Page 22 - Greystones Archaeological Historical Society

WOMEN IN WORLD WAR I

Joe Brien enlisted on St Patrick’s Day 1915, just five days
after his 19th birthday. Nineteen was the minimum age for
enlisting to go overseas. This young man who had probably
never travelled any further than Dublin on the train from Bray was
immediately sent to fight in France. His brother Michael was a
year older and also joined up. Michael died first, in France in
August 1916. By then the political scene in Ireland was changing.
The execution of the 1916 Rising Leaders had hardened
attitudes at home.

The world war which many had expected to end quickly was
into its second year. Many soldiers and their families were
beginning to question the sense of sending so many young men
to their deaths on foreign battlefields. For many of the young men
the adventure was turning into a horror story, with their comrades
and friends lying dead and wounded around them.

It is very clear from the military records that Private Joseph
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Brien suffered a great deal during the war. He was hospitalised
on at least four occasions, first with shellshock shortly after he
arrived in France, later with physical injuries. On one of these
occasions, when suffering from a leg injury, he managed to be
transferred to the Princess Patricia Hospital in Bray. It must have
been a great relief for his parents to have him close by for that
six week period in 1917.

Mary and Michael Brien were to see their son just once more
before his death, when he returned to Bray on leave for a week
in April 1918. During that week of leave in 1918 there was an
incident with a superior officer which ironically almost saved the
life of Private Brien. It is easy to imagine the sense of frustration
that this young man felt more than three years into a senseless
war that resulted in 16 million deaths and 20 million injured
people.

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