NATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION, ‘LUCK OF THE DRAW’ SECURES SPECIAL INVITATION TO REMEMBER GRANDFATHER
By Paddy Walsh Donegal News Friday July 26 2019
Has three medals, earned by Matthew in the First World War and another medal
marking his involvement in the War of Independence.
As he reflects on an emotional National Day of Commemoration at Collins Barracks
in Dublin, Brian O Donnell is remembering.
He remembers his grandfather sitting in the corner of the kitchen smoking his
pipe.
Recalling a quiet man, “And a gentleman. That’s what he was, a gentleman.”
Matthew Peoples had babysat his children but for many others like him there were
no such moments to savour. Like many of his peers, including his friend, William
Doherty, he had fought in the First World War. Fought and received a shrapnel
injury from which he recovered and returned to France.
He survived the war and came back to become involved in another one – the War of
Independence.
Again he emerged relatively unscathed, if such a condition is possible given the
horrors of what he would have seen, particularly on the bloodied battle fields
of France.
“He had joined the British Army when he was sixteen going on
seventeen. He told them he was twenty-one”, his grandson Brian
reveals.
Matthew’s friend, William Doherty, who hailed from the same
locality, joined up with him on the same day. “He was twenty-one.”
For William, there was to be no return – he suffered a wound from
which he didn’t recover. Yet another Donegal statistic from the
so-called Great War.
Matthew’s involvement in the War of Independence is still clouded in
some mystery. No doubt that he had fought in it. “But we weren’t
sure what side he was on”, says Brian.
When the war was over, he took to flax cutting in the fields near
his Kinnycally home.
And it was at Moody’s farm that he met the woman who would become
his partner in life. Mary Cannon, a native of Dunlewey, had been
hired out and the couple went on to have nine children.
“I remember asking him, ‘What was the war like, Grandad?” And he’d
say to me, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ And he didn’t. He just
never spoke about it.”
Matthew, who taught his nephew, Tommy Peoples the fiddle – the
latter would go on to become one of the best ever exponents of the
instrument but sadly passed away last year – died on June 3rd 1972,
while his spouse, Mary, followed him twelve years later.
Of their nine offspring, only one survives, Mick, who resides in St
Johnston.
For Letterkenny man, Brian, it was literally the luck of the draw
that secured him a special invitation to last Sunday weeks’ National
Day of Commemoration in Dublin.
The names of surviving relatives of those Irish who fought in the
respective wars were put in a hat and war researcher, Sabina
Purcell, contacted Brian to inform him that he was one of thirty
relations who would travel for the ceremony.
“It was a moving enough experience and I was very pleased to be
there on behalf of the family and my grandfather”. And indeed on
behalf of all those Donegal families who have links to all the wars
commemorated at Collins Barracks.
Brain has three medals, earned by Matthew in the First World War and
another medal marking his involvement in the War of Independence.
Other memorabilia, too, form part of a highly personal family
history.
The only thing missing is his grandfather's own account of that
horrendous war that lasted from 1914 to 1918.
“That’s a story that will never be told,” Brian poignantly remarks.
