Borrisokane soldier in national exhibition

A portrait of a Borrisokane veteran of the First World War is part of a new exhibition organised by the National Library of Ireland.

Malachy Moore features in the photographic exhibition 'Portraits of the Invisible'. A stretcher bearer with the Royal Army Medical Corps, he was in action at Gallipoli and also served in Egypt and Salonica (Greece).
Decades later, Malachy wrote a poem in which he described his experiences of the war. He called it 'Dog Biscuits and Bully Beef'. The poem, which features some 40 verses, is really the only account that the family has of Malachy's actions during the war. Unfortunately, it seems that his service records were destroyed during the London Blitz of the Second World War.
Born in 1893, Malachy was one of nine children in the Moore family that ran a tailoring business on Borrisokane's main street. Before the war, he was an apprentice tailor working for his father, also named Malachy.
He enlisted in 1915 “with ambitions for to travel, misterious theories to unravel. The old proverb disregarded, I had leaped before I'd seen. And without consideration of the dangerous situation, I joined His Majesty's forces in the year 1915.”
Malachy would have signed up in either Nenagh or Birr and most likely served with the 10th Irish Regiment. He was shipped off to Gallipoli, and in his poem described arriving “mid bullets hailing... with machine guns, grenades and enormous artillery, the insects most ferocious, and the water most atrocious.”
After the failed Gallipoli campaign, the young Borrisokane man was relocated to Egypt. He then served in Salonica, where he contracted malaria and remained in hospital until the end of the war.
Malachy was discharged from service and returned home to Borrisokane. There he went back tailoring and started a family, marrying Kathleen Grace from Dromineer and having four children, including a third generation Malachy. He died in 1973.
Interestingly, his brother Pat, who also served in the war, married Kathleen's sister Mary. A third brother, Jim, served during the war as well and he too survived. And they had a sister Kathleen (Kate), mother of the well-known Nenagh Guardian writer Willie Heaney.
The portrait photograph of Malachy was probably taken some time before he went to war and has been in the family ever since. His grandson (son of the third generation Malachy) Paddy, who now lives in Dublin, brought it to the National Library after an appeal was made for soldiers' memorabilia from the Great War. Among other items, he also brought his grandfather's three campaign medals and a Balkans War Medal that was given to Malachy by a Serbian soldier in a hospital.
When Paddy attended the official opening of the exhibition, he was delighted to see a line from his grandfather's poem emblazoned on the wall: “Our lot was indescribable while on Gallipoli.”
Malachy Moore's is one of around 50 portraits that feature in the exhibition. Each is accompanied with a short bio on their role in the war; Malachy's also has an audio recital of some more lines from 'Dog Biscuits and Bully Beef'.
Paddy, who works with Aer Lingus, lives with his wife and four children in Dublin. He still gets back to Borrisokane regularly to visit his family homeland, and his uncle and aunt James (Malachy's son) and Nell Moore in Coolbawn, the last remaining members of the family in the area.
Part of the National Library's contribution to the 'Decade of Centenaries' and the online 'Europeana 1914-1918' initiative, 'Portraits of the Invisible' is on display at the National Photographic Archive in Temple Bar, Dublin. With no admission charge, the exhibition runs seven days a week (Monday to Saturday 10am to 5pm, Sunday 12pm to 5pm) until January 2016.