User:finbarroreilly Date:28/06/2006 Time:22:03:01Edition:29/06/2006 Examiner LiveXX-2906 Page:8Color:

XX1 - V1

8 NEWS

Irish Examiner
Thursday 29.06.2006

The forgotten army

In the last part of our series on the battle of The Somme and Irish soldiers in World War I,
Allan Prosser looks at how the conflict, and its participants, are remembered in Ireland

Irelands Somme heroes deserve to be remembered

N the small town of

Les Vans, in the middle of the mountainous region of the Ardche,
a statue dominates the market square. It portrays a
young man, fatally wounded and in the throes of
death. The nameplate in
front of it says, simply, The
Somme.
In Beaumont Hamel, in
Picardy, in the middle of a
battlefield, a giant caribou
looks toward Canada and
guards the scene where 670
men of the Newfoundland
Regiment were cut down
on July 1, 1916.
Behind the cathedral in
Ypres, Belgium, 125 miles
north of Guillemont, you
can find the Munster Cross.
Paid for by the people of
the province and Cork, its
capital city.
And, in the tiny Somme
village of Sailly-Sallisel, the
most heart-rending memorial of them all. Une
paysanne kisses the empty
greatcoat of her lost husband. Victime de la guerre.
Many war memorials are
not great art. But this is.
Meanwhile, in Cork, at
the head of South Mall, the
citys First World War
memorial is surrounded and
hidden by builders huts
and a chain link fence.
Even on the 90th anniversary of The Somme, it is
closed to the public. Twenty yards away, a memorial
to the Wars of Independence heroes is open to all.
A metaphor for the prevailing Irish attitude to the
soldiers who fought in the
Great War, this tale of two
monuments tells its
own story not only to overseas visitors, but to the
descendants of the
thousands of volunteers who left
Cork for the battlefields of France
and Belgium.
Of course, Ireland has its War
Memorial Gardens, close to the
Phoenix Park,
which were designed by Sir Edward Lutyens
architect of the
chilling arch at
Thiepval on The

Somme, which carries

in depressing mathematical
uniformity the names of
72,000 men who were lost,
but never found, in that
terrible battle.
The Lutyens Gardens
were completed in the early
1930s, but allowed to fall
into a scandalous state of
disrepair and had to be rescued by Garret Fitzgeralds
government, who paid a
subsidy for their recovery.
While most European
capitals have memorials in
their city centre to honour
their lost sons, proposals to
locate something on behalf
of the Irish dead of the
Great War have never found
favour. You can celebrate
Oscar Wilde and Molly
Malone but not the humble
private who gave his life at
Passendale; or Ginchy; or
Langemark; or Ronnsoy.
In St Stephens Green,
there is a bust to the nationalist, poet, and UCD
professor Tom Kettle, but
you will have to look hard
to find it.
Tom Kettle is also remembered in the major
Irish memorial in Europe,
the Island of Ireland Peace
Park (Pirc Siochna
dOilen na hireann), located at Messines in Belgium.
This was the scene of
perhaps the greatest feat of
arms in the Great War by
the Irish, when the Protestant 36th Division and the
Catholic 16th Division
combined to overcome immensely strong German positions on high ground, thus
fulfilling the vision of nationalist MP John
Redmond of Ulster
shaking hands with
Co Cork.
One of the names
on the Thiepval
Memorial on The
Somme is Private
James Kelly from
Mill Street in
Middleton who
was 15 when he
enlisted for the 6th
Connaught
Rangers. He was
one of seven
members of his
battalion killed by
artillery fire as
they advanced towards Ginchy on

Q: What happened to
the soldiers after the
war?
A: They returned home to
Ireland to a country which
was to be partitioned, and
then divided again by a
civil war. Some were
viewed with suspicion and
hostility for their wartime
role with the British Army
and at the
height of the
Black and Tan
Terror it was,
perhaps, prudent not to advertise a war
record too
prominently. It
is estimated
that as many as
200 former servicemen were assassinated
as suspected informers by
the IRA between 1919 and
1922. William McPherson
of Mallow was shot
through the chest and a
message pinned to him:
Spies and informers in
Mallow beware. Even 65
years after The Somme Sir
Norman Stronge was killed
with his son, and his
home, Tynan Abbey, destroyed by fire two days
before his 87th birthday.
So men such as these survived the war, but not the
peace. Other ex-soldiers,
joined the forces of the
Free State. Others such as
Tom Barry and Emmet Dalton took their wartime experience into the IRA.

sor Castle where they remain today.

