On the way home from the Netherlands on Monday (closing out the long weekend), we stopped in Venray, where my second cousin once removed Gerard Valentine Ryan is buried, a few hundred metres from where he died on 17 October 1944, at the age of 21. It was literally his first hour in battle. He was leading a platoon of riflemen towards the occupied town when a machine-gun hidden in the trees opened up, killing him and another solder immediately. A third soldier was killed shortly afterwards, while checking on the dead and wounded.

This was at the tail end of the Battle of Overloon, a mopping up of the German presence remaining on the western side of the Maas / Meuse after the much more famous Operation Market Garden. The Allies captured the towns of Overloon and Venray, but it was a costly victory and the Germans retained their positions on the western bank of the Maas until the war was almost over.

Gerard and his two fellow riflemen were initially buried where they fell, and later transferred to the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery just along the road, along with 690 others. Gerard’s ID tags had been lost, but he was identified by a cross and chain that he had been wearing. Now he rests beside his comrades.

The people of Venray have set up a lovely project where local people and families adopt graves of particular soldiers to look after them and commemorate them. We were privileged to meet Mr and Mrs Jansen, who have adopted Gerard’s grave, and had gathered the details of his death and reburial. I found it tremendously moving that this whole community is still honouring and respecting those who died liberating their town from the Nazis, eighty years ago.

I must thank Mr Hoebers and Mr Vervoort from the Committee, who had organised for us all to meet at the cemetery (the photos were taken by Mr Vervoort); and my third cousin Desmond Ryan, Gerard’s first cousin once removed, who had blazed a trail by visiting a couple of years ago and also put me in touch with the relevant local folks.

I looked through my grandmother’s memoirs to see what mention I could find of Gerard. Although the blood relationship with my father and grandfather was distant, they were actually quite close to Gerard and his mother. The direct relationship is on the Ryan side – my great-grandmother, who married my Whyte great-grandfather, was born Caroline Ryan, and her younger brother Charles Aloysius Ryan was Gerard’s grandfather and Desmond’s great-grandfather.

I do vaguely remember Gerard’s mother, Aileen, née Grehan, as a very old woman when I was very young. Her sister was Magda Grehan, who married my grandfather’s older brother George Thomas Whyte, and lived at Loughbrickland for fifty years as a widow after he died in 1919, with her sister Aileen frequently visiting. Aileen’s own husband had died in 1927 in a polo accident, and their daughter died in 1933 aged eight, so Gerard was all she had left.

My grandmother notes in her diaries for 1939 and 1940 that they saw a lot of Aileen and Gerard at the start of the war, and that Gerard, turning 17, was particularly good at playing with my baby aunt Ursula, born in January 1939, and he also hung out a bit with my father, who was 12. Aileen was aware that if the war went on any length of time, Gerard would have to sign up. In spring 1944 my grandmother notes,

On April 2nd Magda, Aileen and Gerard came to tea. Gerard was charming and so interesting about the Army and everything. He asked Billy’s permission to propose to Ursula and then went down to the kitchen where she was having tea with Nannie and came racing back to say “She’s accepted me, Uncle Willow!” [My aunt was 5. And strictly my grandfather was Gerard’s aunt’s brother-in-law, not his uncle.]

But in October 1944, the awful news comes from the Netherlands.

My grandmother writes:

On the 26th Magda rang to say that Aileen had been informed that Gerard was killed on the 26th [mistake for the 17th], his first day in action. She was terribly worried about Aileen who seemed absolutely numb, and she asked if I’d go over there next day. Of course I would have gone, but she rang again next morning to say not to come, that Aileen didn’t want to see anyone. So I just wrote to her, and then she did want to see me. I rang again that evening, and Magda said Aileen was better.

[…]

On the 4th [of November] I went to Loughbrickland to see Aileen. I went by bus in pouring rain. I wrote in my diary that I had never been so sorry for anyone. But she has been wonderful ever since and has never let it embitter her.

I certainly don’t recall Gerard ever being mentioned at family gatherings; but I was very young when those who would have known him best were still alive.

He is the only relative that I know of who was killed in the Second World War. (Another cousin on the Whyte side, Neil Seward Killick, died of malaria and general ill-treatment in a prisoner camp on Sumatra in 1945.) The First World War had hit the family worse (as with most British or Irish families); my grandfather was wounded three times, and lost his brother-in-law and his oldest nephew.

I dug a little deeper and found this tribute to Gerard from the May 1945 Ampleforth Journal.

Gerard Ryan came to St Wilfrid’s House in January, 1936, at the age of thirteen years and two months. He was a fragile and timid little boy, showing none of those gifts he was later to develop so well. In fact he scarcely ever spoke. However, he joined the Junior Debating Society and the Historical Bench, and his natural gift for speaking and his delight in history sprang to life. But it was not until his Sixth Form period that he became quite assured of his powers; and with the help of good friends he truly came into his own.

He was never a gamester, not being robust enough, but he played a good game of tennis—being the mainstay of the St Wilfrid’s team in the 1941 season; he was a fair long distance runner; he loved the open country and enjoyed a day with the beagles. His country, however, was that of ideas. He became a voracious reader, an inveterate and humorous arguer—in the best sense—no mean linguist and a good historian. Besides, he had that natural and strong, almost inborn, faith of his race.

It was not a surprise, but never the less gratifying, to see him win a Kitchener Scholarship at Oxford. He went to New College in the autumn of 1941. It being war time, his stay, though he packed much experience into it and made many friends, was all too short. His mind, during this period, was deeply interested in politics; he became a “live wire” of the Conservative Club, wrote letters to the Times—which it published—and became acquainted with several of the younger Conservative M.P.’s.

Oxford over, he joined the Rifle Brigade; and, whilst he was near here, we saw a lot of him at weekends. He evidently enjoyed coming. His health however was far from satisfactory; he had colds and two attacks of jaundice; but he persevered and was rewarded with his commission. There is little more to be said, for no sooner had he reached the front in the Low Countries than he was killed outright. His commanding officer wrote, “he was a competent leader and was killed whilst actually leading his platoon into action.”

I don’t think we would have been aligned politically – but who knows? He was only 21 when he died, and if he had survived, his war service might have changed his views. (Also we can perhaps allow for wishful thinking from the Ampleforth Journal, which is hardly a bastion of radicalism.)

Every one of the 693 buried at the Venray CWGC cemetery will have had a similar story, and it was tremendously moving to meet the people in Venray who are keeping their memory alive. My thanks again to Mr Hoebers, Mr Vervoort and the Jansens for what they have done and continue to do.