This is the story of a man whose name you have never heard before. Most people will probably never hear it. This man was John Sherman. An ordinary man; John traveled from his home in the streets of Dublin to the front lines in Belgium. He won none of the glory or honour he was promised, and died, nobody knowing his name or story. 

I want to tell the story of a brave man, who, aged twenty-four, signed away his life to fight for his country. He sacrificed himself in the hope that the rest of us could live a normal life and never see war again. If even one person can take something away from John's story, I would like to think John's death was not futile and he helped contribute towards our society.

May he and all who fell victim to war's destruction rest in peace

Birth

John Sherman was born to John Sherman and Julia Sherman (née Murphy) sometime around 1891. 

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any document with John's date of birth so we may never know his actual date of birth.

John was born in 18 Ardee Street. This was a tenement house (as were all of his families houses) and shows that the Sherman family were your standard working class inner city family of early twentieth century Dublin.

Family

At the time of John's birth, his family consisted of his two elder two brothers, and two sisters, mother, and father. John and Julia would later have two more girls. John's father worked as a slater. They lived in an area of Dublin known as "The Tenters", a standard working class area.

• The eldest child, James was born in 1883. At the age of 18, he began working along his father as a slater, a job he maintained until his death. In 1940, aged just 57, James died a childless bachelor, having never married. He never left the final family home in Cow Parlour.
• Elizabeth, also known as Eliza, was born in December 1883. In 1901, according to the census she was studying. In February 1910, she married Michael Donnelly, a butcher from Drury Street. In 1911, they were living in Thomas Street. Eliza completed her studies and began working as a teacher. 
• Andrew, born in 1885, was the family's third child. He, like James, worked as a slater his entire life. He died aged 75 in 1960 of a lung abscess in 20 Madde Road. He was also a bachelor.
• In 1886, Julia was born. In 1901 at the age of 14, she was working as a seamstress. In 1911, she was working as a machinist. In 1914, she married Owen Byrne of Gray Street. They had at least one child together, Annie, in 1914, who died at the age of one-month-old.
• Mary was born after John in 1892. She went on to marry John Joseph O'Neill in 1924 at the age of 31. At the time she was living in their house in Cow Parlour. Her younger sister was her maid of honour.
• John and Julia's youngest child has been referred to as Catherine and Kathleen depending on several legal documents. Every document she is named on her name is different. She married a printer, Richard Reddy, in September 1923, aged just 26. She worked as a confectioner. They had at least two children together, Eithne Mary who was born in 1924 and died just two months old, and Richard J. Reddy born in June 1928.

John attended school until he was at least age ten. According to the 1911 Census, he was single at the age of seventeen. This meant that he would never go on to marry or have children as his mother is listed as his next of kin on his Soldier's Will. As James and Andrew were also bachelors when they died. the name Sherman would presumably die out. 

John worked in Jacob's Biscuit Factory as a baker. Jacob's was located on Bishop Street in Dublin, where DIT and the National Archives currently stand. This broke the tradition of working as a slater in the family. John is mentioned in the Jacob's Role of Honour. It was very interesting to think about the position of time as only two months after John left for the front lines, his place of work became central to the Easter Rising. It is strange to think which cause John would have chosen if he had of stayed in Dublin just a little while longer.

The 9th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers began their service in December of 1915. For his own reasons, John chose to join the war effort, enlisting in Sutton Barracks to join the 9th Battalion as a private. He signed his Soldier's Will on February 14th, 1916. He was given the service number 23540. Unfortunately, John's enlistment papers appear to have been destroyed during the Blitz, where sixty-percent of all war documents were lost during the bombings.  

• At 4:35 A.M on April 27th, the Germans attempted to lure the Irish from their trenches.
• When they suspected the Irish soldiers to be manning the trench line, they released a highly concentrated combination of chlorine and phosgene gas shortly after 5 A.M.

• The Ginchy offensive took place on the 9th of September 1916.
• The battle was actually a part of the Battle of the Somme.
• In the early hours of the Saturday morning, the 7th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers launched an attack on the German occupied French town of Ginchy.

• In the run up to the assault on Langemarck, the 9th Battalion was chosen (along with the 7th Irish Rifles) to take the left attack on the other side of the 48th Brigade.
• This would be the first time the 9th Battalion would be one of the leading battalions in battle.
• The attack began at 4:45 A.M on the 16th of August 1917.
• The Battalion was met with heavy gunfire and suffered heavy losses.
• Everywhere the turned they were met with blasts of machine gunfire.
• Miraculously, they made it to the first point (the Green Line), however, the German machine-gunners came into their pill boxes and fired back at the 9th Dublins.
• Two officers and ten men from the battalion kept up the advance with the courageous few reaching the final objective. 

• Sixty-six percent of the 9th Battalion's men were killed in the Battle of Langemarck.
• After the battle, with barely anybody left in the 9th Battalion, they amalgamated with the 8th Battalion to form the 8th/9th Battalion.
• They died with no hope, in fields the same consistency as porridge, after serving nearly two years, never living to see the end of the war.

It is unknown what happened to John's body immediately after his death. He would later be brought to his final resting place in Poelcapelle British Cemetery, where he is buried in LX D 4. Originally, his body is recorded on his returns as "unknown soldier". His body was found with two metal ribands, clothes and boots. He was also believed to have been a member of the 4th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers when his body was found. His mother, Julia, was sent out thirteen shillings and sixpence.

I may never get to meet John's relatives, or see his face, or learn the full extent of his story. But I know his name, I know as much of his story as possible, I know his struggles. You too now know about John, and that is why it has been such a pleasure for me to tell his story. Thank you for taking the time to read John's story.