The miracle of WWI

Ever since the end of World War I (1914-18), Armistice Day has been celebrated annually on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in remembrance of those millions who have made the supreme sacrifice for their country in the many conflicts that have ravaged different parts of the world this past century.

Deeds of tragedy, of valour, of loss are recalled and memories revived of events that have remained alive because of their impact.

One of the most amazing and most inexplicable has been that of John Traynor, a soldier from Liverpool, who enlisted in 1914 at the age of 35 and was with the 1st Dublin Fusiliers when they landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey on April 25, 1915.

An Anglo-French force made a disastrous assault on the Dardanelles in a bid to reach Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) and knock Turkey out of its alliance with Germany.

As the troops disembarked from openings in the side of the steamship River Clyde, they were massacred by Turkish machine-gunners. Raynor was one of the few to reach the shore but a few days later, on May 8, during a bayonet charge he was sprayed with bullets and was wounded in the chest and head, and a bullet pierced his right arm and lodged under his collar bone.

He was evacuated dazed and paralysed and taken to Alexandria where he was operated on by the distinguished surgeon Sir Frederick Treves. Various other operations followed when he was returned to England to try and put together the severed nerves in his body but all failed and he became subject to frequent epileptic fits. He refused to allow the surgeons to amputate his useless right arm.

Traynor was discharged from the army as 100 per cent completely and permanently disabled and given a full pension. He spent months helpless in hospital with epileptic fits and in 1920 an effort was made to try and ease these with an operation on the brain.

This left an open hole about an inch wide in his head and one could see the pulsations of his brain. He was no better after the operation. He had fits as many as three a day. His legs were by now paralysed and he had to be lifted into a wheel-chair, unable to walk or stand – a total wreck.

One day in July 1923 he learnt that the Liverpool diocese was organising a pilgrimage to the shrine at Lourdes, at the foothills of the Pyrenees in France where in 1858 Our Lady had appeared to a 14-year-old girls named Bernadette Soubirous and described herself as the Immaculate Conception.

During one of her 18 appearances Our Lady told Bernadette to scratch the ground and water appeared which increased into a watercourse. Here in due course persons with various afflictions were cured when bathed in the water.

Traynor insisted, he was booked on the pilgrimage but everybody tried to dissuade him, explaining his condition was such he would die on the train journey. The organisers demanded that doctors should certify he could travel but none would. Doctor or no doctor, Traynor kept insisting even after his priest begged him to give up the idea. On the journey, the train stopped at three different places as Traynor appeared to be dying but there were no hospitals in the vicinity and when the train arrived at Lourdes he was quickly taken with the other sick persons to the Asile hospital by the grotto.

Traynor was desperately ill and had haemorrhages and fits and some of the pilgrims wrote to the wife to say he would be buried in Lourdes. On the second day he was being wheeled to the baths when blood started flowing from his mouth and he had a fit but he refused to return to hospital until he was bathed. Strangely, the fits stopped altogether.

The doctors continued to certify him as paralysed in the nerves in the right arm and atrophy of the shoulder, no movement in the legs and nobody control and the hole in the head continued to be protected by a metal plate.

Preparations were being made for the pilgrimage to return home and Traynor was wheeled to the baths on the eve in the afternoon. While being bathed, his legs became agitated and without thinking he tried to get up. His carers were afraid he was having another fit, put him on a stretcher and took him quickly to the nearby square where the sick had been lined up to catch the procession with the Blessed Sacrament.

When the Archbishop of Rheims made the sign with the monstrance over Traynor, his right arm was violently agitated. He burst the bandages and with his arm blessed himself, which he had been unable to do in years. His carers held him down and took him quickly to the hospital where he said he could walk.

But he was put in a special ward and guards posted to watch over him. Early in the morning, on the chimes of the Ave Maria, he jumped out of bed, knelt on the floor to recite the rosary, made for the door and pushed away the guards to the amazement of the doctor who had been expecting him to die.

He ran towards the grotto pursued by the guards but they stopped when they saw him on his knees in his night clothes, praying.

A crowd began to gather and after 20 minutes he rose and walked back to the hospital, stopping in front of a statue of Our Lady to pray.

By now people were afraid to approach him and nobody stopped him when he went to the washroom to shave. A priest, who did not know him, asked for someone to serve his Mass; Traynor volunteered immediately, still somewhat dazed and not quite realising that he was walking about for the first time in eight years.

On the morning of July 26, 1923 Tranor was given, despite his protests, a first class compartment for the return journey. He was met by a large crowd on arrival at Liverpool, including his wife who had not heard of his cure until then.

An official report by the Medical Bureau at Lourdes in 1926 declared that “the extraordinary cure is absolutely beyond and above the powers of nature.” The British War Pension Ministry, which had certified Traynor’s disabilities were incurable, did not acknowledge the miracle and continued to award him full disability pension for life, even though he had set up a coal and haulage business, undertaking heavy work, even lifting heavy sacks of coal.

He went to assist the sick at Lourdes every year until his death on the feast day of the Immaculate Conception 20 years later, in 1943.