Somme Journey

The whole concept of the Somme is hugely important to the Loyalist community...

Protestant community.

It means so many different things -

sacrifice, loyalty, commitment, pain, sorrow...

..it's so huge.

So really huge within our community.

I think the way the Somme is used by Unionists

is a one-dimensional view of history.

But history is anything but one-dimensional.

It's layered and it's complex.

It has many cul-de-sacs.

It brings you into spaces you didn't want to go in the first place.

I'm prepared to explore because I'm confident.

And Tom's Republicanism isn't contagious.

As an Irish Republican,

I don't adhere to the war aims of the British state.

Nevertheless, I also recognise

that all of those who served on the Western Front,

and who came from this island, are a part of my history.

My sense is there is a change going on within the Irish Republican community about the Great War.

Let's see if I'm right. I'm not going to sit at home and think, "Maybe I'm right."

Let's go and find out. Let's explore.

Switch on the light.

It's quite idyllic at the moment, but I can't imagine what the smell...

-This would have been no-man's-land, wouldn't it?

-It would have been.

You'd have got popped from both sides here.

'The first day of the Battle of the Somme was the most costly day

'in the history of the British Army.

'50,000 casualties killed, wounded and missing were sustained on that day.'

The Ulster Division on the first day of the Somme...

The figures are not specific.

But there were over

5,000 casualties in the Ulster Division

killed, wounded or missing.

There were over 2,000 of those dead.

This is Connaught Cemetery,

in a front line right by Thiepval Wood.

And so is this where they came out to face the German lines?

I understand they burst out of there at 7.30am and attempt to traverse

right to left up Schwaben Redoubt which was held by the Germans.

How many men are in this cemetery?

-I think there's about 1,500 here.

-1,500?!

The British attack was across a long stretch of about 15 miles -

something over 15 miles of the front.

And the British divisions were set along this,

including the Ulster Division, opposite Thiepval which was very heavily defended.

A good many people were under the impression

that the Ulster Division attacked Thiepval village.

They didn't.

It was the 32nd Division on the right

that was to take Thiepval Village.

Over on the left, the 29th Division,

they were to take Beaumont Hamel,

and we were dead in the centre.

The Ulstermen came out of Thiepval Wood towards the German position.

At 7.30am on 1st July, that's when they set off across no-man's land

towards the German positions.

SHELLS AND MORTAR FIRE

So many young men killed.

There was nothing we could do to help them.

They were falling around you but you weren't allowed to stop.

You just had to keep going.

So many young men killed...

Blown to pieces.

The young people laying here are from the laneways and roadways

of the society that I come from.

Innocent, virtuous.

Simply on the basis that they'd never been anywhere.

Never travelled any great distance to be plucked from their homes

and planted down...

willing, in the most part, to do for king and country.

I think one has to say that what happened to them...

absolutely incredible, and I mean incredible.

-See, they came up here.

-They came out of the wood behind us.

-And I imagine it was right across...

-A whole line of men.

-Yeah.

-Aye.

I suppose their sense was that there are plenty of us

and here we go...

-The enemy have been softened up with a bombardment.

-Yes.

But the enemy weren't softened up.

The offensive had been preceded by more than a week's bombardment.

The British high command, and the ordinary British soldier,

had put their faith in the guns,

the 1,500 guns that had fired off millions of shells for a week,

that it would have destroyed the German positions and cut the wire.

In fact, although there were more guns than before,

and the bombardment was bigger than ever before,

it wasn't enough.

It neither destroyed the German position sufficiently well,

nor did it cut the wire.

This local battalion here, the 12th Rifles,

they had the longest stretch of no-man's-land to cross over.

So, they made three charges,

and of course they were slaughtered every time they went out.

In Ballyclare alone that day, out of the small community we had there,

there were 30 men killed and over 100 wounded.

You know, that was awful.

An awful total for such a small community.

Well, isn't it strange that those who did come back didn't want to talk about it?

-Yeah.

-That the horror of it was so deep in them...

You could not not be traumatised by this.

