'They are still there': Francesca's profile number 3 - Jo Kirlew

A 2013 visit to the western front in France unearths a remarkable story for one Adelaide Hills resident.

Julie Reece Tours’ Connecting Spirits trips’ has been connecting the spirits of those who fought in world wars with their loved ones for some time, by taking groups to the western front of Europe to commemorate the fallen. For retired South Australian primary school teacher Jo Kirlew, the visit to her grandfather’s grave in France would allow a whole story of her own fathers’ history to unfold. A history learnt by coincidence, after travelling to her grandfather’s grave, Jo has spent most of her life completely unaware of the tragedy her father had dealt with and ultimately kept to himself, through much of his life.

“It’s almost something you could make up as a fiction story,” Jo says. “It truly is an amazing story and I now see my dad in a different light altogether,” she recounted.

Jo always knew of her grandfather Walter Kirlew and his service as a Private in the 7^th East Yorkshire Regiment during World War I. Private Walter Kirlew sadly died on July 1^st 1916, during the first day of The Battle of the Somme and is now buried in Fricourt New British Cemetery in France.

After meeting tour manager Julie Reece in 2009 and again in 2011, Jo decided to embark on her first Connecting Spirits tour in 2013, to visit the grave and commemorate her grandfather’s service in the war. Having known of her grandfather’s service, Jo was eager to expand her knowledge and gain a connection to him by visiting his gravesite.

“The very first time that I went to my grandfather’s grave would have been 2013 and I thought no more about the visit other than the fact I’d been,” Jo says.

“Later that year Julie got an email from someone called Allan Kavanagh from Kent (in the UK), with an attached photo of himself at Walter’s grave,” she says.

Unsure of what to expect after the initial contact, Jo soon realised she and Mr Kavanagh shared the same great-grandfather, consequently making the two of them distant relatives. During her next trip to England, Jo arranged to meet with Allan in person, however did not realise she was about to learn a whole hidden story about her own father, one he had kept secret through all his married life.

“He came to meet me to have lunch together and he brought with him a large A4 folder of my grandfathers’ history and we chatted about having both visited Walter’s grave,” Jo explained.

“I believe he must have done a significant amount of research as in his folder he had information of family history going back to around the 1600’s.”

Jo described how after about an hour of chatting about Jo’s own father, as well as her grandfather, Mr Kavanagh’s wife asked him to ask Jo ‘the question’. Absolutely clueless, Jo asked what they meant, only to be asked if she knew much about her father before he married her mother.  

“I told them all I knew, which was not a lot.”

Jo knew he lived in Hull and that his father had been killed in the war, so he lived with his mother and auntie, whose husband had also died. She knew he delivered coal as a lorry driver and they were not rich, living on next to nothing. Jo was again asked another question by Allan, this time if he had been married before meeting her mother.

 

Jo explained how the next question took her by surprise but it was very possible there was a part of her father’s life she had known nothing about. She quickly recounted her father’s age when he met her mother and how it differed to many men during that era, being that he had married later in life, rather than at 18 to 20 years, like many people did in the 1930’s and 1940’s.   

“I said he could have been, because my dad had me at the age of 30, had married my mother at the age of 29 and only met her when he was 28,” Jo replied.

Allan then presented Jo with a document from the archives at Somerset House containing information of a wedding between Ivy Abbott and Joseph Kirlew, held sometime during the last three months of 1936. Jo questioned the name because she knew her grandmother had named her father Joe, due to being illiterate and the name being an easy one to write and spell.

“My dad wasn’t Joseph, he was Joe, but maybe officially when they said his name was Joe, maybe the officials wrote Joseph. He then took out a copy of an article from the Daily Mail in Hull of a death notice for Ivy and another for a baby who died at 6 weeks. If this was the case, he had married this lady in 1936 and within a year she had died as a result of childbirth and the baby died weeks later,” Jo explained.

