HIS NAME was Michael Cooney. He was born in 1894 in Killuran Mor, a townland near Broadford, Co Clare. His grandfather, also Michael Cooney, farmed the land there, along with others, as commonage in 1855. By 1894, this man's son, Patrick Cooney, had acquired the land and farmed it in his own right, writes Terence Killeen.
Michael was the eldest of a large family - he had four brothers and four sisters. Obviously, prospects were not great on a small farm with so many siblings, and Michael, despite (or maybe because of) being the eldest, emigrated to Australia around 1912. Two of his brothers, Jack and James, also went there, as did a sister, Delia. Michael worked as a labourer in Linelion, Boogaville, New South Wales, for a time, but as the Great War went on, he eventually enlisted as a private in the Australian Imperial Force in July 1916.
Michael embarked from Melbourne on October 28th, 1916, on the transport ship Ulysses, back to a continent which he had no doubt believed he would not see again for a very long time, if ever. He was a member of the First Machine Gun Company, seventh reinforcements, and was bound for the Western Front.
He was involved in the offensive on Polygon Wood in 1917 which formed part of the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as the battle of Passchendaele, one of the bloodiest and most controversial operations of the entire war. It is notorious not only for the scale of the casualties but also for the appalling conditions in which it took place, in a sea of mud so deep that many soldiers and horses drowned in it.
The offensive began in July and eventually, on November 6th, the Allies captured what was left of the small village of Passchendaele, barely five miles beyond the starting point. This gave the British commander, Gen Douglas Haig, the excuse to call off the operation and claim a victory. The Battle of Passchendaele had taken 325,000 Allied casualties.
What happened to Michael Cooney is fully recorded in the admirable "Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau Files, 1914-18 War".
The most detailed account is provided by his comrade Private A Mellor, who gave his testimony in August 1918: I knew Cooney quite well. He went by the name of 'Mick'. He was a finely built fellow, came from Ireland and was about 23 years old. I was Company runner on September 24th during the Ypres attack and during the afternoon had to go past a D/S . On a stretcher outside D/S I saw Cooney lying. I went up to him and asked him how he was and he said 'pretty bad'. He had a big wound in his right shoulder from a piece of shell and a second one in stomach. I tried to get him carried to a collecting station where he might have got better attention but they were too busy and all had to wait their turn. I got 2 blankets and put one over him and one under his head. I then had to leave him but later word came to HQ (I did not see official list but heard of it) that Cooney was dead."
Further information is given by Gunner Richard Percy Whalan, who had travelled with Michael Cooney on the Ulyssesand was a member of the same company. Gunner Whalan had been a tramway conductor in Sydney. He testified: "He was wounded by a shell whilst we were at Polygon Wood. He was taken out to the C.C.S. and on the way out he was hit again. He died at the C.C.S. He would be buried close by. I knew him in the company. He came from N.S.W. ."
Another comrade of Michael Cooney was Cpl Alfred Marshall. He had been a wharf labourer in Sydney. He stated: Ypres. Wounded by shell in shoulder, taken D D/S about 21st Sept. He was my cobber . He was carried past me and I recognised him but he was not conscious at the time."
These accounts are all the more striking for their sheer reticence, the language of soldiers recounting another day's work. A statement like "he was my cobber" is far more telling in its epigraphic brevity than any amount of sustained eloquence.
Michael Cooney died on September 24th, 1917. (Despite the testimony of Private Mellor, it appears he was actually wounded on September 20th and died three days later. He is officially categorised as having "died of wounds", rather than "killed in action".) He is buried in Lijssenthoek military cemetery in Belgium, the second largest cemetery for soldiers in the Australian army. His name is inscribed in the Roll of Honour in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. He was my mother's first cousin and his youngest brother, Tom Cooney, of Courtbrown, Askeaton, Co Limerick, is hale and hearty at 94.
The Great War is notorious for the industrial-sized scale of the carnage involved. The huge figures involved can become a blur, so that it is only by recovering the stories of individual tragedy and loss, such as that of Michael Cooney, that the reality of what was involved can strike home again. And since all of the stories cannot be recovered, his, in its sheer "ordinariness", may also stand as an emblem of all the untold ones, the fate of millions caught up in a nightmare not of their own making.
• An exhibition entitled "90 Years On - County Clare and the Great War" continues at the Clare Museum, Ennis, until Christmas