My grandfather William Joseph Gillen, or ‘Dado’ as we affectionately called him, was born on 29th October 1895 in Co. Dublin and he took part in World War One. While romantic idealism was probably the cause for his enlistment, there would certainly have been economic motivations also as while he was an educated man, he grew up in the tenements of the city and came from an impoverished background. Therefore, he enlisted in the Royal Engineers on 29th July 1913, and went to France that September. He was part of the cavalry communications section, who were responsible for recon, planting bombs and diffusing land mines. He was wounded at the Somme as he got shrapnel in his left leg and cheek, which left him out of action for two months. There is a letter from September 1919, two months before he left the army. He was awarded the Mons Star. Unfortunately, like many other Irish soldiers at that time, he was met with animosity upon his return. Dado’s self-professed royalism and hatred of DeValera even distanced him from his own brother, Robert Gillen, who was in Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army and was arrested leading upto 1916. The family conflict resulted in his departure to Galway, where met and married my grandmother within a year. He joined the P&T and was posted to Connemara, where he worked until his retirement in 1962. Following in his father’s footsteps, his son, Pat Gillen participating in the Second World War and was in the first infantry to land on Normandy on D-Day. He died of lung cancer in 1979, a disease that started in the cheek wound he received at the Somme. I was lucky enough to know my grandfather when I was a child, and there were definitely traces of the war that remained with him. He was incredibly regimented, always insisting upon polished shoes, good dress and posture. He also had occasional binge drinking episodes, which could have been an attempt to repress the difficult memories of the war that he never spoke about.
Photograph of Bill in uniform ; Baptismal Certificate 1895 ; A recommendation letter from the local priest ; Discharge Certificate, a reissue given to him in 1930 ; A recommendation for the Chief Superintendent at Dublin Metropolitan police in 1919 from James Clarke.