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26/6/06

Dr Ian Adamson, OBE, chairman of the Somme Association and president of the Ullans (Ulster-Scots) Academy:

One of the finest shows of courage in all of history

THE Great War of 1914-1918 placed Ulster on the world stage. The Province's record in the conflict is one of which her people have every reason to feel proud. Both in the actual fighting services and in work at home, the Ulster people threw themselves heart and soul into the struggle against Germany for the freedom of the world. Following the outbreak of the war, the British Army had raised 82 battalions in Ireland by the end of 1914, and of these Ulster contributed 42. Although out of 145,000 voluntary recruits from Ireland, Ulster contributed 75,000, no fewer than 46,000 were from Belfast, which stood second on the roll of British cities for numbers of recruits in proportion to population up to the imposition of universal service. As well as the famous 36th (Ulster) Division, there were six battalions of the regular Army from Ulster, five Ulster battalions in the 10th (Irish) Division and five more in the 16th (Irish) Division. Inspired by old family traditions, many Ulstermen chose to enlist in Scottish battalions such as the 6th Black Watch and 4th Seaforth Highlanders (who had a recruiting office in Belfast). These formed part of the famous 51st (Highland) Division. Others joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. There were also many Ulstermen in the London Irish, the Church Lads' battalion of the King's Royal Rifles, the Bantam battalions and in the Royal Scots, the Cheshires and the Sherwood Foresters. Besides the recruits from Ireland, a large number of men born in Ulster were to be found in the Dominion troops, especially among the Canadians, with whom two Ulstermen won the VC. Altogether, half-a-million people from Ireland fought in the Great War, and 50,000 were killed.

The advance of the 36th (Ulster) Division at the commencement of the Battle of the Somme on July 1,1916, when they sustained 5,500 casualties, is perhaps the most memorable single episode of the war and stands as one of the finest displays of courage in the history of mankind.

On the site of the advance at Thiepval in France, a handsome memorial tower was erected by public subscription raised in the north of Ireland in memory of the officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the 36th (Ulster) Division, and of the sons of Ulster in other forces who died
in the Great War, and of all their comrades-in-arms who were spared to return.

This tower, modelled on Helen's Tower at Clandeboye, Co Down, was opened on November 19,1921, by Field-Marshal Sir Henry M Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

On July 1,1989, it was rededicated in the presence of Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. Veterans of the Great War, including those
of the 36th (Ulster) Division, were accompanied to the ceremony - organised by the Farset Somme Project - by dignitaries and public representatives from throughout Ulster.

It may be that there are certain setbacks of such magnitude and heroism that they serve to sustain and temper a people instead of weakening them. Or else, perhaps, the setbacks come to have an energising, emblematic power. Perhaps it may be that the Somme has come to symbolise unconsciously the thwarted nationhood of the Ulster people. Perhaps at the level of community consciousness the loss of the sons of Ulster and the founding of Northern Ireland are intertwined. The battle became Northern Ireland. This was a statelet which invited the pride in which it was fashioned. The supremely arrogant Stormont Parliament Buildings and the splendidly reassuring Burgher Palace, the Belfast City Hall, came to be seen figuratively as stationary Titanics in danger of sinking by the chilling, impersonal iceberg dynamics of Irish nationalism following partition. So it was that nationalists in Ulster rejected the emotional appeal of the Titanic story as they did the heroism of the Somme and the other great battles of the Great War.

In the case of the Titanic, it is doubtful if this was due to the 113 third-class Irish passengers the ship picked up on its last stop of Queenstown, now Cobh, two thirds of whom perished. The Titanic was not primarily an immigrant ship; rather, the reason for rejection was ideological. The quarrel was with Ulster Protestants rather than with English policy-makers in Ireland; for nationalists it was caused by the creation of Northern Ireland itself. Thus the importance of the return of the Nomadic, tender to the Titanic and a veteran of both world wars, and the overwhelming generosity of the Government in purchasing it and Thiepval Wood on behalf of the Somme Association.

The importance also of this year's ceremonies at the Ulster Tower and Guillemont in France when all-Ireland will be represented to honour the memories of both the 36th (Ulster) and 16th (Irish) Divisions at the Somme.




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26/6/06

Death or the threat of it is everywhere
BY PAUL O'HARE

A SOLDIER sits alone in the squalid casualty clearing centre with blood-soaked bandages around his head and chest.
Under the feeble light of an oil lamp, a large rat crouches in the mud beside his hand as he stares blankly at the corrugated iron walls.
Outside the makeshift shelter, which is re-created at the Somme Heritage Centre in Newtownards, Co Down, a raging storm of shell-fire lights up the night sky and creates a vision of hell.

As a survivor of the Battle of the Somme recalled: "Death or the threat of death was everywhere."
Another spoke of the green tide of chlorine gas and the yellow plumes of mustard gas.
Trying to sum up the experience, one man said: "The only thing I can compare it with is it is like waiting for someone to die.
"You wish it would come and you wish to God it was over with."

Back on the home front, a devastated young man said: "Dad showed us a piece of paper and it said that Edward, my brother, had died of wounds in France.
"My dad was saying: 'How will I tell your mother?'"

The human sacrifice on the fields of France in 1916 continues to resonate in Northern Ireland and the heritage centre attracts more than
21,000 visitors a year.

In the first two days of the battle, the 36th (Ulster) Division lost more than 2,000 men, while another 3,500 were injured.
Formed from the Ulster Volunteer Force in September, 1914, the soldiers who perished in the First World War have become icons of unionism.
A life-size trench has been created in the museum in a bid to provide a snapshot of the horror unleashed on Jury 1,1916.
A white sign with blood red paint reads: "To Front Line", while another warns: "Do not put your head above trench during daylight." Humour is visible at a ramshackle food hut, called "Trembling Terrace.

A mock no-man's land lies beyond the 5ft wall of sand bags, which is dotted with wooden periscopes.
The debris of war - barbed wire, helmets and empty shells - litter the muddy quagmire ahead where the only symbol of hope was small clusters of red poppies which blossomed amid the carnage.

Emerging from the front-line experience, the visitor sees a large image of white headstones at Etaples Cemetery, in northern France, where 11,300 soldiers are buried.

The immaculately maintained graveyard was to prove the final resting place for many of the men who left Northern Ireland to fight for king and country and perished on the fields of Picardy.

The heritage centre, opened in 1994, is near Whitespots Country Park where First World War troops were trained.
As well as the Ulster Division, it commemorates the role of the 16th (Irish) Division and 10th (Irish Division) during the conflict.
The centre operates daily guided tours and features a wide range of artefacts, ranging from uniforms to medals, weapons and food rations.
The Somme Association, which runs the museum, was responsible for the renovation of the 70ft Ulster Tower in Thiepval Wood from where the Somme offensive was launched.

The wood was bought by the association in 2004 and will be kept as a memorial to the soldiers, many of whom are buried where they felL An inauguration ceremony will take place on July 1 and part of it will open on July 2 for guided tours.



