Ghosts Of Menin Gates - Michael Kelly
The photograph you see in the footage that my daughter is holding, is that of my paternal Grandfather, also Michael Kelly. He was born in Co. Galway and in 1911 enlisted in the Royal Engineers of the British Army. Little is known of his service, sadly his records were destroyed in the blitz of 1940. But it is known he fought in Ypres and on the Somme and as a result of his experience he suffered from shell shock and in 1918 he was admitted to mental institutions where he lived until his death in 1961.
I only knew him as a morose and distant man. The Menin Gate is a tribute to those with no known grave but Michael was lost to his family never to regain his sanity and the Memorial is a fitting tribute to his memory. I wrote the song some 10 years ago after I visited the Gate one winter evening and I saw grandfather’s ghostly shape in the shadows. It has had a profound effect on me for many years.
Ieper (Ypres) Belgium
Leaves In The Wind - Michael Kelly
Click here to view the Leaves In The Wind (Live) - Michael Kelly
This is a song about a young woman who marries as her husband goes to the Great War and never returns. Many thousands of women all over the world were left on their own after losing their husbands. The great sadness is that many of them never remarried and lived the rest of their lives alone.
My grandfather Michael Kelly was born in Newbridge in Co. Galway in 1875. He went to England to find work as did many others in those difficult times. He married Mary in 1907 in Sheffield and in 1911 he joined the Royal Engineers in the British Army. Not much is known of his army career. His service records did not survive the Blitz of WWII. Michael and Mary had four children, one of whom was my father John Michael, born in 1908.
Little is known of the circumstances of Michael’s demise, only that an occurrence in the war caused him to be admitted to an Asylum in Wakefield in August 1918 and later to a mental institution near Sheffield. Two words on his medical records describe his condition. ‘Shell Shock.’
The Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium is a Memorial to those 55,000 Missing in the Ypres Salient who were killed in battle in WWI and who have no known grave. Fifteen years ago, whilst attending the Last Post Ceremony, held every night at 8pm at the Menin Gate. I saw the figure of a WW1 soldier in the shadows of this huge monument. He only appeared for a few moments and was no more. This incident played on my mind for some time, and I began to feel that this figure had appeared before me alone and as such was connected to me. The realisation that I had been visited by my grandfather dawned upon me. But there was a problem in that he had not been killed in battle and so why should he appear at the Menin Gate?
Then it dawned upon me. My grandmother had bid farewell to her husband presumably after a period of leave. He had returned to the battlefields and when he came home wounded, he was not the man he was before. He was lost to his wife, his son and his daughters. He spent the next 42 years in institutions dying in 1961, never to regain his sanity. In effect he was a missing soul, lost to war.
| I had written and recorded the song ‘The Ghosts of the Menin Gate’ after and as a result of the event and before this realisation struck me, and when it did, I went with my daughter to Ypres and with a film crew made the DVD that appears on YouTube.The song I have recorded here is called ‘Leaves In The Wind’ and it is written by the Irish singer/songwriter Johnny McEvoy. It is my tribute to my grandmother Mary and to the memory of my grandfather. |  My grandfather Michael Kelly, grandmother Mary, My Auntie Winifred and father John Michael Kelly. Circa 1911 |