Before returning home, Jo contacted Somerset House to gain more information of the particular wedding, interested in the fact it may have been her father, yet still bewildered about possibility it was he. After receiving the marriage certificate from the unknown wedding, Jo was able to compare it to her own parents and she noticed Joe Kirlew was named as a bachelor on both.

“I knew he had not told my mum. On the first certificate, his father was named as Walter, deceased and his address listed as 2 Richmond Court. Once I read that, I knew it was him.”

As Jo spent some time understanding the significance of her father’s former life, a life she only found out about by chance, she began to plan attending another Connecting Spirits tour. After the tour, Jo made the decision to visit the gravesite of Ivy and the baby, who was technically her older half-brother, by birth.

“Julie and I were going back to Europe for another battlefield tour and so we said let’s go back Hull. We met with Allan (Kavanagh) and his wife Sue and we sprinkled some of my dad’s ashes at the gravesite of Ivy and the baby.”

There was no headstone so Jo decided to have a black marble stand with a little vase for flowers made to place at the site, with the words of the death notice from the newspaper in Hull. Jo continued to find out more about this compelling story after visiting the gravesite and now thinking back to her father’s life, understands why he made some of the decisions he made, for their family.

“Through the cemetery register we discovered that Ivy died of Septicaemia and the baby died of Gastroenteritis. That was enough to dissolve me into tears because there was an incident when my nephew was 18 months old and had gastro and my sister had just had another baby so was unable to stay with him in hospital. My dad said he’d do it and the whole family thought it was really odd, because we didn’t think it was to be something my dad would do,” she stated.

Finally the dots all joined together and Jo finally has found out a somewhat amazing story about her father and she and her family are now able to appreciate her father in a different light. The way her father was such an involved family man, wouldn’t go anywhere without his family and who clearly was a very dedicated husband and father made perfect sense. Having attended several tours since 2013, in this sense Connecting Spirits has enabled Jo not to just connect with her grandfather but for her entire family to connect with other people, both those living and those not, by truly connecting spirits to one another.

The name of the project ‘Connecting Spirits’ is embodied in the story of Walter, Joe and Jo Kirlew all linked because of a laminated commemorative card left on a grave in the fields of the Somme valley. They are now forever one.

Postscript...out of this extraordinary story Jo not only discovered she wasn't the eldest child of Joe Kirlew and had lost a baby brother she never knew, but from my perspective I gained the friendship of this beautiful soul. Jo and I will be forever connected ...

Julie Reece

May 2019

                                                     

Profile number 2 by Francesca Atkinson: ' The war to end all wars'

The last time I set foot on the western front battlefields of World War I (WWI), I was a shy sixteen-year-old girl. Young and partially clueless to the hell that we know as The Great War, I was left feeling raw and felt a significant sadness at what remains throughout the countryside of France and Belgium in today's particularly altered society. It took just three short weeks in April 2012 to grow from that shy girl into a person who understood the meaning of war and how the brave men and women who were part of WWI still teach our society so much today. Since returning home, I always yearned to one-day return to the solemn sites that are Western Front cemeteries and finally in 2019, I was able to do just that.

I have spent many occasions throughout the past six months, along with the years before that, reflecting on the 2012 Connecting Spirits tour, which happened to be in association with the McLaren Vale RSL in South Australia. Each moment, my thoughts focused on three particular events and they are always the first I have when thinking about the past tour and also my younger self. Throughout the three weeks in 2012, I saw thousands of WWI graves and memorials, along with monuments relating to war. I commemorated five Australian soldiers and one British airman, each of whom I felt a connection to, as I learnt about their lives and as though I knew them closely. However, the most memorable places we will be visiting include Tyne Cot Commonwealth Cemetery, Langemark German Cemetery and taking part in the Menin Gate Last Post Ceremony.