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26/6/06

Battle is charged with meaning for many people

THE significance of the battle for Northern Ireland should not be underestimated, according to historian Philip Orr.
He said: "The Somme is still charged with meaning for many people, many years on."
The author of The Road to the Somme recalled the day in August, 1915, when 17,000 Army recruits marched past Belfast City Hall.
It was an impressive show of strength at a time when few would have foreseen the brutal reality of trench warfare.
Mr Orr said: "No-one who watched those fresh-faced young soldiers would ever forget the sight."
He said that Ireland was simmering under a Home Rule crisis and, as a result, a paramilitary people's army, the UVF, was already in place.
The Ulster Division was trained at Clande-boye, near Bangor, Co Down, Ballykinler, near Newcastle, Co Down and Pinner, near Bundoran, Co Donegal-Coming from a society bitterly divided by religion, many of soldiers were baffled by what they found in France.
Mr Orr said: "It did come as a surprise to see Catholic shrines everywhere.
"They were defending the Catholic French against the German Protestants."
Some troops held Orange lodge meetings in the trenches.
Mr Orr quoted moving accounts from men in the front line.
One soldier told how hundreds of Ulstermen were mown down by machine-gun fire as they raced across no-man's land at 7.30am - zero hour - on July 1.

[Galloway-Raider]

"For God, And Ulster"

We still remember you..!

[Kilsally]

The Somme: The Irish in the battle
http://news.bbc.co.u.../uk/5126128.stm


By Kevin Connolly
Ireland correspondent, BBC News

Soldiers of the 36th (Ulster) Division in WWI
The 36th (Ulster) Division fought on the early days of the Somme

Irish soldiers played a major part on the Somme during World War I.

Their involvement had repercussions for Ireland long after the initial fighting of the battle.

The Irish troops were committed into the Battle of the Somme haphazardly alongside the English, Australian, Welsh, South African and Scots and other Imperial forces - not to mention the French, and French-African troops who fought alongside them.

Still, it is possible to follow the Irish thread through the confused tapestry of the fighting.

Forced retreat

The 36th (Ulster) Division was committed in the attack on the first day, tasked with taking a German fortification called the Schwaben Redoubt.

They were among the few units to reach their objective, but reinforcements despatched into the carnage of no man's land never reached them, and eventually, isolated and surrounded they were forced to retreat.

Of the nine Victoria Crosses awarded on the day, three went to the Ulster Division - two of them posthumously.

The Division was relieved on 2 July having suffered more than 5,000 casualties - 2,069 of whom were killed.

'Blood sacrifice'

Tattered and traumatised, the Ulster Division withdrew from the battlefield to re-group and march directly into the political mythology of Ulster Unionism.

Their "blood sacrifice" was seen as Ulster's side of a deal in which Britain would somehow "see the loyal province right" in the agonising over Home Rule which was sure to resume when the fighting was done.

Their legend lives on. One of the Protestant paramilitary organisations in modern Northern Ireland uses the title Ulster Volunteer Force precisely because of the historical resonance they know that title has for northern Protestants.

Images of the old volunteers are still to be seen in the banners of Orange lodges and in the huge murals that adorn gable ends in working class areas of Belfast.

It is worth bearing in mind that the annual Orange march at Drumcree in County Armagh, whose route remains a subject of intense political controversy to this day, is a commemoration of the first day on the Somme.

Reckless courage

There were, of course, Catholic soldiers from the south of Ireland in the fighting on that first day - the Royal Dublin Fusiliers amongst them - but we pick up the story of the Irish at the Somme in September.

The front line - a huge metallic scar through pretty French meadowland - had barely moved since July, although the casualties on both sides had been beyond imagining.

More than one million men would be dead, injured or missing by the end of the fighting and many of the injured were permanently disabled.

On 3 September, another great British offensive went in. This time the soldiers included the mainly Irish Catholic 16th Division, brought down from Loos in Belgium.

Their objectives were the hamlets of Guillemont and Ginchy, which the original battle plans had assumed would be taken in the first few days of fighting.

The men of the 16th Division fought with the same reckless courage that had distinguished the 36th Division - their sacrifice separated only by a few months, a few miles, and hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Political initiative

Within 10 days the Division had lost half its 11,000 men killed or injured. Most died anonymously which was the way of it in a war which married the tactics of an old century with the technology of the new.

Not all though. A private soldier in the Connaught Rangers and a young officer in the Leinsters won Victoria Crosses.

The manservant of the poet and nationalist MP Tom Kettle, who died, wrote movingly to his wife: "He carried his pack for Ireland and Europe. Now his pack-carrying is over. He has held the line."

The problem for those Irish nationalists like Kettle who served was once the war was over, it was difficult for them to define the cause for which they had fought.

Ulster Protestants returned home, vindicated and demanding. They knew what they had fought for, and they knew what they wanted in return.

If Kettle had lived he would have returned to an Ireland in which the political initiative had been seized by nationalist rebels who refused to fight for Britain, and indeed staged the Easter Rising just two months before the assault on the Somme began.

It was the handful of men who stayed at home to fight the crown, not the many thousands who went to Europe to fight for it, who took control of Ireland's political destiny.

They took control of Irish history too, and it was the fate of men like Kettle to be airbrushed out of it.

Different causes

The Battle of the Somme ground on for another two months or so, and eventually petered out in the rains of November.

It was not obvious at the time, but the Somme would fix itself in the popular imagination as a kind of metaphor for the Great War.

The British and Allied armies suffered 420,000 casualties to move the front line just a few miles in four-and-a-half months.

And Ireland? Well, Irishmen North and South joined up in the hope of somehow advancing their different causes, unionist and nationalist, in fighting on the British side.
There is no space here to argue over how they succeeded and how they did not - but it is worth noting that for all that has happened since 1916 the echoes of the same issues which divided Ireland on the way in to the Great War continue to divide it now.



Time to commemorate the forgotten Irish of World War I



ONE side wore poppies and the other side did not. Strange, how telling the presence or absence of a small paper buttonhole can be.

When I was growing up in the North poppies were common: they bloomed on lapels for Remembrance Day each November, or to signify anniversaries of battles that meant nothing to me because I didn't learn about them in the classroom and nobody spoke of them in the home.

Sometimes we saw ladies in hats and gloves or old soldiers in regimental ties selling poppies, and people reacted in one of two ways: they either hurried by looking the other way or lingered to rattle out coins and exchange a few words. The poppy's scarlet flash lent a rakish air to stern-backed men in dark suits, and to tradesmen who hooked them into their overalls. Their wives and daughters were less likely to pin on a poppy - these flowers meant men's business.

I remember being curious about such pretty emblems but getting short shrift when I asked. Adults had a way of turning the conversation, of saying they had forgotten or it was none of my concern, and some seemed uncomfortable at the mention of poppies. Or more specifically, at what they commemorated. There was a sense of them-and-us about poppy-wearers and non-poppy-wearers - and yet, why that flicker of embarrassment?

It was not that war was considered an unfit subject for the young. As children we knew about the Easter Rising, we were drilled in the list of Proclamation signatories and taught about the War of Independence; but names such as the Somme, Ypres or Verdun were unheard. My cousins from the Republic were even more mystified by poppies when they came to visit; to them they were a totally unfamiliar sight. "It's to do with England and being Protestant," we tried to explain what we did not understand ourselves. Little sponges that we were, we soaked up the impression that it had nothing to do with us - despite the war memorial in our town, despite the Catholic dead.

Our education system was excellent, we were told frequently, the exam results proved it. But we did not learn about the Great War at school and the gaps were not filled at home, as they were with other aspects of our history and mythology. A cataclysmic event of global proportions was, quite simply, overlooked. Collective amnesia, it is being called now, although eradication might be more accurate.