Or brutalised by this.

-And the sense of, in living colour, man's inhumanity to man.

-Mm.

Walking through a butcher's shop.

All of that had to have its..

huge effect on the psychological outcomes.

And then they headed up towards...

-Schwaben Redoubt.

-..Redoubt.

There was a good big fortress that the Germans had built.

They said it couldn't be taken and they were quite definite about that.

Our army commanders were of the same opinion

but it had to be attacked.

And the most peculiar thing about the Somme battle that day,

was the Ulster Division was the only one who reached its objective.

Out of all the divisions that took part in the Somme on that first day,

and they took the place that wasn't supposed to be able to be taken - the Schwaben Redoubt.

In some cases, some of the Ulster units had gone so quickly forwards

that they hadn't mopped up the German trenches behind them.

So they were left very badly positioned,

they were left high and dry without support on each flank.

The divisions to the right of them, the divisions to the left,

did not secure their objectives.

That meant the Ulstermen were open to enfilade fire...

what the soldiers called... from the side.

In my company,

there was only four men left after the battle, including me.

It was terrible

seeing all those young men being slaughtered.

Many of my friends died that day.

They were falling at my feet.

But you couldn't stop. You had to keep moving.

It was terrible.

I was wounded by some shrapnel, but it wasn't too bad.

I was one of the lucky ones.

How we all weren't killed is a mystery.

I suppose it was just luck.

But many weren't so lucky.

What happened here had such a dreadful impact...

..on the streets of the Shankill...

..and the Loyalist areas of the north.

Well, we didn't have CNN or...

The newspapers would have got bits and pieces,

-but then the telegrams started arriving.

-Yes.

-It must have been awful to see a postman turn into your street.

-Aye.

You know, was he going to your door?

You have the harrowing tale of the three Cumber brothers

who probably had never been further than Ballygowan in their lives,

and here they are at the Somme

and they were killed instantly,

together, by the same shell.

Just wiped out.

Their names are on the cenotaph in Cumber.

I think it's awful. Just the sense that this just...wiped out. Gone.

Gone. Never to give seed.

A lineage just stopped.

And a war that they didn't understand.

"Ah, duty, we'll be there, we'll do...we'll follow..."

I couldn't have understood that. And here they are - gone. Just...

Maybe there is some poignancy

in a cemetery being at both the bottom and top of the hill.

I suppose it's where they started - at the bottom.

-This one's at Schwaben Redoubt.

-Yes.

And the Mill Road cemetery.

-How many people did you say were...?

-I think it was about 1,300 soldiers buried...

..in this cemetery.

-In a sense, the root of the battle is to be seen in these stones.

-Absolutely.

-Isn't it? From 1st July.

-Royal Irish Rifles.

-What's his name?

-T Halliday - a rifleman.

I don't comprehend... I can't comprehend.

And yet, I can comprehend better standing here on the terrain,

seeing those names, better than I could before I came.

There's a few insignia. What are they? Royal Irish Rifles?

-Yeah.

-Toman. Aye. Royal Irish Rifles.

-It's a Newry name, Toman.

-Is that where that...?

Aye. We had a lot of Tomans in Newry. Watson...

I, of course, don't adhere to the war aims or the political aims

of a British Government during the First World War.

But I do have a sense here this morning of the loss and the tragedy

that is represented here for Ireland,

on this hill.

If this isn't about the tragedy of war and the futility of violence,

then I'm not sure anybody knows what is.

I come at it from a very political sense,

and seeing this entirety of the Somme experience

to the Unionist community,

it must be very difficult to put that in the context

of the waste of life that took place here on 1st July 1916.

I think there is a piece that needs added as a caveat to all of this.

The Ulstermen didn't die here alone.

And they died in their large numbers, all of them...

..because that's the way the world worked.

So there are lots of... It isn't the simplicity of saying those lives were wasted,

because that's true, and they were.

Doesn't stop one appreciating the determination, the strength,

the valour that was shown by people,

but does connotate for me

how the cannon fodder dies on the whim or the patheticism

of someone else's politics.

