War Service
With Ireland involved in the Great War he returned to Dublin and sided with Redmond’s National Volunteers, volunteering for active service with one of the Irish regiments, but was at first refused a commission on the grounds of fragile health. He received the rank of lieutenant restricted to voluntary recruiting throughout Ireland and England. He presented himself as an IPP candidate for a by-election in East Galway, though not selected his support for the party did not abate, continuing to advocate both home rule and voluntary recruitment, maintaining that Irishmen had a moral duty to join the allied stand against Germany.
| “ | Having broken like an armed burglar into Belgium, Germany was there guilty of a systematic campaign of murder, pillage, outrage, and destruction, planned and ordered by her military and intellectual leaders. | ” |
By 1916 he had published more than ten books and pamphlets, contributed numerous articles to journals and newspapers on Irish politics, literary reviews, poetry and essays, philosophical treatises and translations from German and French. Although disillusioned with the way the war dragged on, he continued to apply to be sent to the Western Front on active service, when, with his health somewhat improved a commanding officer of the 16th (Irish) Division commissioned him into the 9th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
Appalling conditions in the trenches broke his health again. On sick leave in Dublin he refused offers of a permanent staff position and insisted on returning to his battalion. Before he finally left Ireland on 14 July 1916 he astutely prophesied that the Easter rebels of 1916 would be remembered as heroes while Irishmen serving in the European war would be deemed traitors. Easter week had been for him a harrowing and terrible experience:
| “ | With the rebellion he had no sympathy -– indeed it made him furious. He used to say bitterly that they had spoiled it all – spoiled his dream of a free united Ireland in a free Europe. But what really seared his heart was the fearful retribution that fell on the leaders of the rebellion. | ” |
It was as an Irish soldier in the army of Europe and civilisation that he entered the war. He was deeply steeped in European culture. Kettle’s ideal was an Ireland identified with the life in Europe ... he wrote "My only programme for Ireland consists in equal parts of Home Rule and the Ten Commandments. My only counsel to Ireland is, that to become deeply Irish, she must become European". He also stated:
| “ | Used with the wisdom that is sown in tears and blood, this tragedy of Europe may be and must be the prologue to the two reconciliations of which all statesmen have dreamed, the reconciliation of Protestant Ulster with Ireland, and the reconciliation of Ireland with Great Britain. | ” |
In a farewell letter to his close friend Joseph Devlin he showed he had envisaged death and was ready:
| “ | . . . . I hope to come back. If not, I believe that to sleep here in the France that I have loved is no harsh fate, and that so passing out into silence, I shall help towards the Irish settlement. Give my love to my colleagues – the Irish people have no need of it. | ” |
He was killed leading a company of his men for whom he was "our Captain Tom", on 9 September 1916 at the hottest corner of the Ginchy fighting during the Battle of the Somme in France, having previously made the statement that he preferred to die out there for Ireland with his "Dubliners". He has no known grave.
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