And yet there were markers if we understood enough to decipher them. Later I realised they explained that flicker of embarrassment in some quarters. In many houses a sepia-tinted photograph of a boy-man in uniform jostled for space amid pictures of family members who were dead and buried but still referred to, unlike those teenagers in their military regalia. In some of these houses, a series of prints of Pearse and his fellows, or one of Kevin Barry in the striped football shirt that emphasised his youth, could also be seen. So it was never as cut and dried as For Empire versus For Ireland. Here was an overlap where a competing claim of history coalesced, but we seemed either reluctant to recognise it or unable to make sense of it.

There were other signposts: that raft of elderly spinsters in every community for whom there had been no young men to marry; the gravestones which referred to a son who was not buried there although they did not specify where he lay.

A friend spoke recently of attending a funeral where he met an aged aunt. She had one of those missals crammed with memorial cards old ladies tend to carry, one of which fluttered to the ground. Retrieving it, he saw a young man in khaki with the dates 1899-1918. "Who's that?" he asked. "That was your grandfather's brother, your grand-uncle John," she said. Never once had he heard this man's name spoken. The grand-uncles who emigrated were remembered, but the youth who left the farm to run away to war was allowed to die twice. Once in a mud-churned field in France and once again in the family's consciousness.

Yesterday I visited the Cenotaph in Omagh, a handsome granite obelisk which I have walked past countless times in my life but never given a second glance. I could not even have described the relief on it, an angel holding a wreath above the strewn bodies of soldiers, nor told you whether it stood on three steps or six.

I thought to find the names of the Tyrone dead itemised, wondering would I see O'Neills and Gallaghers among the Hamiltons and Wilsons. Perhaps even a Devlin who could be retrieved from the oblivion to which one side of the political divide surrendered its Great War dead. But no names at all were engraved; they were too numerous to inscribe, at 2,000 from this single county among 32 counties which dispatched volunteers to the Western Front - "a whole generation that were butchered and damned," as that haunting song 'The Green Fields of France' puts it.

As I stood reading the inscription - "To Our Glorious Dead 1914-1918 - Their name liveth for evermore" - I noticed that nobody paused.

THEY cut past the memorial to reach the bus depot, paying no attention to it. It was invisible to them. This, in a town where people still bless themselves automatically passing the Catholic church. "No skateboarding by order" instructed a sign in one corner of the site. So much for immortality.

A matter of some hundreds of yards away, within vision, is the Omagh bomb memorial. Another blood sacrifice. Yet it is visited: you regularly see people there with heads bowed in prayer, or walking among the flowerbeds.

Of course it commemorates a more recent experience, less than one decade ago compared with nine decades since World War I, yet it is odd how we speak of one but not another. Is it because one set wore uniforms and the others were civilians? Or because there is consensus that the bomb dead were victims - but ambivalence about those who went to war abroad?

Facets of our history have been wrapped in silence, we agree, even as we congratulate ourselves for finally having the maturity to acknowledge and reclaim all our dead.

You see, we call ourselves Europeans now, North and South, as we enjoy the fruits of unprecedented prosperity. Yet it is the mass death of our grand-uncles in the trenches, those eradicated boy-soldiers, which makes us true Europeans - more than our cafe society, our new-found taste for wine or our holiday homes abroad.

www.martinadevlin.com

www.unison.ie/irish_in...e_id=14268 __._,_.__

A German perspective: 'It's our heritage too'
http://news.bbc.co.u.../uk/5086938.stm

Two German participants in events commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme tell the BBC News website why it is so important that they take part.

Jacob Zutt/Mario Zutt
Mario Zutt (right) in WW1 uniform and his great-grandfather, Jacob

"Many people think the Germans were guilty but in my opinion all the European countries were guilty. The new generation think as Europeans - we want to go forward."

Mario Zutt, a 35-year-old accountant from Biskirchen, 100km north of Frankfurt, is going to France for the Somme commemoration as one of 10 German "re-enactors" on a march organised by the National Army Museum in London.

He will walk alongside about 100 British men, half of whom had ancestors who would have faced his own great-grandfather, Jacob Zutt and his great-great-uncle Herman Emrich across the front line.

Germans and British together will be dressed in their own reproduction uniform, set up Living History campsites along the way and share rations.

The irony is not lost on Mario but he points out he has taken part in war re-enactments with former "enemies" before - "We have a very good friendship, we re-enactors are like family," he says.

This week's event is different though - it's not just a get-together of people who share a hobby, who want to escape the daily grind by reliving the past.


IDENTIFY THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
The remains of three soldiers were found at Serre in 2003 - two German and one British. The British soldier has still not been identified.
He belonged to the King's Own aka Royal Lancaster Regiment and was killed on the morning of 1 July 1916.
He was carrying a Guernsey coin.
Contact Alastair Fraser of No Man's Land: the European Group for Great War Archaeology by email at frasersmountpleasant@tiscali.co.uk
It is a chance to pay his respects to all the "fallen".

"The war is not only [a part of] British and French heritage - it is ours, too."

Mario and his fellow Germans have also been invited to the main ceremony at Thiepval on Saturday 1 July.

"I am very proud to join the ceremony standing in line with British, French and other nations and my family feels the same," he says.

He believes that a few years ago a joint ceremony such as this was unthinkable. There has been little interest in remembering the Great War in Germany - 20th century history at school is dominated by the Holocaust.

"Recently my father-in-law told me nobody wanted to see uniforms after World War Two. Uniforms meant war, so the veterans [of both wars] couldn't speak about it," he says.

Now, he says, more and more German people are researching their family history and finding out about both world wars outside of the official education system.

Jakob Hoenes/Walter Rapp - Photo courtesy No Man's Land
Walter Rapp (right) and his grandfather Jakob Hoenes
One such is Walter Rapp, who went to France earlier this month for the unveiling of the only Anglo-German memorial on French soil.

It honours three men - one unidentified British soldier and two Germans - Albert Thielicke and Jakob Hoenes, Walter's maternal grandfather.

All three men were uncovered near the village of Serre by an archaeological team called No Man's Land in 2003 and their findings displayed at the National Army Museum last year.

Walter was invited to see the exhibition, "Finding the Fallen", last November and while in London attended a Remembrance Day ceremony that left a lasting impression.

"I got to know how the English were so proud of their heroes in the war. I saw the medals on their suits. That impressed me.

"Here in Germany there is no remembrance to the first World War - they want to forget this time. I think it was because they start a war twice. We learned that in school - so it is a path of shame - so they don't [commemorate] it. That's my interpretation."

Oberstleutnant Mayer of the German military attache - Photo courtesy No Mans Land
The Anglo-German monument was unveiled on 16 June
Now with the help of the No Man's Land team who commissioned the Anglo-German memorial, the fallen on both sides of the front line can be remembered.

Walter's speech at the ceremony summed up the sentiments of those who were there.

"Today we are standing here together as friends to honour with this commemorative plaque those killed in action during the First World War, who had no choice but to fight against each other on different sides.

"Never, never again should Europe experience the horrors of war."

There will be live coverage of the Somme commemoration march on BBC News24 and the BBC's One and Six O'Clock News throughout the week.



