On the Road Again!

This year is the 110th Anniversary of the battle when the men on the Royal Irish Regiment fought to the last man at le Pilly. I have blogged this before. It needs remembering. War is nasty and brutal. But to kill everyone and give them no option to surrender or withdraw is criminal.  http://invictamoto.blogspot.com/2020/07/t-oleary-4.html

Another year has passed. We are no nearer finding out where Timothy and his fellow Irish troops are buried. They have no known grave. At le Polly there is a monument to the dead.

It was back during lockdown that I started to investigate Claire's great uncles and in particular Timothy O'Leary.  We had been given some pretty duff information some years ago and when I looked deeper we had been given the wrong Tim. With help from the researcher at the Royal Irish Regiment in Belfast we got more information. This led to the realisation that Timothy was killed early in the war at Le Pilly.  The link below has that information. When we were on holiday in June, I took Claire as a surprise to Le Pilly.  The Triptych mentioned in the article in the link is on a quiet corner. Nearby is a main road carrying cars and trucks that thunder past. https://invictamoto.blogspot.com/2021/10/timothy-oleary-107th-anniversary.html

October 19th 1914 The British Army were fighting to delay the advance of German troops across Belgium and France. Timothy was one of the troops that fought at Le Pilly. At 1500 on the 19th October they advanced across a turnip field. Were isolated during the attack where they captured the village of le Pilly.  They were later surrounded.  In total 177 men were killed and wounded. Others captured. Timothy was one of the former. They fought to the last man and were slaughtered by German artillery.  Here is an article published in 2014 almost on the anniversary of the slaughter in the Irish Times about Le Pilly.    https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/the-battle-of-le-pilly-1.1962035 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/le-pilly-honours-177-irish-men-killed-in-first-world-war-battle-1.3671010 Timothy has no known burial place and is remembered on the  Le Touret Memorial. Once the pandemic is over we would like to go over and pay our respect...

The search for information about Claire's Irish relatives has continued to follow Timothy O'Leary. I have a lot of stuff on Timothy and his brothers that joined the Army and served in various theatres  in WW1. I managed to make this picture from a PDF using a link on the Adobe website -  https://www.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/online/pdf-to-jpg.html Once the Covid pandemic is over and we can travel again, we can go over and visit.  I doubt anyone has been there for years, if ever. Timothy from newspaper cutting This is for the war memorial at Hythe. From the IWM: 2nd Battalion August 1914 : in Devonport (where it had been stationed since 1913), under command of 8th Brigade, 3rd Division. 14 August 1914 : landed at Boulogne. Virtually destroyed as a battalion near Le Pilly during the Battle of La Bassée. Many taken as POWs.