Many people will have never heard of any of these places, but what they will have heard of is World War One and potentially how it was known as the war to end all wars. Sadly, this was not to be the final war, our precious world would see. Each of these three places have one obvious commonality, being that they are kept in remembrance to those who sacrificed their lives during World War One. The connection I feel with each varies slightly place to place, however I remember feeling eerie when I received a haunting chill through my body when initially walking through the Menin Gate Memorial and the two cemeteries. An eerie feeling I do not remember having elsewhere. Now 23 years of age, I believe the feeling was somewhat due to being young and naïve and through experiencing the emotional pressure that touring the battlefields brings.

That is by no means to say I do not believe this is completely due to my young age in 2012, because even today as I have re-walked a similar path through the western front, I endure similar feelings. I have always wanted to attend a second tour; even from being the shy sixteen year old I tended to be and am grateful the opportunity of Connecting Spirits is still present. I believe I grew immensely after attending the 2012 tour and have witnessed this firsthand this time round, as I believe our only teenager on the 2019 tour opened up tremendously, from the first to final week. Every person who walks the roads of WWI in a commemorative manner somewhat understands the meaning of war, however until you physically stand in the position of a specific solider, nurse or battle, the impact of the war does not properly touch you.  

As we travelled through the Somme during the first week of the tour, my thoughts still laid with the sense of how I was visiting many of the same places from the 2012 tour, yet how each place felt so different. I expected to comprehend these changes before we left for Europe but I do not believe I anticipated how I would spend time thinking about my own personal path in life. While Connecting Spirits is a tour to commemorate soldiers from WWI, the tour engages the group to become friends and share our own stories with one another. With such a close group, I was able to express my feelings and thoughts with the wider group, rather than bottling these up to myself. Now having been to many places on the western front for a second time, I was able to gain a greater sense of pride, in that the memory of those who fought in WWI are kept alive by so many individuals, from all walks of life.

The second week of the tour sent us to Belgium, travelling through a region where so much bloodshed took place, yet one, which is now filled with brightly coloured flowers and evergreen fields. During our week in Belgium, we visited the three places that hovered greatly in my memory from the 2012 tour, Tyne Cot Commonwealth Cemetery, Langemark German Cemetery and the Menin Gate Memorial. In the back of my mind, I wondered how I would feel visiting these places, now aged 23 years and with slightly more life experience, than the previous school student in me had. I remember walking through the Menin Gate on our first night, with the group and was left in awe of the amount of names listed on such a significant monument. The eerie feeling I once had, was now replaced with respect for those who after 105 years, still have no known grave.

Understanding the history of the war suddenly seemed instrumental to the thoughts I had as a 16 year old and now at 23, because while I did not fully realise back then, I was and am now the same age as many of those soldiers. This thought alone can be taken further, when thinking of the lives they left behind, in South Australia and elsewhere, to go and fight for their country, lives that while in a different era, would not have been too different to the one someone my age lives today. During both tours, I was asked by Julie to be one of the people to lay the wreath during the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate. Again, this put me in a situation where I was able to reflect on my past experience, while creating a new memory of the current tour. Upon arriving at the Menin Gate my body was filled with nerves due to the pressure of having to walk in front of a large crowd, with the fear that I may drop the wreath I was asked to lay, or walk too fast, like I know I did in 2012. With some time to wait, Felicia (the 16 year old student) and I were able to chat about everything and anything, leaving us laughing at our funny stories about family, friends and everything in between. However, once it came to the ceremony, laying the wreath became our focus and we walked proudly in time, before taking a moment to reflect on the reason we were there – to remember the courage and sacrifice of those who fell in and around Ieper, Belgium.