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27/6/06

Man who captured the bravery of the 36th

Cecil Falls, an officer with the 36th (Ulster) Division, later produced a divisional history which was much acclaimed and set him on the path to become a noted historian and journalist. GORDON LUCY, of the Ulster Society, recalls his career.


THE 36th (Ulster) Division was extremely fortunate in its official historian because Cyril Falls was to become one finest British military historians of the 20th century. Sir Michael Howard, widely considered to be the United Kingdom's foremost military historian, has observed that The History of the 36th (Ulster) Division "contains some of the finest descriptions of conditions on the western front in the literature of the war".

Cyril Falls served with the division. His history is dedicated to the memory of two fellow officers: Harry Gallagher DSO who was killed at the Battle of Messines on June 7, 1917, and George Bruce, Brigade Major of the 109th Brigade, who was killed on October 2, 1918, near Dadizeele.

Falls' family background gave him a full and sensitive appreciation and understanding of the origins of the division and events leading up to its formation. Explaining why his history did not begin with the British declaration of war on Germany on 4 August 1914, he wrote: "There are . . . certain local circumstances anterior to that declaration, which have an intimate connection with the particular division that is the subject of this history, and so could not be omitted without robbing the latter of much of its significance.

"The Ulster Division was not created in a day. The roots from which it sprang went back into the troubled period before the war. "Its life was a continuance of the life of an early legion, a legion of civilians banded together to protect themselves from the consequences of legislation which they believed would affect adversely their rights and privileges as citizens of the United Kingdom - the Ulster Volunteer Force."

In the following passage Falls betrays his Fermanagh origins: "The old clan-names of the Northumbrian and Scottish Borders were clustered thick together [in the Division]. A platoon would have five Armstrongs or Wilsons or Elliotts, a company half a dozen Irvines or Johnstons, a battalion half a score of Morrows or Hannas." Falls was aware of that "the Covenant of the 17th century was taken almost as widely in Ulster as in Scotland' and he was conscious of the survival of 'the old covenanting spirit."

He went on: "The writer of this book can bear witness from personal observation that it was not uncommon to find a man sitting on the fire-step of a front-line trench, reading one of the small copies of the New Testament which were issued to the troops by the people at home. "The explanation was that, on one hand religion was near to them; on the other, that they were simple men. They saw no reason to hide or disguise that which was part of their daily lives." Cyril Falls was born on March 2, 1888, in Dublin but grew up in Co Fermanagh. He was the elder son of Charles Fausset Falls and Clare Bentham.
His father, an Enniskillen solicitor, was a leading Fermanagh unionist. He organised the selection of the Fermanagh delegates to the Ulster Unionist Convention of 1892, was involved in organising the signing of the Ulster Covenant in the county in 1912 and was the commander of the 3rd battalion of the Fermanagh Regiment of the UVF.

Between 1924 and 1925 Sir Charles Falls was the Unionist MP for Fermanagh and Tyrone at Westminster. Cyril Falls was educated at Bradfield College, Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, the University of London and abroad. As a boy he had reputation of being extremely idle but read widely, especially history.

At the outbreak of the Great War Cyril Falls was working as a clerk in the Foreign Office. Both he and his father - then 50 -took commissions in the 11th Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (Donegal and Fermanagh Volunteers). His younger brother Leslie enlisted in the 10th (Irish) Division "simply because it was the first formed and, having hurried home from Canada, did not wait to join us".

Cyril Falls served as a General Staff officer with both the 36th and the 62nd Divisions. He also was a liaison officer with the French.
A Francophile, this proved to be an inspired appointment. He liked the French generals and staff officers and they liked him. He was mentioned in dispatches twice and awarded the Croix de Guerre with two citations.
As a serving soldier. Falls indicated that if he survived the war he would like to record its history and was given the opportunity to do so.
The divisional history, published in 1922, greatly impressed Sir James Edmonds, head of the Historical Section (Military Branch) of the Committee of Imperial Defence, and he offered Falls a place on his staff, first as assistant historian and subsequently as senior historian. Between 1923 and 1939 he authored the official histories of the British campaigns in Egypt and Palestine, and Macedonia, as well as a volume dealing with The German Retreat to the Hindenburg Line and the Battle of Arras.

In December 1939 he succeeded Captain Basil Liddell Hart as the military correspondent of The Times, to which he had been an occasional contributor for 15 years. Throughout the Second World War he wrote a long series of well-informed commentaries on the strategic and tactical aspects of operations In writing these he was assisted by friends who held senior appointments on the General Staff who knew they could rely absolutely on Falls' discretion.

In 1946 he became Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford, a position which he retained until 1953, the year he retired as military correspondent of The Times.

Falls was a prolific author. His many books included Mountjoy - Elizabethan General, The Gordon Highlanders in the First World War, The First World War, The Art of War from the Age of Napoleon to the Present Day, Armageddon, 1918 and Caporetto, 1917, an acclaimed account of the Italian campaign.
He was a modest and unassuming man with wide interests.
In addition to a vast knowledge of both English and French literature, he was well informed about music, riding, sailing, shooting and racing.

He retained his membership of Enniskillen Rugby Football Club and The Yacht Club, was Vice-President of the Military History Society of Ireland and was a keen Mason.
He died at Walton on Thames on April 23, 1971.


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27/6/06

Brothers in arms died side by side in battle

All the men of the Somme were, in a matter of speaking, brothers in arms. For many families, however, it had a more literal truth with the loss of two or more sons. STEVEN MOORE tells of some of these tragedies

BROTHERS Robert, Andrew, David and Herbert Hobbs were inseparable, enlisting together in the Ulster Division on its formation and serving together in the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers. On July 1,1916, they left the trenches north of the River Ancre, advancing into a hail of German machinegun fire that rapidly increased as the division to their left were beaten back. As the remnants of the 108th Brigade made its way back to its own lines, giving up their meagre and short lived gains, the survivors left behind the heaped bodies of their comrades.

Back home in Armagh, the telegram boys were rushed off their feet delivering their dreaded black-rimmed messages. At Andrew's home in Union Street where his wife Elizabeth and widowed mother lived, the knock at the door brought tragic news - three of the brothers had been killed and the fourth lay wounded. Robert, Andrew and David Hobbs have no known graves, with their names inscribed on the Thiepval Memorial, just a short distance away from where they fell.

The loss of more than one son was, sadly, a common occurrence during the Great War.

The Angus brothers, from Bangor, died within weeks of one another. Blair, the youngest of the three, was killed on the first day of the Somme battle.

Robert, at 23, the middle child, died just over a week later, also on the Somme, while James, serving with a Canadian unit, was killed at Vimy Ridge in early September, 1916.

The Love family from Downpatrick sent all eight sons off to war. Three didn't return, including two killed on the Somme.
A fourth. Sergeant William Love, was severely wounded early in the war and was nursed at home in Scotch Street, Downpatrick, but died in May, 1919, and was buried in Down Cathedral New Cemetery.

Frank Skelton, who had been a prominent UVF member before the war, was sent home to Clones to die, having been severely wounded while serving with the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers. He passed away on June 8,1916, and is buried at St Tighernach Church of Ireland in the border town. Three months later, his parents received word of the death of his brother Private Gibson Fitzgerald
Skelton, of the 10th Canadian infantry, who was killed on September 12 on the Somme.