Q: How many VCs were
won at the Somme by
the Irish?
A: There were 51 Victoria
Crosses awarded during
the Battle of the Somme of
which 10 went to men of
Irish blood.

Q
&A

The Somme memorial in Les Vans, in the Ardche region of France. Below left: une paysanne kisses the empty
greatcoat of her lost husband on the WWI monument in Sailly-Sallisel, France.

Q: How did the population of Ireland honour

their soldiers upon their
return?
A: Initially there were remembrance services held
every year around the
country, and the 16th Division Memorial Cross from
Guillemont/Ginchy was
temporarily erected on College Green, Dublin. Thousands of poppies were
sold and in 1925 130,000
attended a commemoration in College Green
which was disrupted by a
Sinn Fin protest.

Clockwise from left: Corks World War I

memorial on South Mall; the Island of
Ireland Peace Park at Messines in Belgium;
the Munster Cross in Ypres, Belgium, paid
for by the people of the province and Cork,
its capital city.
September 8. He had
joined up with his cousin,
Bill Cahill, who had been
wounded five days earlier in
the attack on Guillemont.
The two cousins died with-

in hours of each other.

Not far from Messines is
the hamlet of Poelkappele.
In a military cemetery there
you may find a grave numbered 6322 in which is

buried a Private John Condon, from Wexford. This

may not be his real name,
but what is known about
him is that he was 14 when
he died. That he was Irish

is interesting. That he is the

youngest known soldier to
be killed on the Western
Front is truly tragic. And
for a nation such as Ireland,
worth remembering.

Q: What happened to
the regiments?
A: They marched out of
history with the creation of
the Free State and handed
over their colours at Wind-

Q: How can I
find out
about my relatives who
participated
in the Great
War
A: The Commonwealth
War Graves
Commission
(www.cwc.org) is a good
starting point if you have
details of where he fell. If
his grave was unmarked
his name may be recorded
on the Thiepval Memorial
on the Somme, or the
Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium. The staff at the
Somme Heritage Centre
(www.Irishsoldier.org) are
extremely helpful. There
are also associations you
can try: Royal Munster
Fusiliers Association, 86
High Meadows, Gouldavoher, Limerick; Royal Dublin
Fusiliers Association, 11
Ayrfield Court, Ayrfield,
Dublin 13; Connaught
Rangers Association, Forest Row, Boyle, Co.
Roscommon. Western
Front Association, Republic
of Ireland branch, 49 Killarney Heights, Bray, Co.
Wicklow.
Q: Were any Irishmen
executed for desertion?
A: During the Great War
346 officers and men were
executed for a range of offences including murder
and it is calculated that 26
were of Irish blood. At
least seven were shot
during the Somme offensive. This is a controversial
area and in the early part
of the 20th century little
was understood about
shell shock or battle fatigue. Surprising, perhaps,
is that the number is so
low given that the British
Army had nearly five million men under arms by
the end of 1918.

It is not too late to celebrate the names unmade...

TS A paradox. What the Irish

soldiers, took to the battlefields,
more than any other nation, was
their language.
And yet, where is the iconic poetry
of the First World War to match those
magic English names of Brooke, Sassoon and Owen? A visit to the Peace
Park in Messines in Belgium, a foreign field that is forever Ireland, reveals some lines from To My Daughter Betty, The Gift of God by Tom
Kettle, of The Royal Dublin Fusiliers:
Know that we fools
Died not for Flag, nor King,
nor Emperor But for a dream,
born in a herdsmans shed
Irish soldiers, South and North, volunteering for the British Army, were
often fighting for the hope of a free
country. Or, if not, they were fighting
to remain part of the British Empire.
Or, they were refusing to enlist, instead volunteering to resist British rule
within Ireland and preparing for the
Easter Rising.
It was a veritable tornado of volunteers, that was the truth, writes Sebastian Barry in his recent novel A Long,
Long Way. He draws attention to the
bravery of those who fought against
Germany. While he understands why
those soldiers were ignored in the aftermath of the war, it seems as if he
wants to give them back their voices.
There are two connected questions
to explore. Why were the brave soldiers of the Great War ignored by the
Irish writers who were their compatriots? And why has Irish English, that
most melodic of English dialects, not
been employed to celebrate their
heroism and mourn their deaths? Sebastian Barrys novel addresses both
these questions.
In A Long, Long Way, shortlisted
for the Man Booker Prize, Barry tells
the story of The Royal Dublin
Fusiliers.
He writes a lyrically and poetically

