Joe Corrigan reflects on an Enniskillen family's war efforts

I had stopped at the famed Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, to view the graves on ‘Authors' Ridge’.

There lie buried some of America's best early writers and thinkers – Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Washington Irving, and many more.

On my way out, though, another gravestone caught my eye: “In Memory of Concord's Most Served Family, 1941 – WWII – 1945”.

On the headstone were listed the names of eight members of the Flannery family, who had fought in World War Two.

One of the reasons the grave engaged me was that my mother's name is Flannery – she came from County Offaly, where that surname is profuse.

I thought then of Steven Spielberg's epic war film, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, where a party of eight men are sent behind enemy lines to find Private James Ryan and return him to his mother, to alleviate some of her grief as she has just received word that three of her other sons have been killed in action.

This, in turn, led me to think of the extraordinary war service commitment of a family much closer to home.

My father-in-law, Ronnie Fallis – the youngest of the 11 children of Edward and Olive (nee Woods) Fallis, of Eden Street – wanted to enlist when World War Two broke out in 1939, but he was just too young, at the age of 16.

A gentle, talented and artistic young man, he instead began working in the Armed Forces as a civilian employee attached to an RAF unit at Castle Archdale.

Incredibly, seven of his brothers fought in World War Two, and an eighth brother, who had been in the army, had died shortly before that conflict began.

My next door neighbour growing up in Derrin Road in the1950s and 60s was Willie Fallis.

I used to enjoy being sent in on the occasional message just to see and hear the variety of canaries and budgies he and his wife, Eva, had in their home.

Willie fought in Egypt with the RAF from 1942 until the end of the war. He retired from the RAF in 1950, and died in 1982.

Davey Fallis, who worked in The Impartial Reporter for a while as a compositor after leaving school, joined the Royal Armoured Corps, North Irish Horse, and saw action in Tunisia and Italy from early 1943 until 1945.

After the war, Davey and his wife, Mary, lived the rest of their lives in Portrush. He died in 2003.

Dickie Fallis had joined the Royal Inniskilling and Royal Irish Fusiliers in 1929 when he was only 17.

Before World War Two began, he had served in India, Sudan, China and Malaya.

From 1940 to 1943 Dickie was involved in the siege of Malta after Mussolini entered the war as an ally of Nazi Germany and laid siege to the island.

After the war, Dickie served in Palestine and Gibraltar and he died in 1978 in the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, where he had been an In-Pensioner.

Elmour Fallis enlisted in the Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery of the Royal Artillery and saw action in Tripoli and Italy, taking part in many battles, including Medenine, Tebaga Gap, Salerno, Naples, Anzio and Livorno.

After the conflict was over, Elmour and his wife, Pearl, lived in Ballymena, where he ran his own garage business. He died in 1993.

Maurice Fallis is fondly remembered by many Enniskilleners in his post-war role as the genial caretaker of the Town Hall, where he resided with his wife, May, and family.

Maurice, like Dickie, also joined the Royal Inniskilling and Royal Irish Fusiliers as soon as he turned 18.

He served in China and Malaya before the war and in Madagascar, India, Iran and Sicily during the war, being wounded in action twice. Maurice died in 2005.

Walter Fallis was also very well known as a postman in Enniskillen with his wife, Maude, in the post-war years up until his death in 1998.

As a young man in 1939, he had joined the Royal Armoured Corps, North Irish Horse at the Castle Barracks in Enniskillen.

His regiment's role changed from use of armoured cars to that of infantry tanks and in that capacity Walter saw action in the North African campaign and in Italy, where he was injured in 1944 in the Battle of the Hitler Line.

Derrick Fallis joined the RAF in March, 1939. During the war, he was involved in little-known but decisive attacks on pro-German Iraqi forces in Habbaniya, Iraq, and in attacks on supply convoys and airfields as far away as Baghdad and Mosul.

Derrick served for seven years and died in 2005.

There were two Fallis sisters, Olive and Florrie. Olive married William Balfour, but died in 1943, aged 35.

One of her five children, Heather, was brought up by my next door neighbours, Willie and Eva.

Florrie married an Englishman, Jack Cooke, and tragically, one of their four children, Ruth, drowned in the moat that surrounded the Redoubt in 1935.

The moat was subsequently drained. Florrie died in 1992.

The oldest of the Fallis children, Arthur (or John), was born in 1904 and joined the army in 1922.

He was too young to fight in the First World War and sadly died a young man before the outbreak of the Second World War; otherwise the number of Fallis siblings engaged in that conflict would have been eight, rather than seven.

Indeed, if my father-in-law had been a year older, that figure would have risen to nine.

All of the Fallis soldiers who fought in World War Two were well thought of, and were highly-decorated for their service, and a letter from the King commended the Fallis family for their incredible contribution in World War Two.

Thankfully, and miraculously, I feel – given the ferocity of the battles they were involved in, and the high casualty rates in some of those engagements – all returned safely after the war.

Had things turned out more tragically (and thankfully, they didn't), and had Steven Spielberg known about Enniskillen, his Oscar-winning epic may well have been called ‘Saving Private Fallis’.

My thanks are due to Davey's son, David, who produced the booklet, ‘The Fallis Brothers And The Second World War’ in 2019, which outlined the extraordinary service given by the family to the war effort.