John Orr, of Ballywhisken, Millisle, Co Down, had five sons, a brother and three half-brothers in the services, of which three were killed - his son Andrew serving with the Canadians, his brother Hugh, with the Highland light Infantry and a half-brother Francis, with the Royal Irish Rifles.

Two of Belfast man Arthur Newell's threenserving sons were already dead, one killed in July 1915 and the second in March of
the following year, when he received word that his surviving boy had been wounded on the Somme. He recovered only to be
killed in action in August, 1917.

The widowed Mrs Hamill, of Finlay Street, Ligoniel, Belfast, lost two sons, one of whom, 21-year-old Rifleman Samuel George Hamill, of the 13th Royal Irish Rifles, died on the Somme. A third son was wounded.

Brothers Joseph McCann, of the 10th Royal Irish Rifles, and William, 5th Seaforth Highlanders, from Ravenscroft Street in Belfast, died a month apart on July 1 and August 2,1916, respectively. The loss was felt as much across the officer class of the Army.

Lieutenant Holt Montgomery Hewitt, of the 109th Machine Gun Corps, was killed on July 1,1916, and lies in Mill Road Cemetery, next to the Ulster Tower. He was 29 and had played half-back for Bangor and North of Ireland rugby clubs.
His younger brother, Second Lieutenant William Arthur Hewitt, 23, of the 9th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, died the same day and is commemorated on the nearby Thiepval Memorial.
On July 6 Lieutenant-Colonel Ricardo wrote to the family: "Your little lad Willie led his platoon over our parapet, and the last I saw of him was his happy smile as I wished him luck.
"They got across to the German trenches, in front of which they came under an appalling machine-gun fire. Your lad was hit, and Sergeant Lally, who is not in hospital wounded, was with him when he passed over."
A third brother, Lieutenant E H Hewitt, of the 4th King's Own (Royal Lancaster) Regiment, had been killed a year earlier in
May, 1915.

The Wedgwood brothers both died on July 1. Second Lieutenant Philip E. Wedgwood, of the 16th Royal Irish Rifles, was as "brave as a lion" according to the Rev Canon R G S King.
The body of his brother, 22-year-old Lieutenant Gilbert Colclough Wedgwood, of the 109th Machine Gun Corps, was never recovered.
Canon King, writing to the men's parents, said of Philip: "He was in the German trenches, and was taking prisoners in the dugouts.
"He and his party had bombs with them, and the Germans were at their mercy. He came to a dugout where there were some 20 Germans. He might have killed these but, instead, offered them their lives if they would come out and surrender. "They did so, and all came out. He turned his back for a moment and one of them treacherously shot him dead."

The telegrams telling of the death of Arthur and James Hollywood arrived at their parent's home in Helen's Bay, Co Down, a day apart.
Both had died on July 1, Arthur, 24, as a lieutenant in the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers and 23-year-old James, a second lieutenant with the 12th Royal Irish Rifles.

__._,_.___

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27/6/06

Ulstermen`s charge into history books

The Ulster Division's casualties on the first day of the Somme alone amounted to almost 5,500 in dead, wounded and missing. STEVEN MOORE looks at the part they played in the battle

THERE were nine Irish infantry regiments in the British Army during the First "World War, with several units raised in England claiming strong links to the island. In total they amounted to some 42 battalions on the Western Front, all of which took part in the Battle of the Somme, including two dozen battalions involved in the fighting on the first day of battle, July 1,1916.
Five Irish regiments recruited from the south of Ireland - the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Regiment, the Connaught Rangers, and the Leinster Regiment -while a sixth, the Irish Guards, was based in London.
It was the exploits of the 36th (Ulster) Division, however, which captured the imagination in the Province. Largely made up of volunteers from the pre-war Ulster Volunteer Force, it consisted of battalions of the three regiments which recruited principally in Ulster - the Royal Irish Rifles, the Royal Irish Fusiliers and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.

On the first day of the Somme battle the division faced the German fortresses of Schwaben Redoubt, with the fortified Thiepval village to its right. Together they arguably formed two of the most difficult fortifications attacked on the Western Front that day. The Ulster Division's front was split unequally by the River Ancre. To the north of this natural obstacle was the 108th Brigade, consisting of the 11th (South Antrim), 12th (Central Antrim), and 13th (County Down) Royal Irish Rifles and the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers (County Armagh, Monaghan and Cavan). Hindered by poorly cut wire and fierce German opposition, the brigade found itself under attack on all sides as it moved forward on an ever decreasing front. The failure of the 29th Division assault to their left meant the German guns in Beaumont Hamel were able to turn south on the Ulstermen. The Germans retook their frontline, virtually cutting off any hope of retreat by the forward troops, though some did escape along the river banks.

South of the Ancre the opposition was every bit as great, though the division did manage to gain a better foothold. Here the 107th Brigade, made up of the 8th (East Belfast), 9th (West Belfast), 10th (South Belfast), and 15th (North Belfast) Royal Irish Rifles, and the 109th Brigade, formed by the 9th (County Tyrone), 10th (County Deny), and 11th (Donegal and Fermanagh) Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and 14th (Young Citizen Volunteers) Royal Irish Rifles over ran part of the German frontline.

Colonel Ambrose Ricardo, standing on the parapet of the assembly trench with a loud hailer, encouraged his men forward. "They got going without delay; no fuss, no shouting, no running, everything solid and thorough - just like the men themselves," he later recalled.
"Here and there a boy would wave his hand to me as I shouted 'Good Luck' to them through my megaphone. And all had a cheery face."

Frank Percy Crozier, who later became a brigadier-general but who in 1916 was leading the west Belfast men of the 9th Royal Irish Rifles, spoke of the air "rent with deafening thunder; never has such man-made noise been heard before".
Looking to his right, he realised Thiepval village was still in German hands and that his men would face a withering fire from their flanks as they moved forward. "Again I look southward from a different angle and perceive heaped up masses of British corpses suspended on the German wire in front of the Thiepval stronghold, while live men rush forward in orderly procession to swell the weight of numbers in the spider's web," he later recorded. "Will the last available and previously detailed man soon appear to do his futile duty unto death on the altar of sacrifice? "We march on -1 lose sight of the 10th Rifles and the human corn-stalks, falling before the Reaper."

The division's official history recorded how "flanking machine-gun fire burst out from the dominating position of Thiepval cemetery. The 11th Inniskillings and 14th Rifles, as they emerged from the wood, were literally mown down, and 'No-Man's-Land' became a ghastly spectacle of dead and wounded".

Pausing just long enough to toss grenades into dugouts and tunnel entrances, the first waves of Ulster soldiers had pressed on, attempting to stay on a timetable which required them to be at the German third line by 7.48am.

The men swept across the Schwaben Redoubt, only for those Germans deep inside to emerge later in their rear.
They pushed ahead, their front shrinking all the time, to take the second, third and fourth lines of trenches. An order to postpone the final push was too late in arriving and, in a last desperate effort, the Belfastmen of the 107th Brigade briefly attacked a short segment of the last German trench system after bitter hand-to-hand fighting. This made Ulster Division the only one in the Somme sector to partially achieve all its objectives.

