his face lights up". Quotes from Gleeson were used in Irish recruiting posters and leaflets. Aubers Ridge Whilst moving forwards to the trenches on 8 May 1915, in preparation for the Battle of Aubers Ridge, Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Rickard ordered the battalion to halt at a roadside shrine in Rue du Bois, near Fleurbaix. The shrine, which had been pointed out to Rickard by Gleeson, was in fact the altar of the Chapel of Notre Dame de Seez which had been destroyed by shells earlier in the war. Gleeson, who had ridden at the front of the column, addressed the assembled 800 men and gave them the general absolution whilst still mounted on his horse. The men then sang the hymns Hail, Queen of Heaven, the Te Deum and Hail Glorious Saint Patrick before Gleeson moved along the ranks bidding farewell to the officers and encouraging the men to maintain the honour of the regiment. Gleeson followed the battalion to the start of the trenches to bid the men farewell. The battalion launched their attack at 5.30 the next morning. The Munsters were largely cut down by machine gun fire before they had advanced more than a few yards although enough men survived to capture the German trenches, the only unit to do so that day, before being forced to withdraw. Casualties in the battalion amounted to 11 officers and 140 men killed, including Lieutenant-Colonel Rickard, in addition to 8 officers and 230 men wounded. Gleeson made it his duty to attend to the wounded and dying, comforting them and delivering the last rites, despite German shells landing close by him. Gleeson wrote in his diary that night that "it was ghastly to see them lying there in the cold, cheerless outhouses on beare stretchers with no blankets to cover their freezing limbs". This quote was selected for a stone at the Island of Ireland Peace Park, Messines, Belgium erected in 1998 to commemorate the Irish dead of the war. After the battle the Munsters once again assembled at the Rue de Bois, though only three officers and 200 men were found fit to parade. Gleeson was upset by the high death toll and the heartfelt letters he received from family members of killed and wounded soldiers. Rickard's widow, Jessie Louisa Rickard, requested that war artist Fortunino Matania immortalise the parade at Rue de Bois in a painting that centred on