Remembering the Lancashire Fusiliers at Gallipoli readings in Bury and Rochdale

Saturday 25th April 2015 7:59 am (first posted 17th April 2015)

Poets will be commemorating the losses suffered by the Lancashire Fusiliers and all the deaths at Gallipoli on the centenary of the first world war campaign on 25 April with readings in Rochdale central library and in the Fusiliers Museum in Bury. The Fusiliers gained six VCs before breakfast as a result of their actions on 25 April 1915.

Organiser Eileen Earnshaw said: “Men from Rochdale, Todmorden, Heywood and Middleton and the whole of the Greater Manchester area were killed there. This is an event that includes all the creative writing groups across Rochdale and the surrounding areas. Anyone can submit a piece of creative writing for inclusion.”

There will be poetry, music and dance at Bury’s Fusiliers Museum from 10am-12pm, and at Rochdale library from 2-3.30pm. Entry is free. A number of poems commemorating Gallipoli and the first world war have been assembled here

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Comments

Shirley-Anne Kennedy

Wed 22nd Apr 2015 12:26

Sorry about your wife, Harry :(

Very interesting re Traynor's story, will read more about him this evening.

So pleased to read you enjoyed the poems :) I will let Eileen know when I see her later today. She has worked so hard to bring this about and will be delighted when I tell her about your comment here.

Thank you.

Harry O'Neill

Wed 22nd Apr 2015 00:43

Those excellent Gallopoli poems that this has
attracted reminded me strongly of the story
of a paralysed Gallipoli veteran that was told
to me some years ago.

I became very interested in the landings when -
during a pilgrimage to Lourdes with my seriously
ill young wife - I was told by a lady helper of the
sick that - as a girl - she used to see an ex soldier,
who was wounded at Gallipoli, sitting, paralysed
in a wheelchair, outside his house with a leather
`pack` on his head.

This man, after being previously wounded before
at Antwerp, had recovered and taken part in the
landing at V. beach at Sed-el Bahr. Some days later
during a charge he was hit by a spray of bullets some
of which lodged under his arm, paralysing it. He was
invalided home, and operated on a number of times
for both the arm, and (because epilepsy had set in)
for the previous head wound suffered at Antwerp.

Eventually he was one hundred per cent pensioned
off as incurable and left to spend his days sat outside
his home in the wheelchair with a leather -covered
metal plate on his head protecting a hole left in his
skull by the operation for the head-wound....It was
there that the lady helper (as a young girl) had often
seen him sitting.

The point of all this is that, after spending six years in
this condition, the veteran (Jack Traynor) got himself
to Lourdes, was cured, and became a fit working man.

Traynors own reported account of his cure can be read
on the internet under the title `I met a miracle`. And
also (I assume) In the records of the local Liverpool
newspapers of that time ( JULY 1923)

Sir John de Robeck`s `Gallipol landings Despatch`
is by far the most vivid account of the landings at
the Cape Hellas beaches.

My young wife died the following year.

Shirley-Anne Kennedy

Sat 18th Apr 2015 12:01

You are welcome, Taff :)

The blog has been updated this morning.

Taff

Sat 18th Apr 2015 00:41

Thank you Shirley-Anne Kennedy. I'm going to email Eileen tonight.

Shirley-Anne Kennedy

Fri 17th Apr 2015 23:13

Hi Taff

Please email poems to Eileen. Her email is:
eileen.earnshaw@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks :)

Taff

Fri 17th Apr 2015 20:55

Where's the link to the organiser, Eileen Earnshaw, if I'd like to contribute a written piece to it please?

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