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Editorial team: Dermot Ahern, Josephine Fenton, Allan Prosser.

Grateful thanks to: The Somme Heritage
Centre (www.Irishsoldier.org) ; The Imperial War

Irish literature by volunteers who fought in the First World War is

worth celebrating, writes Josephine Fenton
about their lives and deaths at the
Front.
Barrys main character, Willie
Dunne, is a timid, undersized,
Catholic boy from Dublin. He joins
up, mainly because he is too short to
be a policeman. The British Army
isnt so fussy.
Others of Willie Dunnes contingent enlist for similar unthinking reasons.
But Jesse Kirwan of Cork city knew
exactly what he was doing: some of
us said that we would do what Redmond said, and fight as Irish soldiers,
you know, to save Europe. It is only
when they start shooting the leaders
of the Easter Rising, that Kirwan
starts to have his doubts. An Irishman cant fight this war now. Not after those lads being executed, he
states.
The Irish were fighting the Great
War. Even non-Irish regiments contained large numbers of Irishmen.
Some Irish expats, as Michael Longley
explains in his poem Wounds, were in
the wrong queue and joined the London Scottish.
The Irish had long been the largest
non-British contingent of the British
Army and many soldiers who came
from far-flung parts of the Empire,
such as Australia and America, had
Irish names and Irish forebears.
Barry says, we were used to calling
these men not Irish, against Ireland,
even traitors to Ireland, but the music
of their language makes that unprovable; their old music proves them,
their old talk sanctifies them.
So Barry, at least, has laid aside the

self-censorship which prevents Irish

It is as if he blanked out his youth as a
writers from writing about the First
soldier and ignored his skill as a poet.
World War.
And so we look forward in time for
But what about other writers? Tom
political wounds to heal. Sebastian
Kettle was killed in September 1916.
Barry toured Ireland reading from A
Another poet, Francis Ledwidge
Long Long Way. He speaks of his
from Slane, Co Meath, wrote about
wonder at his audiences acknowledg200 poems, of
ment of their neglect
which fewer than
of the forgotten solnine deal explicitly
diers and says that the
with the Great War.
listeners seemed to
Instead, Ledwidge
understand, identify
uses the voices and
with and salute Willie
sounds of rural IreDunne and his
land to lament the
fr iends.
loss of life: He shall
Michael Longley
not hear the bittern
takes the lead in the
cry, In the wild sky
revival of the genre,
where he is lain,
perhaps? His poems,
Nor voices of the
Wounds and Last Resweeter birds
quests are studied for
Above the wailing
the Leaving Certifiof the rain.
cate. But then hes
Ledwidge was
from Belfast, and
killed in 1917.
Northern Ireland has
Thomas Macalways celebrated the
Greevys poem, De
dead with memorials
Civitate Hominum,
and remembrance
which records his
days.
observation of an
As Donegal-born
English plane being Sebastian Barrys Man Bookplaywright Frank
er-nominated A Long, Long Way: McGuinness says, I
shot down, is distanced not only by a tornado of volunteers.
discovered that every
its lack of immediatown in the North of
cy but also by time of composition, in Ireland has a war memorial. Every
that it was written ten years after the
town. I suddenly realised how deeply
war ended.
WWI had affected every family in
MacGreevy went to live in England
Ulster.
and then in Paris, in the great Irish
Longleys In Memoriam inspired by
tradition of Synge, Joyce and Beckett,
his fathers deathbed confessions is an
and thus became geographically disextraordinary poem. It details shrapnel
tanced from his North Kerry origins.
injuries to the testicles, and ponders

