‘He came back once and then she never saw him again’
By Violet Brown
ON Remembrance Sunday, Ballyhalbert man James Bailie will reflect on an uncle who he never met who was killed in action in France during World War I.
Rifleman David John McDonnell was the son of Mary and David McDonnell who farmed at Ballygalget outside Portaferry. His nephew’s family obtained research on him from the Royal Irish Fusiliers Museum on The Mall, Armagh in 2009.
His service number indicates that he enlisted in the 18th battalion of the Irish Rifles – a recruiting and training battalion – and subsequently transferred to the amalgamated 11th/13th service battalion which was on the Western Front. Rifleman McDonnell transferred to an entrenching battalion whose job it was to dig and repair trenches.
He died on March 28, 1918, seven days after the massive German offensive on the Somme when they broke through the area where the 16th Irish and 36th Ulster Divisions were based.
“Because the movement of the German troops through the British front line was so swift they took many prisoners, wounded and unwounded and given the chaos of the battle many of these died and have no known grave’, wrote Amanda Moreno, curator of the museum.
“Given the date of his death and no grave I would say there is a very strong possibility that he died in a German dressing station as a prisoner of war,” she added.
Rifleman McDonnell is remembered on the Pozieres Memorial at the Somme which is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. His name is also commemorated on a scroll bearing the coat of arms of George V.
It reads: “He whom this scroll commemorates was numbered amongst those who at the call of King and Country left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom. Let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten’.
His name also appears on a headstone at Ballymanish Cemetery, Portaferry.
Mr McDonnell had four younger siblings – Martha, Jenny, Thomas and Mary. Mary married Joseph Bailie. Their son James tells of how his uncle David ‘doted on my mother because she was the youngest’.
“My mother was eight or nine when he went to war,” he said. “She told us how he came back once to visit and then she never saw him again”.