They were primarily drawn from the Protestant community.

Many of them, if not most of them,

had served in the Ulster Volunteer Force, which had been established before the war

to secure Ulster within the Union.

An armed, paramilitary force. So they had some military experience.

We're talking here about people who had no concept of the issue of decommissioning.

And who indeed behaved in a traitorous fashion

towards British authority when they ran guns in to Northern Ireland

to defend what they believed to be their freedom, religion and laws.

They would have fought Britain.

Be under no illusion about that, they would have fought Britain.

And then ended up going to fight FOR Britain.

There is a line that people try to extend from the Somme

through to our current conditions.

And in that respect... I hold my hand up,

I was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force.

A modern-day group of people with the same attitudes in terms of duty

and sense, whether you like them or don't like them.

But there is a fundamental difference.

Those men were legitimate.

They were legitimate.

That was a legitimate battle that they took place in from their own context.

It is not the same as a dirty,

stinking little war that we have taken that line from.

There is a difference - a huge difference.

Well, their war was, "Here we are, we're up front, we know you're there, we know we're here..."

"..and our intent is not good towards each other."

Our war was very much about skulking in hedgerows.

About shooting people in the back of the head, rather than advancing towards them.

It has been a dirty, stinking little war

and whilst there are similarities

in terms of human sentiment about why one does one's duty...

..I won't besmirch the name of the 36th Ulster Division,

by suggesting they were the same.

When you go down the Western Front,

you can see where these people fell because the British Army's policy

was to bury the casualties as close to where they died as possible.

Today, these are unbearably beautiful places,

places of peace and stillness in a landscape that seems untouched by war.

And yet, if you look, when you get to the top of the hill and by the Ulster tower,

there is a huge memorial to the missing at Thiepval.

On that huge memorial are 73,000 names of people

who have no known grave.

That have simply disappeared - they were blown to smithereens,

either on the 1st July or on the days, weeks, months that followed.

All of these monuments to that period

are an indictment of failure.

As a Republican, particularly in the context of the waste of Irish lives,

that in a sense is being confirmed for me today.

Where I make contact, first of all, is because I am here.

I think it's around the common humanity of the ordinary soldier,

but also in the suffering of his family,

and the residue that was left in Ireland from these battlefields.

The sorrow and the pain of loss.

David was talking about families waiting or worrying,

or not wanting the postman to call.

But it must have been whole streets

that were afraid when they saw a postman.

Indeed, the telegrams that came from here, didn't just go to the Shankill Road.

They went to Dublin, they went to the Falls Road,

they went all over Ireland.

SHELLS AND MORTAR FIRE

The biggest Irish myth about the Somme,

is that only Protestants and only Unionists fought and died there...

that only Ulster-Protestant blood was shed for the war effort on the Somme.

In fact, many thousands of Irishmen, from the north and south,

Protestants and Catholics, Unionists and Nationalists, fought there

and died there for a variety of reasons,

but they did so believing that what they were doing was the right thing.

I only learned in later life that really it was only ever from my community's point of view,

or at least it seemed that way, that it was only ever about the 36th Ulster Division.

And the 10th and 16th were never mentioned.

Northern Catholics joined the British Army

almost as willingly as their Protestant compatriots in Ireland.

Particularly working-class Catholics from West Belfast.

They didn't, however, join the Ulster Division.

They might not have wanted to join the Ulster Division,

even if they'd been asked.

So the Catholics of West Belfast joined the 6th Battalion, the Connaught Rangers.

The Catholics of the glens of Antrim joined the Cameronians -

they went across to Scotland and joined the Cameronians.

So what you find is that the politics of Ireland found its way

onto the battlefield of the Somme.

In early September, they were involved in an operation to capture two villages,

called Guillemont and Ginchy.

They secured their objectives,

though at the cost of about 2,000 casualties.

"For the glory of God

"and the glory of Ireland" in Gaelic.

"In commemoration of the victories of Guillemont and Ginchy, 1916.

