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Contents To my daughter Betty, the gift of God ........................................................................... 1 The heroic dead of Ireland – Marshal Foch’s tribute .................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 7 Casualties in Irish regiments on the first day of the Battle of the Somme .................. 10 How The Irish Times reported the Somme .................................................................. 13 An Irishman’s Diary ...................................................................................................... 17 The Irish Times editorial ............................................................................................... 20 Death of daughter of poet Thomas Kettle ................................................................... 22 How the First World War began .................................................................................. 24 Preparing for the ‘Big Push’ ......................................................................................... 26 Divisions in the army .................................................................................................... 31 Why we remember ...................................................................................................... 34 The trouble at home .................................................................................................... 37 Soldiers’ stories ............................................................................................................ 40 Soldiers’ songs .............................................................................................................. 41 Troubled memories of the Somme ............................................................................. 44 The Somme and our buried history ............................................................................. 48 Surprises at Somme commemoration ......................................................................... 50 President leads tributes to Somme war dead ............................................................. 54 Re-examining Ireland’s role in the Great War ............................................................. 56 How unionists and nationalists fought side by side in the first World War ................ 64 An Irishman’s Diary ...................................................................................................... 66 Letters from Willie Redmond reveal pride in Irish at Somme ..................................... 69 1916: A Global History review: Keith Jeffery ............................................................... 71 Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, by Frank McGuinness..................................................................................... 74 Love letters from the front inspires 137-part radio series .......................................... 76 The Somme battlefield: the longest 10 miles in history .............................................. 78 Verdun: hell and patriotism ......................................................................................... 82 School project honours Irish fallen in first World War ................................................ 88 Maj Gen Oliver Nugent: The suspect unionist ............................................................. 91 One for all, all for one: first World War Allies agree military strategy ........................ 97 Otto Dix, artist on the front line ................................................................................ 105 There is no village now, just a hole in the ground ..................................................... 110 Thomas Michael Kettle: an enduring legacy .............................................................. 118 Hollande and Merkel heed lessons of Battle of Verdun ............................................ 124 The green and white armies ...................................................................................... 127 Epic telling of the horrors of the Great War Jean Echenoz ....................................... 129 The Somme: selected stories of the Irish dead ......................................................... 133 Somme: Heroism of Irish remembered at Belfast ceremony .................................... 137 The Somme 100 years on: Search the roll call of the Irish dead ............................... 141 Apocalypse then: Day one of the Somme, 140 to go ................................................ 143 Observe the Sons of Ulster re-enacted in Thiepval ................................................... 146 Somme 100th anniversary: Conspicuous bravery, loyally celebrated ...................... 149 President Higgins: Openness to others must be at heart of remembering .............. 151 A hundred years on, the men of the 36th (Ulster) Division remembered in Thiepval .................................................................................................................................... 153 Leaders unite for 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme ............................. 155 The Irish Times editorial ............................................................................................. 158 To my daughter Betty, the gift of God In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown To beauty proud as was your mother's prime, In that desired, delayed, incredible time, You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own, And the dear heart that was your baby throne, To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme And reason: some will call the thing sublime, And some decry it in a knowing tone. So here, while the mad guns curse overhead, And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor, Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,— But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed, And for the secret Scripture of the poor. Tom Kettle, killed at the Battle of Ginchy, 9 September, 1916 Page | 1 The mad guns: The British expended 1.7 million shells in a week long bombardment of the German lines before the infantry went over the top on July 1st, 1916. “Nothing could survive the bombardment in the area covered by it,” General Sir Henry Rawlinson, the man commanding the British Fourth Army, stated. Unfortunately, the area covered by the shells was too large, many of the shells were duds and the Germans had taken shelter from the bombardment in deep bunkers. Page | 2 One of the few photographs from the first day of the Battle of the Somme show men from the Tyneside Irish brigade going over the top. By the end of the day the brigade had suffered 70 per cent casualties. “It took two years to train them and 10 minutes to kill them,” one observer said. Page | 3 French general Marshal Ferdinand Foch was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in late March 1918. It was at a time when the German Spring Offensive threatened defeat on the Allies. Foch was credited with reversing the German gains and then turning potential defeat into victory. At his command, the Allies launched a 100 day offensive which finally broke the German army and led to the Armistice on November 11th, 1918. At the request of a special correspondent for The Irish Times in Paris, Foch penned this tribute to the Irish men who died in France during the First World War. It was published to mark the 10th anniversary of Armistice Day. The final paragraph is inscribed on a new memorial from France remembering the Irish war dead of the Franco-Prussian War, the first World War and the second World War. The memorial in Glasnevin Cemetery was unveiled by President Francois Hollande in July 2016. The heroic dead of Ireland – Marshal Foch’s tribute Saturday, 10 November 1928 From a special correspondent Today Marshal Foch responded to my request for a special Armistice Day message to the People of Ireland through the Irish Times with the following tribute to the heroism of the Irish race during the world war. “The heroic dead of Ireland have every right to the homage of the living; for they proved in some of the heaviest fighting of the world war that the unconquerable spirit of the Irish race, the spirit that has placed them among the world’s greatest soldiers, still lives and is stronger than ever it was. “I had occasion to put to the test the valour of the Irishmen serving in France, and, whether they were Irishmen from the North or the South, or from one party or another, they did not fail me. “Some of the hardest fighting in the terrible days that followed the last offensive of the Germans fell to the Irishmen, and some of their splendid regiments had to endure ordeals that might justly have taxed to breaking point the capacity of the finest troops in the world. Page | 4 “Never once did the Irish fail me in those terrible days. On the Somme, in 1916, I saw the heroism of the Irishmen of the North and South, and arrived on the scene shortly after the death of that very gallant Irish gentleman Major William Redmond. “I saw Irishmen of the North and