The chaplains of all denominations are equally devoted. But the
Catholic priest has a special impulse to self-sacrificing duty for two
reasons--first, the desire that Catholics have to die shriven and
anointed; and the softening of the bereavement of parents and
relations which comes from the knowledge that Paddy, Jamsie, Joe, or
Mike had been to his duty before the battle, or had the priest with
him when he died. Accordingly, no consideration of danger to himself
will deter the Catholic chaplain from going into the firing line to
administer the last rites. In the circumstances, it was to be expected
that though the chaplains of all the denominations are zealous and
brave in the discharge of their sacred duties, the first chaplain of
any denomination to give his life for his men should be an Irish
priest, Father Finn, of the 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who fell in
Gallipoli.

A Tipperary man, serving on the English Mission in the Province of
Liverpool, Father Finn joined the 1st Dublins on their arrival in
England from India for active service, in November, 1914. The Dublins,
with the 1st Munster Fusiliers, took part, as I have already
described, in the first landing of British troops on the Peninsula, at
Sedd-el-Bahr, on Sunday, April 25th, 1915. On the Saturday morning
Father Finn heard the confessions of the men on board the transport,
off Tenedos, said Mass, and gave Holy Communion. Then on Sunday
morning he asked permission of the commanding officer of the battalion
to go ashore with the men. Colonel Rooth tried to persuade him to
remain on the transport, where he could give his services to such of
the wounded as were brought back. "You are foolish to go; it means
death," said the officer. "The priest's place is beside the dying
soldier; I must go," was Father Finn's decisive reply. For these and
other particulars of the gallant action of the priest, I am mainly
indebted to the Rev. H.C. Foster, Church of England naval chaplain,
who was in one of the warships engaged in the bombardment of the
Peninsula at the landing, and highly esteemed Father Finn as a friend.

Father Finn left the transport for the shore in the same boat as the
Colonel. When the boats crowded with the Dublins got close to the
beach a hail of shrapnel, machine-gun fire, and rifle fire was
showered upon them by the Turks, hidden among the rocks and ragged
brushwood on the heights. Numbers of the Dublins were killed or
wounded, and either tum