Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

“No trouble at all,” said the Captain. “We’ve got them beat.”

But there was still trouble ahead. All afternoon the trench mortar shells and whiz-bangs kept bursting in the whole sector, making the work of litter bearers and liaison men very difficult. Also the task of burying the dead, which Mr. Jewett of the Y’s athletic department volunteered to superintend for me with the sturdy assistance of Corporal Michael Conroy of Company H.

Company H was in support—the most thankless and difficult sort of a job for any unit, whether Company, Regiment or Division. It is called upon for detachments which must go up under shell fire, and go in where the battle is hottest, and in unfamiliar surroundings. The unit generally gets little public credit for its share in the fight though military men know that it is a compliment to be held in support. It means that the Chief Commander has confidence that the smaller fractions into which it may have to be split are under well trained and competent leaders. However, nobody likes the job. Certainly big courageous Captain Jim Finn did not like it. He wanted to lead his own company in the fight and the H men would rather fight under their great hearted Captain than under any other leader in the world. That pleasure was denied them, but the Company surely did honor to the training and the spirit their Captain put into them. I saw a platoon going up the boyau with Lieutenant Wheeler, all of them flushed with the joy of action. “Over the top with Fighting Joe,” called John O’Connor, from the words of Tom Donohue’s song. Their services were needed often on the 15th to support the gallant defenses of Companies F and G.

On the morning of the 16th there was another furious assault. A whole German Battalion attacked one of the defense positions and for a time the situation looked serious. Lieutenant Young of F was killed while organizing the resistance. Lieutenants Wheeler and Anderson of H and Sears of F took all kinds of chances in meeting the situation and were carried off wounded. Some parties of Germans managed to get up into the trench. Joe Daly, while carrying ammunition, almost ran into a German. The latter was the more excited of the two, and before he could recover his wits, Daly had snatched a rifle which was leaning against the trench, whirled it over his head like a shillelah, and down on the German’s skull. Then he ran into the middle of the fight.

Sergeant Bernard J. Finnerty and Corporal Thomas Fitzgerald of H saw a group of Germans who had ensconced themselves in an angle of the approach trench whence they were doing terrible damage with their potato mashers. Michael Tracy, a crack shot, who had done great work that day with his rifle, made a target of himself trying to find a better spot to shoot from, and got wounded. But they had to be dislodged. So Finnerty and Fitzgerald rushed down the trench, hurled over hand grenades into the party, and destroyed it—but at the cost of their own heroic selves. John F. O’Connor, Mechanic of Company O, jumped on the parapet to get a position to bomb out a machine gun crew which were sheltered in a hollow. He drove them into the open where our own machine guns settled them.

The places of the wounded Lieutenants of H Company were taken by Sergeants Eugene Sweeney and Jerome and William O’Neill (two of “The three O’Neills of Company H”; the third, Daniel, being First Sergeant, was with Captain Finn). In Company F Sergeants Timothy McCrohan and Thomas Erb with Corporals James Brennan and John Finnegan led the fighting under Captain Kelly and Lieutenants Marsh and Smith. Bernard Finnegan and Matt Wynne refused to quit when badly wounded. William Cassidy, Company Clerk, who could not content himself with that work while the fight was on, and Corporal Michael Leonard, an elderly man who had volunteered when men with a better right to do so were satisfied to wave the flag—these too won great renown. They and the others routed the enemy out of the trenches, following them over the top and up the boyaus. Cassidy and Leonard were killed, and my old time friend, Sergeant Joe O’Rourke of H, and many another good man. Sergeant William O’Neill was wounded, but kept on fighting, till death claimed him in the heat of the fray. His brother, Jerome, still battled valiantly and he was always worth a hundred men.[3]

Eugene Sweeney was twice wounded and refused to retire till the enemy was chased utterly from the field. When his wounds were dressed he insisted on returning to the lines.

Corporal John Finnegan had been wounded in the leg the day before. He tied a bandage around the wound and stayed where he was. He was with Lieutenant Young when that leader was killed and ran to avenge him. A shell burst near him and he was hurled in the air, falling senseless and deaf. I saw him in the First Aid Station, a little way back, where he had been carried. The lads there had ripped up his breeches to re-bandage his earlier wound. He was just coming to. They told me he was shell shocked. “Shell shocked, nothing,” I said. “A shell could kill John Finnegan, but it could not break his nerves.” Just then he got sight of me. “There’s nawthin’ the matther with me, Father, exceptin’ that I’m deef. They got the Lootenant and I haven’t squared it with thim yet. I’m goin’ back.” I told him he must stay where he was at least till I returned from the Battalion Dressing Station, which was 500 yards down the old Roman Road.

Going out I saw Marquardt, Hess and Kleinberg carrying a litter. I offered to help and found it was Dallas Springer, a dear friend of mine since Border days, now badly wounded. We got him with difficulty down the shelled road to the Battalion Dressing Station where I found the Surgeons, Doctors Martin, Cooper and Landrigan working away oblivious of the shells falling around. Landrigan had been out most of the night of the big bombardment arranging for the evacuation of the wounded. I put Dallas down beside Michael Leonard, a Wisconsin lad named Pierre, and Harold Frear, a slim, plucky lad whom we had rejected at the Armory for underweight when he applied for enlistment just a year ago, but who had pestered us all till we let him by. I was told that Lester Snyder of our Sanitary Detachment had been brought in nearly dead, a martyr to his duty, having gone out to bandage the wounded under heavy fire. It was a consolation to me to recall the devout faces of all five of them as I gave them Communion a day or two before.

Between looking after these and others who kept coming in it was a good while before I got back to the First Aid Station in the trenches and John Finnegan was gone. They had kept him for some time by telling him he was to wait for me. But after a rush of business they found John sitting up with a shoe lace in his hand. “Give me a knife,” he said, “I want to make holes to sew up my pants.” Johnny Walker had mine but he wouldn’t lend it. “Lie down and be still.” “All right,” said Finnegan, “I have the tools God gave me.” He bent his head over the ripped up breeches and with his teeth tore a few holes at intervals in the hanging flaps. He carefully laced them up with the shoe-string, humming the while “The Low Back Car.” Then he got up. “Where’s me gun?” “You are to wait for Father Duffy. He wants to see you.” “Father Duffy done all for me I need, and he’d be the last man to keep a well man out of a fight. I’m feeling fine and I want me gun. I’m going back.” He spied a stray rifle and seized it. “Keep out of me way, now, I don’t want to fight with the Irish excipt for fun. This is business.” So wounded, bruised, half deaf, John Finnegan returned to battle. Immortal poems have been written of lesser men.