Musician Tracey McRory completed a remarkable
journey in to the unknown as she played an emotional Remembrance Sunday
tribute on one of the very battlefields in Europe where her great-uncle,
an army chaplain, was an unsung war hero and whose chalice she found
after a transatlantic search.
Father James McRory, who came from Inishowen in Donegal, was shot
and wounded in October 1917 as he ministered to soldiers amid the
horrors of the trenches at the Battle of Passchendaele on the Western
Front, and Tracey never imagined just how amazing a voyage of discovery
she was embarking on as she started to research the story of the
relative she barely knew existed.
It is a search which began quietly and without fuss in her home county and moved to Belfast and Belgium
before its final, completely unforeseen, climax thousands of miles away
in America, with the chance unearthing of the chalice – a stunning link
to Father James, who had enlisted as a chaplain with the Connaught Rangers, an Irish regiment in the British Army.
In February the small chalice was returned to Tracey after it had been in the possession of another priest in the USA.
James McRory, was born in 1881 in north Donegal and was raised only a mile from the historic Dunree Fort.
It's an area which is still home to all-Ireland champion fiddler Tracey.
Fr James attended the local Desertegney National School and later went on to St Columb's College in Londonderry.
It
was in the city that he honed his skills as a footballer, getting
special dispensation from his school to play for the local Derry Celtic team.
But
his real goal was to become a priest. And after training in Ireland, he
was ordained in Rome in 1909, with his first parish in Croy in Glasgow.
With
the outbreak of war in 1914, Fr James enlisted as a chaplain with the
Connaught Rangers, one of three local priests to do so. Father William
Devine from Castlederg and Fr Hugh Smith from Moville were his
contemporaries.
The horrors of war had a searing impact on James
McRory who kept an astonishing 800-page diary about his experiences –
which is now in the Public Record Office in Belfast.
Tracey McRory
had no knowledge of the diary or her granduncle's wartime exploits
until a few years back when, while researching another subject, she
happened upon an article in a Derry diocesan magazine about him.
"That was the first time I knew he was in the First World War," said Tracey, "and the magazine also published a photograph of him, which enabled me to put a face to his name."
There
were more shocks to come for Tracey who even before finding out about
the diary had been fascinated by WW1 and had even written a piece of
music which she was to call Passchendaele after the horrific battle
which raged in Belgium.
"It was the beautiful name which
attracted me," said Tracey, "but when I went to Belfast to read the
diary, I found to my absolute amazement that Fr James had actually been
injured at Passchendaele.
"It was as if I had been meant to write that piece of music for him."
The
diary also revealed that Fr McRory had spent one six-week period
trapped in the trenches, coming under almost continuous shelling from
the Germans.
"He wasn't able to lift his head above the
parapet in all that time," said Tracey, adding that her great-uncle's
diary shows he was deeply disillusioned by the way the war was handled.
She adds: "He was a very intelligent man and, in his diary he was very angry about what he witnessed during the war. He
was also angry at the generals, at their ignorance of what was
happening, at top level inefficiency and at the mistakes they made in
different battles. Being a Catholic priest, he was also furious that continued shelling destroyed convents and churches. He was annoyed that there was no respect for religion or for what he held sacred. Throughout
his diary, he writes that the Germans knew that the convents were a
place of safety for mothers and children but still shelled them to make
sure they couldn't be used by snipers."
Tracey says that
while he did record his thoughts extensively in his diary, he rarely
spoke to his family on his return home from the frontline, leaving them
to imagine what life – and death – was like for him in the battlefields,
hearing confessions and listening to the last words of dying soldiers
before whispering acts of contrition in their ears and writing letters
for their grieving families back home.
The diary also held another stunning disclosure for Tracey.
"I
realised that he had changed his name to McGrory, as if he didn't want
anyone to find his writings until after his death," she said, adding
that she felt an instant connection with Fr James as she started to read
them.
"I thought 'My God, he's left the diary in the
hope that somebody would come along', not necessarily a member of his
family, but somebody to do something with them, to tell his story."
The
diary was a catalyst for Tracey. "Looking at it for the first time and
seeing his handwriting made me want to find out more. What is so good
about his writings is that they aren't for academics or military
historians who want to know about strategies and troop movements – even
though that's in there – they are a human document. And they tell the
truth about the war."
After he was wounded, Fr James was sent home.
He
brought with him two shell casings given to him by a German prisoner of
war who had decorated them with pictures of a young girl.
They
were kept in Tracey's family home in Donegal but for a long time she
had no idea what they were. She says: "I thought they were vases, not
shells from a war. No one ever said."
Back in Ireland, Fr
McRory served as a priest in Coleraine, Donemana, Claudy,
Newtownstewart and Carndonagh in Donegal. He died at a nursing home in
Warrenpoint in 1952, aged 71.
And it wasn't until many
decades after his passing that Tracey became intrigued by his story and
she was actually invited to play her music ... at Passchendaele.
She
and three other musicians including her sister Donna and singer Eilidh
Patterson were guests at a service to mark the 90th anniversary of the
battle in 2007.
"It was a weird experience to play my music on the very battlefield where Fr James was shot and wounded.
"I did it in remembrance not only of him however but also of all the young Irishmen who died in that awful war," said Tracey.
It
wasn't long after a visit to Belgium the following year that more bits
of the Fr McRory jigsaw fell into place for Tracey who's been
all-Ireland fiddle champion four times and who is also an acclaimed harp
player.
After she came back to Ireland she was contacted
by a woman who had seen her talking on television about the
commemoration and about her great-uncle.
"She told my
parents about a priest in a nursing home in America who believed he had a
chalice used by Fr James in the trenches. Apparently he'd passed it on
to him for safekeeping.
"Subsequently it emerged that the
priest was called Fr Camillus McRory, a member of the Capuchin
Franciscan order who was born in Belfast and he died on Christmas Day last year in California. He was a nephew of Fr James."
Tracey
said: "Relatives of Fr Camillus living in Belfast – who we didn't know
of – contacted us last year after he died to let us know that the
chalice was being brought back from the United States.
"I told them I'd love to see it and arranged to travel to Belfast a short time later."
The Belfast family told Tracey that the chalice belonged to her family, adding: "It's your responsibility now."
Tracey
said she was deeply moved after seeing the chalice. "When I first held
it, I have to admit that a shudder ran through me," she added.
"To
think that this very same chalice had been held by my great-uncle while
he ministered to soldiers in the trenches – it really is an
unbelievable story.
"In a sense it has now come full
circle after almost 100 years. The chalice probably left here with Fr
James when he departed Ireland and it's now home again. It's as if it
was meant to be."
Tracey can't explain what triggered her interest in WW1 but it has played a major part in her life.
She
and her partner Sam Starrett – a Drumahoe playwright and musician she
met during a visit to Poland – had written new music and songs in the
hope of creating a shared remembrance of the war among Protestants and
Catholics.
Sadly Sam died from cancer in March 2007 but
singer Janet Dowd's version of one of their compositions which they
wrote with musician Richard Laird was named by respected folk musician
Richard Digance as his song of the year on his BBC radio programme in
Devon.
The song, John Condon, was about an Irish teenager
from Waterford who was believed to have been the youngest Allied
soldier to be killed died during WW1.
Tracey was recently commissioned to compose and perform a tribute to all the chaplains who served during WW1.
She
called it In my Darkest Hour and said: "I couldn't help thinking of my
granduncle's experiences on the battlefields and thinking of the many
pleading eyes that looked to him for help."