war experinces, and now he is long-gone, I wish I'd asked him a lot more.
He told me how the Battalion embarked at Dublin and landed at Le Havre, and then went by train up to Flanders. Following the German offensive, the Battalion fell back as far as Le Cateau, where they made their famous stand. He was one of the lucky ones who survived, having fallen wounded by shrapnel from a shell burst.
Some of the things he told me about what he had seen that day were vivid and harrowing in the extreme. He recounted how he was picked up by the Germans and taken to a field hospital. As it was a very hot day and he was wounded, he was very thirsty and he picked up a mug of water and drank it off, only to be beaten by a German officer who told him that it was for German wounded only.
Too late! He had drunk it! He escaped shortly afterwards from some kind of holding camp but ran into German cavalry who ran him back tied to their stirrups. After that he was sent to Germany, to a camp in Chemnitz and later to Riga on the Baltic coast.
He was finally moved down to what is now Austria by the end of the war, and was repatriated in We have no surviving records of him as they were all destroyed by my grandma, who could not bear reminders of the past. Are there any records that survive that might have his name on them? I'd be very grateful for any help. I can't add much for you, but it seems your grandfather was a prisoner of war for almost the entire war.