Earlier in the week, we had visited both Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Cemetery and Langemark German Cemetery, where again I was not sure how I would feel walking through both. Langemark German Cemetery is one of four German cemeteries in the western front region and as a 16 year old, I was not sure what to expect when visiting the German cemetery. To the commonwealth states, Germany was the enemy during WWI and I suppose this is how we are taught when learning about the war from a young age. When walking into the cemetery in 2012, four statues along the back of the cemetery caught my eye, causing the eerie feeling I had felt in Tyne Cot and the Menin Gate to return. Each statue faced the graves of thousands of soldiers and they were built to look as though each is a soldier looking over the graves of their comrades. This recent visit, I walked in expecting to catch sight of the statues instantly, however soon realised I was standing next to them, as they have been moved to another boundary of the cemetery. The statues now still look over the graves from a different view, but stand at the back of the mass grave of 40,000 + unidentified German soldiers buried together. Unlike many other cemeteries we visited, I did not feel like I could easily walk around on my own and just like in 2012, stayed with others to acknowledge the gravesites. Tyne Cot Cemetery is the resting place of just under 12,000 soldiers and the walls to the cemetery, dedicated as the Tyne Cot Memorial of the Missing holds the names of almost 34,000 soldiers. Once again, re-walking the steps of my 16-year-old self, I was able to further comprehend the amount of graves, as I now understand the background the battles fought throughout the Ypres Salient. I believe by walking back through Tyne Cot, with the 2019 group and along some rows by myself, I felt a feeling of comfort, in the thought of these soldiers being the reason we can live the life we do today.

Ultimately, this recent tour has taught me that no matter where you are from or what upbringing you have, people can come together as one, whether that be at the time of war or for other matters completely. As I continue to make changes in my life and as I soon become a university graduate, I know the journey in which is Connecting Spirits, will continue to connect me to others and keep me thinking of the reason I am able to live the life I live today.      

               

'A Message in a Poppy'

BLOG: 2019 CS TOUR

“Message in a poppy.”

When I first read of the ‘Message in a poppy’ via social media, I had reservations about the intent and ethics of the project. However, due to a lack of understanding and knowledge of the initiative, I was clearly totally wrong to have any concerns about the project or its producer Jan Fieuw. So, what is the ‘Message in a poppy’ all about?

To set the scene, I need to go back to last month when the CS tour group were in Flanders at the grave of my great uncle Martin Neagle. The day was perfect with sunny weather and clear blue skies. As with all of the CS commemorations, Martin Neagle’s story was shared with the group along with that of my mother Cathy (MacFarlane) Royal. Our Belgian friend Frank Mahieu had kindly organised piper Gil Vermeulen, in full Scottish kit, to play the pipes as part of the commemoration. Cathy’s favourite song “Amazing Grace” wafted through the trees of Polygon Wood and the moment could not have been more perfect. Well…there was so much more to come on this emotional roller coaster.

Following the graveside ceremony and a cathartic walk through the woods, we visited the oak sapling dedicated to my great uncle in the Polygon Wood of Peace …the 500 oak trees that are living memorials to some of the many thousands who died in the infamous Battle of Passchendaele in October of 1917. Once again, 18 year old Gil, drew us together with the strains of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ played on the bagpipes. For all present, it was an evocative moment.

If I thought that was the end of this incredible day, once again I was in for yet another surprise. Frank and Greg directed us to a field close by and I recognised it from my visit there last year: it was the location where Pte. James Martin Clement Neagle was killed in action and initially buried. Then Greg stopped me to pull out a number of things from a bag: a folder, a tiny box and a couple of other items. I was about to receive a ‘Message in a poppy’. Its producer, Jan had located Martin’s death place by cross referencing the co-ordinates from a trench map in September 1917 with a burial record. The exact spot was identified. From there Jan investigated the soil in and around where Martin was killed and found a number of lead shrapnel balls. These are all over the fields of Flanders as the iron harvest of WW1 continues to produce the detritus of war.

Each of these stages were carefully photographed and recorded ready for the next step…the production of a unique poppy badge. And so there I was in the field where Cathy’s favourite uncle lost his life to the ravages of war, holding the tiny box containing my lead poppy badge. A folder with all the story of the ‘Message in a poppy’ was presented to me and needless to say, that moment was one I will never forget. Words can’t convey that surreal experience, and I will always be grateful to the people of Belgium like Frank, Greg and now Jan for all they do to honour the memory of our lost relatives. ‘Message in a poppy’ will stay with me forever.