letter / Bernard Reid, WWI / The Irish Soldier, 1918

Copy of the booklet 'The Irish Soldier', No. 6, December 1918. Printed in Dublin by Brindely & Son, Eustace Street. With a reprinted letter from Bernard Reid tohis mother, pages 11/13. The letter is dated 26 January 1916. Bernard Reid, the second son of Michael and Sarah Reid, was born in Dublin on December 1st 1886. He grew up in 11/12 Chatam Street in Dublin living over the family butchers business. McDonagh and Company were the biggest butchers in Ireland with a staff of fifty (mostly wholesale) and were ‘Butchers to the King and the Lord Lieutenant’. Bernard attended school at St Mary’s College Rathmines and obtained a Medal for Irish in 1902 and for French in 1903. In 1905 the family moved to Tower Hill, Harbour Road, Dalkey, Co. Dublin. He attended University College Dublin, was President of the Students National Literary Society, and graduated with a BA. In 1913/4 Bernard was the Editor of the National Student magazine in UCD. In the November 1913 edition he wrote a ‘rousing editorial’ in the magazine extolling patriotism. He was one of the organisers of the enrolment of young men into the Irish Volunteers at the Rotunda in November 1913 and signed many of their membership cards.At the outbreak of War he travelled to France to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. (Bernard did not want to join the British army but wanted to fight to defend Belgium and France). The French Foreign Legion had gone to the Front and there was to be no further enlistment in it until November 1914. As he believed that the war would be over by then he returned home and enlisted in the 9th Royal Dublin Fusilier’s. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant and was killed at Loos by a German shell on the 27.06.1916. He is buried in the British Military Cemetry at Vermelles.;