By this time the contest on either flank 1 long been settled in the German's favour and the encroachment of the Ulstermen was getting their full attention. Bullets filled the air from the machine guns firing from Thiepval village to the right and the high ground of Beaumont Hamel on the left. The Germans were reinforcing, with fresh troops arriving at Grandcourt by train. The enemy counterattacked, pushing down from St-Pierre-Divion. Inch by inch the division was forced back, giving up its hard won gains. The survivors found themselves pinned down in a segment of the German frontline trenches.

The 16th Royal Irish Rifles (2nd County Down), the division's Pioneers, attempted to cut a trench across No-Man's-Land but were forced to give up the task because of the weight of enemy fire.

When the division was relieved on July 2-3, it had suffered some 5,500 casualties in dead, wounded and missing, including more than 200 officers. The 8th and 9th Royal Irish Rifles both lost 20 each and none of the remaining battalions, with the exception of the Pioneers, suffered less than a dozen officer casualties.

Divisional commander Major-General Oliver Nugent, from a long-established Co Cavan family, in his Special Order of the Day of July 3,1916, recorded that, in his opinion, "nothing finer has been done in the war than the attack by the Ulster Division on the 1st July".

He added: "The advance across the open to the German line was carried out with the steadiness of a parade movement, under a fire both from front and flanks, which could only have been faced by troops of the highest quality."


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27/6/06

How war saved Ulster from Home Rule crisis



Politics in pre-partition Ireland threatened to bring about civil war but, as Steven moore reports, the outbreak of The Great War changed the situation overnight

ON September 3, 1914, William Hanna emerged from his medical examination to become the first member of the Ulster Volunteer Force to sign up as a soldier in the 36th (Ulster) Division. The 44-year-old veteran of the Boer War smiled broadly as he greeted the waiting Press at Belfast's Old Town Hall.

Earlier in the day Hanna, along with his colleagues in the North Belfast Regiment of the UVF had proudly paraded before Sir
Edward Carson, who had told them:
"You may have many difficulties - you will have many difficulties - you will have plenty of suffering and sacrifice before you, but from what I know of you l am confident that you will acquit yourselves as Irishmen in the field, and above all, as Ulstermen, proud of
your British connection."

The Ulster Division was well and truly on the road to the Somme, but the men of Carson's UVF had already travelled a long
way to reach this point.

For close to 30 years the Liberal Party at Westminster had been trying to return a form of limited self-government to Ireland, a move bitterly resisted by unionists.

While the first two attempts had been repelled byparliamentary means, the Third Home Rule Bill of 1912 had brought about a constitutional crisis in Great Britain and raised the possibility of a civil war or confrontation between the people and the authorities.

Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, by using his Westminster majority and the support of the nationalist MPs and the forced
cooperation of the House of Lords, pushed the Bill through its stages in the face of fierce unionist and Conservative opposition.

In Ulster a series of anti-Home Rule rallies were held to show the strength of public feelings but Sir Edward, ably assisted by Sir James Craig, realised that opposition would have to be harnessed into a form which would be an asset otherwise it could evolved into potentially sectarian violence. The result was the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force, made up of men who had signed the Ulster Covenant and organised into regiments across the nine counties of the Province.

This civilian army, some 90,000 strong by 1914, openly trained on the streets and countryside of Ulster, largely in ordinary clothes though attempts were made at standardising a form of uniform, and "armed" with dummy rifles. In April, 1914, however, the shortage of weapons was solved with the arrival of some 25,000 rifles and three million rounds of ammunition bought in Germany by Belfast businessman and longtime gun smuggler Fred Crawford.

He sailed them into Larne in the Clyde Valley, sending others to ports in Co Down. All the weapons were unloaded that evening by the UVF which, using the guise of a mobilisation training exercise, spirited them away. The authorities, aware that something was going on, concentrated their efforts in Belfast where squads of Royal Irish Constabulary officers and UVF volunteers gently
ribbed each other at the quayside until the arrival of dawn confirmed their would be no weapons seized that night.

Many of those serving in the UVF were former soldiers, and sympathy to the unionist cause was equally strong among serving Army officers. A month before the guns were landed in Ulster what became known as the Curragh Mutiny had occurred, during which almost 60 officers, including Brigadier-General Herbert Gough of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, had offered their resignations rather than
be sent north to coerce Ulster. By August 1914 the Third Home Rule Bill was nearing the completion of its passage through Parliament, with the Government and unionist people of Ulster set on a collision course.

The outbreak of war, however, changed the political picture overnight. The News Letter reported on August 6, 1914: "Yesterday afternoon unprecedented scenes were witnessed in Dungannon, when some thousand Nationalists escorted to the railway station a number of Irish National Volunteers who had been called on to rejoin the colours. "The local Nationalist flute band, playing the 'Marseillaise,' headed the procession, and a large party of the Irish National Volunteers, wearing bandoliers, marched behind.
"On arriving at the railway station the band and Volunteers, assembled on the platform, and as the afternoon mail train steamed off loud cheers were raised for the departing reservists, the band playing 'The girl I left behind me' and 'Auld Lang Syne'. "All the leading officers of the Dungannon Battalion Ulster Volunteer Force have also been called up, including Viscount Northland, Major Alexander, CMG; Major E. Milnes-Gaskell, and Mr Percy Mallet, battalion instructor.

"A large number of Unionist Volunteers assembled on the railway platform to bid farewell to Mr Mallet, battalion instructor, and Mr David Williamson, and Mr Stevenson, second in command, presented Mr Mallet with a purse of sovereigns." The Home Rule Bill was passed into law but suspended for the duration of hostilities. It was ultimately to be overtaken by events with its measures never applied.

After further talks to ensure that the men would not be betrayed in their absence, it was agreed that the men of the UVF would serve together as the 36th (Ulster) Division.

It wasn't only unionists, however, who went to war. John Redmond, leader of the Irish parliamentary party, after attempting unsuccessfully to persuade the Government to allow the Irish Volunteer Force - formed in direct response to the UVF - to form a home guard, give the nod for them to enlist.

Many did and went on to form the basis of the 16th (Irish) Division, among whose ranks were substantial numbers of Ulster nationalists from the likes of west Belfast. Redmond's call was not universally popular, however, and led to a split in the Irish volunteers, with many of those who stayed behind taking part in the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916.


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27/6/06

Men who are sewn in fabric of history
BY GEMMA MURRAY
g.murrayl@newsletter.co.uk

MEMORIES of the part played by Orangemen during the Battle of the Somme went on display yesterday.

A new exhibition focusing on the significance of the date both in terms of the Somme and the Battle of the Boyne was
previewed at the Order's east Belfast headquarters.

David Hume, director of services for the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, said the exhibition is a "must-see" for anyone with an
interest in Ulster history.

He said: "I think it will help to bring the story of July 1 to life for people.
"It is an educational tool for children and young people and it brings together localised stories and the art tradition of the Somme."

Mr Hume said after the First World War many seats were left vacant at Orange Lodge meetings.
"An awful lot of members were lost and this exhibition will ensure they are not forgotten," he said.
"After WWI a lot of banners were dedicated to those who perished.
"There is a man called William McConnell, a WWI veteran who was at the Battle of the Somme, who lived to 101.1 interviewed
him a number of years ago when I worked as a journalist. It was amazing hearing history being told at first-hand.
"He was wounded in the shoulder on the first day at the Somme. When you find out about the experiences they had there, you understand why those who were there refused to talk about it. They couldn't.

