Students shed new light on fallen Galway hero
A group of young Galway students are shedding new light on a local war hero who gave his life almost exactly a century ago on the Green Fields of France.
The history pupils at Galway Community College have delved into the world of the early twentieth century to uncover the life of Claregalway brothers Martin and Bernie Fahy, as part of their Leaving Cert project.
September 26 marked the 125th anniversary of the birth of Bernie Fahy, who worked in the tunnels for the New Zealand army before he was sadly killed in action by an artillery shell in France in 1917.
His brother, Martin Fahy, was in active service with the IRA before drowning during the Civil War in January 1923, at just 29 years old.
There is some confusion over when Bernie was actually born, with some New Zealand records stating September 26, and other war records showing it was June 24, but one thing that is certain is that he was born in 1890. The sixth of eight children, Bernie set off to New Zealand to visit and aunt before joining the New Zealand army.
Cathy Fahy visited the grave at Arras in Northern France, where she was shocked to discover her great-granduncle had his own beautifully kept grave and headstone – a rare occurrence during that period of time.
“I live two doors down from his original home, I’m the only family member left on the homeland,” she said.
“We heard very little about Bernie Fahy in the family; even my mother wouldn’t have . . . just little snippets of information, but very little, whereas we would have heard lots about Martin.
“Both brothers met in 1916 when Martin was incarcerated in Wales. Bernie would have come from New Zealand and travelled by ship all the way with the rest of the tunnellers up to Southampton, I think.
“He had a week or two off so he went to visit his brother; you can only imagine, one dressed in British military uniform and the other one in jail because he was fighting against them.”
One of the last letters from Bernie was written in the trenches on a small piece of notepad size paper with scrawled handwriting, much different to his previous neat and cursive hand on March 16 1916 – a mere five weeks before his death.
The letter to his ‘dearest mother’ read: “If it’s not too much of me to ask you, you might send me a pair or two of homemade socks. They would do just the thing for this damp. Hope I’m not asking too much of you. Well, I must say goodbye. Goodnight, lights out. Best wishes from your son, Bernie Fahy.”
Through the research carried out, the family have since discovered that they have more relatives in New Zealand when they found out that Bernie’s aunt, whom he had visited, had given birth to an illegitimate son before joining the nunnery.
“The can of worms just started opening,” said Cathy, on the new discoveries that keep on coming about Bernie.
Galway Community College Head of History Philip Cribbin heard about the story by chance on his way up to a camogie final in Dublin, conversing with his neighbour Cathy who he discovered was a great-grandniece of Bernie.
“I just thought it was a kind of an interesting story; how somebody could actually go from Cregboy to New Zealand, return to Britain and then go to France and die there,” he said.
“I thought it was a very simple way to explain to the class as to the divisions and tensions of the time.
“Our missionary statement here in the history department is ‘bring history to life’ and so this is basically what we’re doing, we’re making it relevant, making it real for them, and personalising it,” he added.
During a recent commemorative ceremony, the class planted a tree with Bernie’s great-grandnephew Sean Fahy, where some of the students dressed up in costume and one recited a Siegfried Sassoon wartime poem.
A group of students also made two wooden plaques dedicated to Bernie and one of them was left on the Fahy family grave in Claregalway as a memorial.