on the fact that he, Michael, might

not have been conceived. Then, the
poem chronicles how his father
sought girls behind the lines to rekindle his sexual function. Longley celebrates these lost wives who rescued his
future genes from no-mans land.
From Michael Longleys latest collection, Snow Water, comes another
unusual poem, The Front.
I dreamed I was marching up the
Front to die.
There were thousands of us who
were going to die.
From the opposite direction, out of
step, breathless, The dead and wounded came, all younger than my son,
Among them my father who might
have been my son.
Whats it like? I shouted after the
family face.
Its cushy, mate! Cushy! my father-son replied.
They were so young, for the most
part, those Irishmen who marched
away to die. And when the poem is
read in conjunction with Longleys In
Memoriam we realise how many unborn sons and daughters followed
their young fathers-to-be to their
graves in the filth and mud or the heat
and dust of those great battles.
Frank McGuinness, on the other
hand, with an Irish Catholic background wrote Observe the Sons of
Ulster Marching Towards the Somme,
in 1985. This is a play about eight
Northern Irish Protestants, seven of
whom die in the heat and dust of the
morning of July 1, 1916.
What I wanted was to write a play
with a big theme, and this was a sub-

ject waiting to be explored. You must

remember that in Ireland when I grew
up, almost nothing was taught about
World Wars I or II. To serve in those
wars was regarded as unpatriotic, almost, McGuinness said.
Seamus Heaney also writes in
mourning for those who died and
seem forgotten, in his poem, In
Memoriam Francis Ledwidge. He
recognises the difficulties that the Irish
have had with remembering their lost
soldiers: In you, our dead enigma, all
the strains Criss-cross in useless equilibr ium.
These lines seem to acknowledge
the ambiguity of Irish feelings, pointing out the irreconcilable cross-hatching of political ideas stretching from
pre-1914 to the present day.
Ledwidges poem Soliloquy should,
perhaps, have the final word. The
poem belittles the voice of the poet in
comparison with the heart of the soldier.
Ledwidge does not reiterate Tom
Kettles idea that the Irish soldiers
who fought were fools.
Nor does he agree with the secret,
bitter words of Christy Moran in A
Long Long Way when he describes
his comrades as these wretched fools
of men come out to fight a war without a country to their name, the slaves
of England and kings of nothing.
He seems to say that, even if the
dream that they fought for is lost,
even if the idea of freedom which
they died for is lost, even if they are
unrecognised and forgotten, the Irish
soldiers of the Great War were great
men.
It is too late now to retrieve a fallen dream, too late to grieve a name
unmade, but not too late to thank the
gods for what is great; a keen-edged
sword, a soldiers heart, is greater than
a poets art.
And greater than a poets fame a little grave that has no name.

Museum; Muse Somme, Albert, France

(www.musee-somme-1916.org); Historial de la
Grande Guerre, Peronne, France (www.historial.org) ; staff at the Ulster Tower, Thiepval,
France; Tom Burke MBE, chairman, The Royal
Dublin Fusiliers Association; John Foley.

Background reading: The Road to the Somme

(Philip Orr, The Blackstaff Press); The Somme
Then and Now, Flanders Then and Now (John
Giles, After The Battle Publications); The Irish on
the Somme (Steven Moore, Local Press Limited);
Irelands Unknown Soldiers (Terence Denman,

Guillemont (Michael Stedman, Leo Cooper London); Bandon District Soldiers Who Died In The
Great War (Bandon War Memorial Committee);
With A Machine Gun to Cambrai (George Coppard, MacMillan Publishers); Battlefields of
Northern France (Michael Glover, Michael

Joseph Ltd); The British Soldier on the Western

Front (Richard Holmes, Harper Collins); Somme
(Lynn McDonald, London).
Further enquiries: If you want to respond to
this series or ask further questions please email:
allan.prosser@examiner.ie

Irish Academic Press); To Win A War (John Terraine, Macmillan Publishers); First World War
(Martin Gilbert, Harper Collins); A Long Long
Way (Sebastian Barry, Faber and Faber); Ireland
and the Great War (edited by Adrian Gregory and
Senia Paeta, Manchester University Press);