'On a flesh and bone foundation': An Irish History: 'While the mad guns curse overhead': Thomas Michael Kettle 1880-1916

"If I live I mean to spend the rest of my life working for perpetual peace. I have seen war, and faced modern artillery, and I know what an outrage it is against simple men."

It was with these words that Thomas Michael Kettle signed off on the last letter his family would ever receive from him. It was written to his brother Laurence on 8 September 1916, just one day before Thomas fell on the bloody field of battle that was the Somme.

Thomas 'Tom' Michael Kettle was the son of my maternal great-great-grand-uncle Andrew J. Kettle and great-great-grand-aunt Margaret McCourt Kettle, and nephew of my maternal great-great grandmother, Mary Kettle Fitzpatrick. According to the record of his birth, Tom was born in the Clontarf suburb of Dublin, 9 February 1880.

Thomas Michael Kettle was a barrister, journalist, published poet, Irish Home Rule politician, professor, and soldier. He was the third born son of twelve children and, like his brothers before and after him, was educated at the Christian Brothers School in North Richmond Street, Dublin. His post secondary education was conducted at Clongowes College and University College Dublin (UCD). He was called to the bar in 1905, and elected Nationalist M.P. (member of Parliament at Westminster) for East Tyrone in 1906. In 1909 he was appointed to the professorship of National Economics at UCD. He resigned his parliamentary seat in 1910, driven by the desire to fully dedicate himself to his role as a professor.

Along with his brother, Laurence J. Kettle, Thomas was a member of the Provisional Committee of the Irish Volunteers, a committee of sixteen men responsible for the 1913 formation of the Irish Volunteers. Thomas Kettle was in Belgium to procure arms for the Volunteers at the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

In 1917, Thomas Kettle's The Ways of War was posthumously published. Co-authored with his wife Mary Sheehy Kettle, he intended the book as an elucidation of his reasons for choosing to fight in the war. In the introduction to the book Mary Sheehy Kettle notes that Thomas was horrified by the German attack on Belgium, and saw in Germany's domination over the small nation a parallel to that of England over Ireland. Tom's immediate enlistment for service in an Irish regiment is explained as a desire to fight "not for England, but for small nations". He took a commission with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

In his last letter to his brother, penned the night before Tom was killed, there is a note of pre-sentiment in the tone of his words,

"I am calm and happy, but desperately anxious to live. The big guns are coughing and smacking their shells, which sound for all the world like overhead express trains...Somewhere the Choosers of the Slain, as in our Norse story, are touching with invisible wands those who are to die."

Thomas Kettle was killed in action during the advance of his battalion to Guinchy, 9 September 1916. He was a Lieutenant with the 9th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers. The War Office announced he fell "at the post of honour, leading his men in a victorious charge."

Tom was only 36 years old. His body was never recovered, so he has no known grave. Near the end of September 1916, his wife Mary Sheehy Kettle received a telegram from the War Office in London dated 19 September 1916. It reads:

TO: MRS. KETTLE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN:

DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU,
LIEUT. T.M. KETTLE, DUBLIN FUSILIERS,
WAS KILLED IN ACTION SEPTEMBER 9TH.

THE ARMY COUNCIL EXPRESS THEIR SYMPATHY.

SECRETARY WAR OFFICE

In the biographical notes of their father's memoirs, Tom's brother Dr. Laurence Kettle writes, "when I told him Tom was listed as missing, after the battle of Guinchy, he said: If Tom is dead I don't wish to live any longer." Andrew J. Kettle followed his son Tom to the grave shortly thereafter, dying on 22 September 1916, only 13 days after Tom's death.

Commemorations

Thomas Kettle is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing (Pier and Face 16C) in France.

In addition to the commemoration at Thiepval, Thomas Kettle is also remembered at Island of Ireland Peace Park (*click for site) in Messines, near Ypres in Flanders, Belgium. Dedicated to the memory of the soldiers of Ireland who were wounded or lost in the Great War of 1914-1918, the park was officially opened in November of 1998 by then President of Ireland Mary McAleese, and Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, and King Albert II of Belgium.

Nine stone tablets are located in the grounds of Ireland Park near the Round Tower. Inscribed with quotations from poems, prose and letters from Irishmen at war, one of these nine tablets bears a quotation written by Thomas Kettle. The quotation on the tablet is lines from a sonnet he penned to his daughter shortly before his death ('To My Daughter Betty') and reads:

“So here, while the mad guns curse overhead, and tired men sigh, with mud for couch and floor, know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, died not for Flag, nor King, nor Emperor, but for a dream born in a herdsman’s shed, and for the secret scripture of the poor.”

On the grounds of St. Stephen's Green in Dublin this bust stands in honour of Thomas Kettle. Although he had been a member of the Irish Volunteers, and believed in an Ireland free from English rule, there was some controversy surrounding the erection of the bust because Kettle had fought in the Somme as a member of the British forces. His wife Mary Sheehy Kettle, a highly respected educator and activist in her own right, worked hard to raise funds for the memorial, often spoke about the importance of it, and wrote at least one strongly worded letter to the editor of an Irish newspaper in defence of the commemorative bust.

Thomas Michael Kettle is also remembered on The Barristers Memorial bronze plaque in the Four Courts Dublin which commemorates twenty-six Irish barristers who were killed in the Great War.

My maternal great-great grandmother Mary Kettle Fitzpatrick named her first born son Thomas. That son Thomas, my great-grandfather, in turn named his first born son Thomas Andrew. His daughter, my grandmother, named the fourth born of her sons Thomas. Her son, my uncle Antony, named one of his sons Thomas, so the name was carried forward for several generations.

Intersecting Lives

Thomas Michael Kettle is on my maternal family tree; William Dunne, about whom I have previously written, is on my paternal family tree. Both men died in France serving in different battalions of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. It is probably the case that these men did not have a personal relationship; their particular branches of the family tree were not yet connected, although William may have known Thomas by reputation alone. Also, in 1913 Thomas Kettle spoke at a recruitment meeting of the Irish Volunteers, the meeting at which young Michael Magee (William Dunne's nephew) joined the Volunteer movement for which he would sacrifice his life. Kettle was well known at that time, but the then 16 year old Magee was in all likelihood unknown to Kettle. It is interesting to consider the ways in which the lives of these three men intersected. They would one day belong to the same family tree, but they were not related to one another when their paths crossed in history.

References:

Burke, Tom. "In Memory of Lieutenant Tom Kettle, 'B' Company, 9th Royal Dublin Fusiliers",
Dublin Historical Record, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 164-173.
Gwynn, Denis. "Thomas M. Kettle 1880-1916"
Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 55, No. 220 (Winter, 1966), pp. 384-391.
Kettle, L.J., editor. The Material for Victory, Being the Memoirs of Andrew J. Kettle, C.J. Fallon Ltd., Dublin, 1958.
Kettle, T. M. and Mary S. Kettle. The Ways of War, C. Scribner's & Sons, Dublin, 1917.
The War Graves Photographic Project
Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Thiepval)
Island of Ireland Peace Park
UCD Collections The Papers of Tom Kettle 1880-1916

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