222901 Capt. William Joseph Gabriel Doyle British Army att. 8th Btn. Royal Irish Fusiliers Army Chaplains Department (d.16th Aug 1917) William Joseph Gabriel Doyle was born on 3rd March 1873 in Dublin Ireland.
He served with the 8th Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers from 1915. He faced No Man's Land constantly running the gaunlet of gunfire and proved fearless.
Father Doyle celebrated his first Holy Mass in the trenches on 23rd April 1916, Easter Sunday. Father Doyle lived with the men in the trenches, he witnessed the horror of death and the mutilation of the men he called his boys, he went into No Man's Land to give The Last Rites and to bury the dead, he worked tirelessly to give comfort to the injured and dying. He stayed in the trenches to give support even during the gas attacks on the 16th Irish Division. 800 men died, nearly all from gas. In the mist of the fighting, a German shell was fired randomly at British lines. As it exploded, Father Willie was killed outright, whilst dragging a wounded man away from danger. The date was the 16th August 1917.
Father Doyle loved his men, he was loved by everyone in the battalion whether Catholic or Protestant. What was left of Fr Doyle's body was hastily interred without ceremony in a communal grave in the battlefield of Passchendaele.
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