A last reflection on the Sherwood Foresters
On 4th May 1916 Joseph Mary Plunkett was
executed at Kilmainham Gaol.
Before he
died he gave his Rosary beads to Sergeant William Hand
one
of the members of the firing squad – again a Sherwood Forester. The beads are
in the National Museum of Ireland and the image is taken from the Royal Irish
Academy, Digital Repository which tells us that
‘Sometime later Hand gave [the rosary] to his cousin, Dora, before he
went to fight in France. He was killed in battle there on 21st March
1918'.
Just one year after his sojourn in Ireland Samuel Henry Lomas would be dead. His War Office record states that on 27 April 1917 he was wounded and missing, subsequently he was 'accepted as having died' on or since that date. The same fate awaited so many of those soldiers who had stayed so briefly at Carriglea but who had such a huge impact on Irish history.
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| Accepted as having died 27 April 1917 [National Archives, Kew] |
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