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L/Sgt. William Mulvey
British Army 9th Btn. Royal Dublin Fusiliers
from:Little Bray, Co. Wicklow.
(d.23rd Oct 1918)
I only had a name and a single photo of my Grandad, William Mulvey in Army uniform and knew nothing about him until I received his medals from a cousin in Canada. This began a long, interesting, sometimes frustrating but deeply satisfying journey to discover something about him. Through my research and reading his Battalion War Diaries I now know he was at Hulluch, Ginchy, Guillemont, Messines and Wytschaete and would have seen the beginning of air warfare and the introduction of tanks to the battlefields.
He contracted 'Trench Fever' a debilitating louse born disease that invalided him out of the horror and filth of the trenches back home to Ireland to recover over several months whilst serving in the Labour Corps barracks in Kildare only to contract 'Spanish Flu' and Pneumonia and die in 5 short days just three weeks before the end of the war.
He had effectively been demoted because of ill health, and for a man who had the responsibilities of a L/Sgt that could not have come easily to him. I have yet to track down his service records but I consider my work as a memorial to a life I was not privileged to be part of. He had two children a daughter and my own Father who was born whilst he was away in France and whom I doubt he ever saw, like so many of his generation he was robbed of the chance of a normal life so my work is keeping his memory alive.
