Sir, - In Kevin Myers's most moving article about the Great War memorial now belatedly planned for Messines (The Irish Times, December 30th), I could not find any mention of the women of Ireland, North and South, who also gave their lives in that terrible war.
In the quiet rural village of Louth near Dundalk, in the nave of the ruined St Mary's Abbey, there is a small white headstone of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission type, with the crest of the Royal Ambulance Corps, inscribed for "54444 Kathleen Carroll, aged 27, worker, killed in France, 1917".
We must never forget that there were very many women like Kathleen Carroll in the Red Cross and in the nursing branches, whose lives were also snuffed out in the mindless slaughter.
I hope to see this fact recognised and inscribed on the proposed memorial. - Yours, etc.,
W. J. Lawlor,
Ardee Road, Dundalk, Co Louth.