Soldier Record

Matthew Giles Hetherington was wounded in the knee on 1 July 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.

Matthew Giles Hetherington was wounded in the knee on 1 July 1916 at the Battle of the Somme. He was a member of the 9th Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. According to a letter he wrote to his brother James from The Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, Matthew said that he had a bullet removed from his knee. Matthew added that his cousin, Hugh Hetherington MM, a sergeant in the Inniskillings, was in the Curragh Hospital, outside Dublin, recovering from shellshock. Matthew walked with the aid of a stick for the rest of his life and had to attend hospital on a regular basis for treatment. I remember Matthew carving me a smokerÂ’s pipe out of a small ash tree branch when I was four years old and giving me a ride on a wheelbarrow to the end of the farm lane to collect the milk churns. Matthew's brother, James, a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary, was murdered by the IRA in 1921.