Letter from Fr Henry Gill SJ to Father Provincial Thomas V Nolan SJ, 11 July 1916 Letters 1916-1923 Henry V Gill

This work was originally published by Maynooth University in Ireland in 2017. In 2026 this data, stored in a relational database was extracted and converted into this TEI/XML document.

 Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities Vienna, AT 2026

This is an open access work licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0).

This letter from Fr Henry Gill to Fr Thomas Nolan, details the opening days of the Somme offensive, the death of one of the chaplains of the division (Fr Donal O' Sullivan of Killarney, Kerry, who died 5 July 1916 at the age of twenty-six) and the horror of the war.The Irish Jesuit Chaplain, Fr Henry Gill SJ (1872-1945) was the son of H.J. Gill, head of the publishing firm, M. H. Gill & Son. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and University College Dublin. He possessed an acumen for mathematics and science and studied in Louvain and under Professor J.J. Thompson, Cavendish Laboratories, Cambridge (1906 - 1908). Fr. Gill had a special interest in seismography: 'Experiments with Spinning Tops to illustrate earthquake reactions' was the title of a lecture given by Henry Gill at the Cavendish Laboratory, 16 June 1908. It is recorded that the hardship of four years as a chaplain in WWI, had a lasting effect on him. Fr. Henry Gill SJ gained the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order with the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles, 3rd Div., II. Brig., B.E.F., France. Fr. Thomas V Nolan (1867-1941) was the Provincial of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus (1912-1922) and was a member of the Distribution Committee which looked after the welfare and distribution of the the Belgian refugees who arrived in Ireland as a consequence of the First World War.

 Irish Jesuit Archives IE IJA/CHP1/25/50, IE IJA/CHP1/25/50 https://letters1916.ie/item/621 English Henry V Gill 1916-07-11 Somme, France Thomas V Nolan St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin Male World War I (1914-1918) World War I (1914-1918)

The data in these XML files was generated based on a data dump from the Magellan database (https://github.com/Maynooth-Center-for-Digital-Humanities/Magellan). Each database record has been converted to a JSON file (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/json). The element section of the JSON file contains the TEI-encoded contents of the letters. The TEI XML has been cleaned and made well-formed using a Python script (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/src).

 2d R I Rifles B.E.F. France 11/7/16 Dear Fr Provincial P.C. Just a line to say I am still alive. We are, of course, as always, in it. I have been wandering about trenches and dug outs recently captured from the Germans. I believe I may not say how many casualties we had during the attack, which is I suppose the first of a series. Fr O'Sullivan, one of the Chaplains of this Division was killed last week. I was speaking to him a few hours before, then we gave each other absolution. He was a splendid young fellow and will be hard to replace. This is about the fifth attack I have been in and I feel I know more than I want about shells of all sizes and conditions. It is a horrible and squalid business. Trenches full of mud with bodies of dead Germans and British lying unburied all along. Please God it will end soon and that we may be able to forget it all as quickly as possible. The outstanding thing is real courage and wonderful scruples of officers & men in the midst of the awful wounds and death and squalor all round. Possibly death has lost its terror for me With kind regards I remain dear Rev Father Yours H.W. Gill S.J. Henry V Gill Letter from Fr Henry Gill SJ to Fr Thomas V Nolan SJ, 24 June 1916Letter from Fr Henry Gill SJ to Father Provincial Thomas V Nolan SJ, 11 July 1916Letter from Fr Henry Gill SJ to Fr Thomas V Nolan SJ, 3 May 1916 Somme, France Letter from Fr Henry Gill SJ to Father Provincial Thomas V Nolan SJ, 11 July 1916 St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin Letter from Fr Francis M Browne SJ to Fr Thomas V Nolan SJ, 21 August 1916Letter from Fr Henry Gill SJ to Father Provincial Thomas V Nolan SJ, 11 July 1916Letter from Fr Patrick Morris SJ to Father Provincial Thomas V Nolan SJ, 24 September 1916Letter from Fr Jerome O'Mahony SJ to his Father Provincial Thomas V Nolan SJ, 25 May 1916Letter from Fr Daniel Roche SJ to his Father Provincial, Thomas V Nolan SJ,, May 1916Letter from Fr Joseph Wrafter SJ to his Father Provincial Thomas V Nolan SJ, 6 July 1916Letter from Mr Henry A. Johnston SJ to Fr Thomas V Nolan SJ, 17 February 1916Letter from Fr Nicholas J Tomkin SJ to Fr Thomas V Nolan SJ, 7 June 1916Letter from Fr James Brennan SJ to Fr Thomas V Nolan SJ, 21 August 1916Letter from Fr Henry Gill SJ to Fr Thomas V Nolan SJ, 3 May 1916