"We also have the personal story of Victoria Cross winner Robert Quigg. And Willam McFadzean, who would have lived just up the road from Schomberg House in east Belfast. "It is important to us that individuals' stories are not lost sight of. Those personal stories are very important."

The Rev Martin Smyth said the exhibition, when it is complete, will be unforgettable. "In south Belfast, where I grew up, virtually every home in Blythe Street had a message of a family member killed or wounded in WWI," he said. "Interestingly enough, that was one of the streets that suffered a great deal in World War H with the bombing.
"These memories keep reviving and they challenge us all. "This is a day of memories, not holding bitterness, because we recognise the issues that were there.
"Those who say that Orangemen have no time for Roman Catholic people fail to realise Ulstermen, when their own country was under threat, went to fight against Protestant Germany because they did not want to see totalitarianism controlling the liberties of the
world."

Mr Hume said that contrary to some reports, the Orange tradition is very much alive and well in Northern Ireland.
"Although the exhibition is looking into the past, we are also looking into the future," he said.
"We see great vibrancy within the institution with a lot of new members coming in. The Order is not in decline.
"We see this exhibition as a means of putting out our history to the community."


Broken Hearts on the blackest day
Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 09:10 AM Reply with quote Report Post
Broken Hearts on the blackest day
NEIL GRIFFITHS

THE WHISTLES blew on the morning of 1 July 1916, ordering the 100,000 troops from their trenches. After five days of shattering British artillery bombardment, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the Army's blackest day ever, had begun.

Among the assault troops on the 14-mile front were eight members of the Heart of Midlothian Football Club who were now in the uniform of the 16th Battalion The Royal Scots. Dozens of British sporting clubs were represented in the war, however Hearts were the only one to join up en masse – 15 athletes in total – and they were to pay dearly for their patriotism.

Ceremony to pay tribute to the capital's fallen Somme heroes
Edinburgh Evening News
8 June 2006

Precisely 90 years later their sacrifice is being honoured by a group from Edinburgh in a service of remembrance to be held in the tiny northern French village of Contalmaison. The hamlet is home to the 16th Royal Scots memorial, a 14-foot high Scottish cairn built by Scots in 2004. Among those paying their respects will be fans and directors of both Hearts and Hibernian football clubs along with families and representatives of the military and Royal British Legion Scotland.

When the Hearts captain, Sgt Duncan Currie, led his men over the top with team-mates Private Harry Wattie, Private Ernest Ellis and L-Cpl James Boyd, they were typical of the burgeoning units of civilian-soldiers who made up the Minister of War Lord Kitchener's "New Armies" – earnest volunteers ready to sacrifice everything for King and Country.

The battalion also included footballers from Hibernian, Falkirk and Raith Rovers with members of Watsonians Rugby Club, giving it the nickname the Sportsman's Battalion, though it was better known as McCrae's Battalion for the man who led it, Sir George McCrae.

"Seventy-five football teams were represented," says Jack Alexander, author of McCrae's Battalion: "Everything from top professionals to players in the Shop Assistants' League, but everyone was proud to be from Edinburgh."

As the battle continued an enormous explosion hit their immediate front. A field-size crater suddenly appeared. It was all that remained of the Lochnagar Mine, a reassuringly Scottish name for a massive underground evacuation filled with explosive that was detonated under the German lines. There were five such mines, taking a year to create at vast expense. Upon detonation thousands of the enemy were killed but the advantage could not be pressed home. Things were already going badly wrong.


The unveiling ceremony in 2004 of the Memorial cairn at Contalmaison.
Picture: Getty Images
The artillery barrage moved forward in 100 yard jumps, leaving the infantry far behind and, dismayingly, past the German front-line trenches before the British could reach them. The race for the parapet was won by the German defenders who had been safely sheltering in deep bunkers. The oncoming British were gunned down as they marched in slow waves, a hundred yards apart as if on parade but half-deafened and loaded under 60lbs of equipment.

Three of the Hearts footballers were killed almost instantly, along with three-quarters of their battalion. Alongside, thousands floundered and gasped their last in a hail of bullets. The day's total casualty figure of 57,470 still haunts the nation. Of that total 19,290 were killed. The fourth Hearts player, Sgt Currie, would die later in battle.

Though Edinburgh-born commander Gen Sir Douglas Haig had sent a telegram to his wife describing the "very successful attack this morning", in truth it went terribly for his men. The battle ended four months later with the British death total at 150,000. By comparison, total military deaths in the whole of the Second World War were 398,000. The Somme was an indecisive battle in an indecisive war, but its aftershock remains on the edge of folk memory.


George Foulkes, then Hearts chairman, attends the unveiling ceremony.
Picture: Getty Images
The bodies of the four team-mates were never found and their names now appear on the Thiepval Memorial in Somme along with 72,080 others of the British Empire who have no known graves. Of the 15 Hearts footballers who enlisted, seven died in action.

Alexander, the author, says: "All of Scotland should share a pride in the deeds and sacrifices of this unique battalion."

Erskine Hospital was built as a direct consequence of the many injured from the Somme battle. Erskine still has premises in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The hospital's chief executive and former Royal Scots commanding officer Col Martin Gibson adds: "The men's courage was remarkable, especially when you remember that as volunteers they didn't have to be there. Scotland still remembers them."

The poignant Contalmaison ceremony shows that the tragedy of 90 years ago has not been forgotten.

Neil Griffiths is editor of the Royal British Legion Scotland's journal, the Scottish Legion News.


Walking in my grandfather's footsteps
http://news.bbc.co.u.../uk/5098146.stm

Neil McGurk, an engineer from Cambridgeshire, is about to take part in a five-day commemorative march in France to mark the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme.

Neil McGurk (left) and his grandfather Horace Clark (Photos courtesy: Neil McGurk)
Neil McGurk in reproduction uniform (left) and his grandfather Horace
Re-enacting historical events is a favourite hobby of Neil's. But this march is a personal pilgrimage as he retraces the footsteps of three of his ancestors.

William, Ernest and Horace Clark, all fought in the Great War but only Neil's grandfather Horace survived.

Horace lived with Neil and his parents in the family home in Middlesbrough, but he never spoke about the war - the memories were too much to bear - and he died in 1977.

So Neil has had to piece together his family's role in the Great War himself - a daunting task bearing in mind that most World War I military service records were destroyed by World War II bombing.

"The death roll for William Clark is were this all started. A couple of months ago this was all I knew about my great uncle.

Map of the marcher's route along the 1 July front line
"He had been killed in the Great War and had been a Corporal in the Durham Light Infantry."

In the days leading up to the commemorative march he has been sifting through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, census records, and old family photos. He has also visited his grandfather's grave, which to his great surprise, mentions his great uncles Ernest and William.

William's service number indicates he joined up before 1914, as a part-time soldier in the 1st/5th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. He was a stretcher-bearer and was killed on 17th September 1916 aged 27. His brother Ernest had died in January of that year.

Neil has also been getting his reproduction uniform and kit ready for the five-day march, undaunted by the prospect of living the life of a Great War soldier.

"It's a chance in a lifetime. I think these sort of things are worthwhile doing because the number of veterans are becoming fewer and fewer," he told the BBC News website.

"For me it's less about the politics [of war], more about the sacrifice of those people who were swept up in it. It makes me realise how lucky I was to have been born. My grandfather survived, and so I am here."

