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He was luckier than my Uncle, Leo Burke, who was a Staff Sergeant Major in the Royal Army Service Corps and evacuated from Singapore on one of 42 ships to make its way to Java. The Japanese sank 40 of the ships, and a survivor from his ship saw him swimming. Leo was 38years old at the time, 2 years younger than my mother. I was 6 weeks old at the time. Leo was not lucky with his choices. He was 12 during the 1916 Rising, and followed a crowd looting a sweetshop. And raced home to his appalled mother with a large parcel which she ordered him to return. But she took it from him and realised it was an empty display box from the shop window. His mother had been widowed in early 1914. My mother did not know about his fate until 4 years after his death. By sheer coincidence my brother yesterday sent me a copy of his Certificate of Death Certified that having regard to such information as is available concerning No. S/12666 S.S.M. Leo Joseph Burke Royal Army Service Corps who was officially reported missing, it has been presumed by the War Office that he was killed in action on or shortly after the 13th Day of February, 1942 while serving with the British Forces in the Far East. Dated this 26th day of February 1946. Signed Squiggle Squiggle THE WAR OFFICE In May 1916, six weeks shy of his 17th birthday, Leo’s Brother Jack Burke, serving on the Battle Cruiser HMS Princess Royal, off Jutland, was wounded by a German shell, and was supplied by surgeons with a pigskin stomach. He was fanatical about the sea, and served the full 12 years that he had signed up for. In his 40s he served with the Home Guard in London. He died in early 1963, aged 63. He was one year older than my mother. In the Spring of 1918 during the great German Counter-Offensive my mother’s brother, Ned Burke, serving with the Dublin Fusiliers threw away his rifle and ran like hell to keep up with his comrades in his sector. He had inhaled mustard gas and was sent home, expected to die. When he got home to his house on the Burrow Road, Sutton, his uniform was lousy and burned in the garden.His family nursed him back to life but he was in and out of hospital until his death on December 31 1963, still in 60s. Ned had been in Fianna Eireann, the GAA and played the war pipes. In July 1914 he helped unload rifles from Erskine Childers’ yacht Asgard in Howth. But he followed the advice of the scoundrel John Redmond (described. as “a Liar” by Roger Casement, who recognised scoundrels when he saw them. My mother’s eldest sibling, Denis Burke, would be automatically dismissed by today’s commentariat as a MAN OF VIOLENCE and he died in 1971, well into his 8th Decade. He was an IRISH CHRISTIAN BROTHER. My Uncle Ned Burke was a master bookbinder, as had been his father, and grandfather, also called Ned. My grandfather would have preferred to have seen his sons in hell than in British uniform.. He was a cousin of John Devoy. Devoy was described by Pearse as the greatest of the Fenians, and, by THE TIMES, no less, on his death in 1928, as the most dangerous enemy of England Ireland produced since Theobald Wolfe Tone. |
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