Armistice Day - 100 years on

On Armistice Day today, the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War 1, I wanted to look at the Burkes who fought in the war. Of the siblings who stayed at home, Michael (my grandfather) was too old to enlist and his brother Dan, who was 29 at the outbreak of war, didn't enlist. There was no conscription in force in Ireland due to opposition from Irish nationalists so enlisting was voluntary. Many Irish people would have felt that this was Britian's war and of no concern to them. However, it is estimated 200,000 Irishmen served in the British forces in WW1.

Of the siblings who emigrated, most were too old (Pat, Bill, Jack, Tom) or dead (Fr. James, Ned) to enlist. However, I have a draft cards for Bill (aged 38) and Tom (aged 39) but at that age they obviously weren't going to be posted overseas.

The last Burke to emigrate, Joe, was aged 33 when the US entered the war in 1917 and did serve in the US Army during the war. However, he was based in the southern states and wasn't posted overseas.

Of their children, three of Pat's children served in the military, two of them serving overseas that I know of. His son, John, served with US Army (602nd Engineers) from February 2018 to July 2019. He was working as a high school teacher before he enlisted. When he left the Army he entered the Jesuit Novitiate becoming a priest. Below is a picture of him (on the left) in Germany at the junction of the Mosel and Rhine rivers according to a note on the back of the photo. I think this photo may have been taken at Deutsches Eck in the city of Koblenz, a famous viewing point for the confluence of these two great rivers. 

Joe served in the US Navy. Family lore is that he was shell-shocked and never worked. However, in the 1920 census he is liviing at home with his parents and working as a clerk in a bakery company. However, I also have a record of him living in the Downey in Veterans Hospital (now known as the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center) in 1961 so his condition must have deteriorated. Below is a picture of Joe taken in 1969.

Bill also served in WW1 but I don't have any details of his service and if he was sent to Europe.

Their brother, Robert Emmet, desperately wanted to join his brothers in the military so in May 1918, despite not feeling well, he went to the recruitment centre. When he returned, his condition worsened and, tragically, he died in December of that year. His death certificate gives the cause of death as pneumonia with influenza as the contributory factor. Maybe he was one of the casualties of the Spanish Flu epidemic which swept the world at that time and killed more people than the war had.