The route will follow roughly the front line of 1 July 1916. At each halt he will help set up a 1916 Living History camp which will be open to the public in the afternoon.


Daily rations for an infantryman
Meat - fresh (1lb) or corned beef (3/4lb)
Bread, 1 1/4lb, or 3/4lb biscuit or flour
Bacon, 4oz
Cheese, 2oz
Fresh veg, 8oz or dried, 2oz
Tea, 5/8oz
Jam, 2oz
Butter, less than 2oz
Sugar, 3oz
Oatmeal/Rice, less than 2oz
Salt 1/2oz
Mustard, Pepper
Condensed milk
Pickles 1oz weekly

Total calories: 4,232

Source: National Army Museum

Neil and his fellow re-enactors are being encouraged to experience as much as they can of life as a "Tommy". They will dress in period uniform and eat standard rations. They will even wash their clothes in buckets and hang them out using period clothes pegs.

Members of the public can join the march or send Great War style letters or appropriate presents to the troops from home. These will be distributed and those that receive a message from "home" will write back.

There will be some concessions to modern living - portable toilets and showers, for one, and tents and other heavy equipment will be moved by 21st century vans. Neil will be allowed a mobile phone so he can let us know how he's coping with life as a Great War soldier.

The march ends on Friday 30 June and the following day there will be a memorial service at Thiepval attended by Prince Charles.

There, Neil hopes to find his great-uncle's name, Corporal William Clark, engraved on the world's largest British war memorial.

You can follow Neil's progress on the Somme march by reading his online diary over the next few days. There will also be live coverage of the march on BBC News 24 and the BBC's One and Six O'Clock News throughout the week.


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26/6/06

Battle is charged with meaning for many people

THE significance of the battle for Northern Ireland should not be underestimated, according to historian Philip Orr.
He said: "The Somme is still charged with meaning for many people, many years on."
The author of The Road to the Somme recalled the day in August, 1915, when 17,000 Army recruits marched past Belfast City Hall.
It was an impressive show of strength at a time when few would have foreseen the brutal reality of trench warfare.
Mr Orr said: "No-one who watched those fresh-faced young soldiers would ever forget the sight."
He said that Ireland was simmering under a Home Rule crisis and, as a result, a paramilitary people's army, the UVF, was already in place.
The Ulster Division was trained at Clande-boye, near Bangor, Co Down, Ballykinler, near Newcastle, Co Down and Pinner, near Bundoran, Co Donegal-Coming from a society bitterly divided by religion, many of soldiers were baffled by what they found in France.
Mr Orr said: "It did come as a surprise to see Catholic shrines everywhere.
"They were defending the Catholic French against the German Protestants."
Some troops held Orange lodge meetings in the trenches.
Mr Orr quoted moving accounts from men in the front line.
One soldier told how hundreds of Ulstermen were mown down by machine-gun fire as they raced across no-man's land at 7.30am - zero hour - on July 1.
__._,_.___

In the name of my grandfather
Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 06:11 PM
The Battle of the Somme has special resonance in Northern Ireland, which produced so many of the young men who fell on this infamous field of combat. On this, the 90th anniversary of the battle, Alf McCreary is undertaking a personal pilgrimage to Northern France to pay tribute to the suffering endured by his grandfather, Thomas McCreary, who survived, and the hundreds of thousands of others who didn't
29 June 2006

This weekend, along with thousands of people from across Britain and Ireland, I will be commemorating the 90th anniversay of the Battle of the Somme on the once bloody battlefields of northern France.

I will be on a personal journey of remembrance for my grandfather, Thomas McCreary, who fought at the Somme on July 1, 1916, but who - unlike hundreds of thousands of others - survived the terrible carnage.

My pilgrimage will also pay tribute to all the fallen of the First World War, which was one of the most catastrophic conflicts in history.

Thomas McCreary was a soldier with the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and although he survived the war he rarely talked about it. When he died my mother gave me his medals, which I keep in a framed presentation box in my home as a tangible reminder of what he and so many others went through.

At the end of each annual Remembrance Sunday, I place my poppy beside his medals as my own act of remembrance. People may regard me as sentimental, but I believe such things are important.

My son Matthew will also be with me at the Somme on Saturday - which is also the first birthday of my first grandson. He lives in Sydney, Australia, and he is called Thomas, after his great great grandfather.

Again, such details are unimportant to the outside world, but they are part of the deep personal history of every family as the generations move on.

The details of my grandfather's service in the First World War are sketchy because men in those days did not regard themselves as heroes, or worthy of special attention. They had a job to do, however dangerous, messy or dirty, and when it was over they came home and made the best of what was left.

He spent the rest of his life working as a civil servant in Newry, with regular visits to Crossmaglen and Forkhill. Sometimes, however, he would talk briefly to me about his war, when I was a student and old enough to share a beer with him on a weekend visit to home.

I realised then that this was history in the telling, and if I did not pay attention to what my grandfather was saying, he would take his memories to the grave and his story would be lost forever. I am sure that many families were exactly the same.

Recently, I talked to several people who were also planning to visit the battlefields and the war cemeteries of northern France, some to visit the graves of relatives long gone. The blood and sacrifice of the Somme and other battles are lodged deeply in the psyche of this island, north and south, and many younger people feel the need to touch the hand of history that fell over that beautiful part of France with such devastating suffering and loss.

My grandfather came from the Glenanne-Markethill area of south Armagh. He volunteered for Army service at the start of the war because his younger brother Sandy had joined up under-age and their mother was heartbroken. I am not sure how they managed to make the swap, or what the enlisting sergeants thought, but it worked anyway.

Before being shipped off to France, Tommy McCreary trained with the other raw recruits at Clandeboye. He told me later that when Sir Edward Carson came to visit them one afternoon, they were not exactly overwhelmed. When the news about Carson's presence filtered into the tent, one young fellow yelled out: "To hell with Carson!" My grandfather always laughed at the memory.

During the war he had acted as a stretcher-bearer at the Somme, which was a particularly dangerous role, and he was once billeted in a French chateau and slept on silk sheets while wearing a muddy uniform. Near the end of the war, he was captured by the Germans and forced to work in a salt mine.

After the Armistice, he was shipped back home, and that was it. For most of the rest of his life, his war was kept firmly in the background.

The only exception was on Remembrance Sunday, when he paraded with the local British Legion to the Cenotaph in my native village of Bessbrook. This annual ritual began the evening before, partly because he was an old fashioned Presbyterian and he would never clean his shoes on a Sunday.

Each year, he marched straight and proud, with his beloved soft hat brushed and his medals gleaming, until he felt that he was too old to do so. He was a small man physically, but to me he was always a person of stature.

Each year he was joined on parade by his son-in-law Denzil (Dave) Jones, a Welshman who was married to my Auntie Jean and who had fought in the Second World war in North Africa and then Burma. They were just two ordinary men, but like so many thousands of others they were extraordinary, because they had lived through such remarkable experiences in two of the most traumatic wars in the history of the world.

Now, every year, I try to attend the Services Club dinner at Queen's University, Belfast, and also the Remembrance Day service at the city's Cenotaph - or wherever I happen to be. This is a tribute not only to my grandfather and my other relatives, but also to those who suffered so much in wars which the younger generations can only read about. They belong to history, but to my mind it should remain '