Home » Arts & Culture » The remarkable life of Clare priest, Cornelius Sexton

The remarkable life of Clare priest, Cornelius Sexton

Car Tourismo Banner


Author of Dark Times, Decent Men – Stories of Irishmen in World War II, Neil Richardson.

The following is an extract from Dark Times, Decent Men – Stories of Irishmen in World War II by Neil Richardson, published by O’Brien Press.

HOWEVER, it was not just Irishmen serving in the British Army who were taken prisoner at Singapore but also Irishmen serving in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). One such man was army chaplain Father Cornelius ‘Con’ Sexton – raised in Ballyvaughan, County Clare, but who had been born in September 1905 in nearby County Galway.

The son of two national school teachers, Father Sexton was ordained in All Hallows, Dublin, in June 1930 before being sent to Sydney, Australia, along with two fellow new priests – Father WJ Fahy and Father P McManus – sometime before November that year (as recorded in The Sydney Morning Herald, November 8, 1930).

In July 1940, he joined the Australian military and became an army chaplain with the rank of captain attached to 2/20th (Battalion) AIF. The following year, on February 2, 1941, he sailed to Malaya with his unit aboard HMT Queen Mary and after suffering from chronic cholecystitis – an inflammation of the gall bladder, in May, he was still in Malaya when the Japanese began their invasion on 8 December. Father Sexton was 36 years old.

On January 23, 1942, he fell ill again and was admitted to a field ambulance and later to a military hospital (during this time, 2/20th AIF were involved in heavy fighting against the Japanese in Mersing, Malaya). However, he had returned to his men by the time they had withdrawn to Singapore and by the time the Japanese began their assault on the island on  February 8. That night, with 2/20th AIF having been forced to spread out to cover a wide front, the Japanese attacked the battalion and managed to break through the Australians’ lines. However, the Australians succeeded in inflicting heavy casualties on their enemy before withdrawing and digging in along the Lim Chu Kang Road but because this was a poor defensive position, the men were ordered to retreat further south.

The fighting continued on February 9, and, as Father Sexton recorded in an interview he gave post-war, “We had several wounded brought in during the night  from the shelling  and the colonel of our battalion sent up men to try and stop the [enemy] landing, but it never – it should have never [been ordered] – it was a massacre there were so many killed on that particular night that should never have been because their chances were nil from the time that they left their posts until they went up to the Causeway, they didn’t stand a chance. The first two [wounded] that were brought in, as far I can remember, were Chinese who were fighting with our forces and the doc said, ‘Padre, will you go down – take these down to the hospital before dawn.’ And we loaded them on to the back [of a truck].”

However, en route to the field hospital, the truck was hit by enemy mortar or artillery fire and Father Sexton was ‘blown out of the truck’ along with another soldier, Jack Bowman. When they finally recovered their senses, as Father Sexton later recalled, “Jack said to me, ‘Are you alive, Father?’ I said, ‘Yes, I am. Are you?’ Irish humour, if ever there was one … and then we looked inside the truck and the two Chinese were dead. And we took them down to the hospital anyhow and unloaded them.

While in the hospital, Father Sexton asked a doctor to look over some wounds he had received to his hand and wrist when his truck had been hit. The doctor examined his injuries and then said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ll have to cut off your fingers”. But the priest refused and replied, “Listen, give me a cigarette and stitch it up if you can and do the same with that [the wrist wound]”. So that is exactly what the doctor did and Father Sexton’s fingers were saved. After this, Father Sexton “went back [to his unit] for another load [of wounded] to gather anybody we could that was still at the RAP [Regimental Aid Post]”. This RAP was soon moved and then 2/20th AIF’s commanding officer – Colonel Charles Assheton – led a group of men forward towards the enemy. Father Sexton volunteered to go with them but he was refused permission. This probably saved his life, as when the Australians got into position, many of them fell asleep from sheer exhaustion before the enemy arrived and when the Japanese finally showed up, “the Japs just crept up on them [the sleeping Australians] and bayoneted one after another”.

Meanwhile, Father Sexton and a convoy of seven trucks with Red Cross markings withdrew towards Selarang Barracks near Singapore. However, the Japanese had blocked the road and – even though the trucks were clearly carrying wounded men – they fired on them. Several trucks were hit and rolled over but Father Sexton’s managed to make it through. At the same time, the Australians and the rest of the British and Commonwealth troops were withdrawing to Singapore city. The Japanese were closing in.

In the confusion of the Battle of Singapore, 2/20th AIF was split up and men fought on in groups of various sizes until the Allied surrender was declared on 15 February. Father Sexton initially found himself interned in Selarang Barracks, but he was soon transferred to nearby Changi POW camp where, in August 1942, he began suffering from dysentery. However, being held prisoner did not prevent him from ministering to his troops, and he later recalled, “The lads used to come in from the airport of a night time, if we had stole a bit of timber now and again from the Japs, we made kind of a little chapel. But the last year [1945], through some Chinese who were working on the airport, we got a letter through to the Bishops of Singapore, and we got altar breads and altar wines.

Father Sexton also managed to get hold of red berries he dried in the sun to make rosary beads. However, “there were no vestments just an old yucky pair of shorts and a pair of thongs that one of the Dutch prisoners had made for me”.

However, it was not just Allied soldiers Father Sexton ended up ministering to. In an almost certainly unique event, he also received a request for a blessing from a Japanese soldier, “[One day, while saying Mass] I turned around … [and] I saw this guard standing just in front with the bayonet on the end of the rifle and I said [to myself], Cornelius, you’re for it and didn’t pretend anything, went on. And I asked the lads at the offertory, ‘Do any of you boys like to go to Holy Communion?’ and quite a few did. And when the mass was over, they slunk away. The guard stayed and he put his rifle and bayonet on the ground, and he said in perfect English, ‘Father, I’m a Catholic, educated by some Marist fathers in Korea, and I have a wife and two children. We’re leaving for Borneo in the morning. I’ll never see them again”

Father Sexton blessed the soldier and though the circumstances were tragic, he later remembered this event as “my most wonderful experience”.
After being liberated in August 1945, Father Sexton was underweight and soon diagnosed with neurotic beriberi – a nervous system disorder caused by vitamin deficiency. Having recovered, he sailed aboard HMAS Manoora via Labuan Island and landed at Brisbane on October 15, 1945. He was finally back in Australia.

Father Sexton soon found out his mother – who now lived in Shrule, County Mayo – had been sent a telegram back in 1942 that he was “missing, presumed dead”. And so, he wrote to her, letting his mother know that he was still very much alive and well. He remained in Australia after the war and on April 25, 1950 (ANZAC Day), Father Sexton was one of several priests who celebrated a Mass in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney (as recorded in The Sydney Morning Herald, April 26, 1950) to remember Australia’s fallen war dead. 3,000 people attended the mass and one of the priests in attendance – Father John Roche, a former naval chaplain – said that, “For the men and women whose memory we revere today we must always have the greatest reverence”.

About News Editor

Check Also

Clare Rose in full bloom at special New York parade

The 1968 Clare Rose was one of a bunch of 27 former Rose of Tralee …