3palsdw.html

IRISH BATTALIONS: DOWNLOAD TEXT - PALS

Sportsmen join up: Rugby Footballers at the request of the President of the Irish Rugby Football Union, F.H. Browning and undergraduate students from Trinity College joined the same Pals Battalion. According to the Dublin University War List 3,042 men from Trinity served in the War of which 869 were undergraduates who gave up their studies in order to join the Army. 450 students from University College Dublin enlisted ‘for noble service’. Soccer players from the famous Dublin clubs, Bohemians and Shelbourne, joined up as well.

Congowes Wood College: Clongowes Wood College in Co. Kildare was, and is today, administered by the Jesuits. The College supplied five hundred and sixteen ex-students up to the 30th of May 1917, including the Poet Tom Kettle, and Willie Redmond, the brother of the Nationalist Party leader, John Redmond. Six Jesuit members of staff enlisted, one of whom was Fr. Willie Doyle, Chaplain to the Dublin Fusiliers. 

Forty two Clongownians joined the Dublin Fusiliers, ten were killed, one of whom was Capt. Mick Fitzgibbon from Castlerea, Co. Galway, killed in Gallipoli on the 15th of August 1915 fighting with 'D' Company, 7th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Each week during the war, two special masses were said for Clongownians at the Front. The Boys offered their Holy Communion on Mondays, and their Rosaries on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays for the same intentions.