"In memory of those who fell therein and all the Irishmen who gave their lives in the Great War,

"rest in peace."

Well, of course, they were Irishmen,

and they were encouraged to join the British Army by Redmond,

on the basis that the First World War was a struggle for the independence of small nations.

Indeed, was a struggle for Irish independence.

Remember, home rule had been delayed because of the First World War.

And most of these men expected home rule to be put in place

after the war was over.

Tom Kettle was one of the Nationalists.

He had been an MP who fought with the 16th Irish Division

in the Battle of the Somme and died there as well.

And he, reflecting after the Easter Rising,

after fellow Nationalists - men who he had been associated with...

among them were friends of his.

He said they will be remembered, those who fought in Dublin in 1916

will be remembered as heroes.

"If I'm remembered at all," he said, "it will be simply as a bloody British officer."

There can't have been anything more upsetting and painful

than to have returned home from the hell of this

into a society where you were an alien.

And there are comparisons made between the returning Irish and the Vietnam veterans.

That there was no heroes' welcome.

In a way, I think it's worse than that.

They became part of non-history. They were just airbrushed out of history.

Although many of them came back and joined the IRA.

Many would have come back and joined the new Free State Army.

The First World War had not only changed the world,

but it had also changed Ireland.

Home rule had been delayed.

The 1916 rebellion, the Easter rebellion, had taken place...

There was the beginnings of the War of Independence.

And they came back to an Ireland

that really didn't want to know about them or their sacrifice.

There was what you might call a national amnesia.

Or a Nationalist amnesia.

There was no Unionist amnesia

because the exploits of the 36th Ulster Division were celebrated and commemorated continually,

and became part of the "creation myth" of Northern Ireland.

"We have died for the Union, we have died for the British Empire,

"we will remain within the United Kingdom."

It is that sacrifice which then is used

by the early Unionist governments

as a means of consolidating Unionist identity.

This is what we paid in our blood to defend Empire.

It is loyalty to Empire.

And therefore, it is that theme that Unionist governments

begin to weave into the fabric of Unionist life.

I think that I feel British.

I can't imagine that I should factor in whether I feel more British because these people died,

or whether I would have felt less British had they lived.

I think at the end of the day, the waste that we see here

has had an effect on the society that I live in.

When our leadership was constantly complaining, "Well, look what we did for you..."

As the years go on, it was, "Look what my father did for you."

And then, "Look what my grandfather did for you."

Then there comes a time when that isn't able to be said.

I think we need to stand on our own two feet...

Stop using this sacrifice but fully understand this sacrifice

as the cannon fodder that happens when the world gets it wrong.

When we fixate on our narrow politics about why we're here,

then what we do, is perhaps we maybe give some reason or excuse almost,

for this cannon fodder.

SHELLS AND MORTAR FIRE

At the battle of Messines, in June 1917,

the 36th Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division

fought alongside each other for the first time.

Messines was much better planned.

We had more experience.

Somme was our first real taste of action.

And it taught us a lot.

One of the reasons why Messines was such a success,

was that the British generals who planned it were beginning to get the technical details right.

They placed a series of huge mines deep underground -

there were 21 of these.

About a million pounds of high explosive.

And at the moment of the offensive starting, these mines are let off.

LOUD EXPLOSION

The noise would have deafened you.

And you couldn't see a thing in front of you - what with the black smoke.

Some of the men were blown off their feet as they went forward,

but I don't think anyone was seriously hurt.

I was lucky at Messines.

Our gas blew back into our own lines.

And a lot of the men suffered from it.

The gas masks weren't very good then.

The point of the battle of Messines was to capture the high hills, the plateau -

it's not very high - next to Ypres in Messines, which dominated the battlefield.

And the Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division

were given the job of capturing a village called Wytschaete,

or "White Sheet" they called it, which they did very successfully.

There's a road going up into the village

in which the Ulster Division are on one side,

and the 16th Irish Division were on the other side.

And we were sitting in a ring at the entrance to White Sheet,

that was at the beginning of the Battle of Messines.

And I says, "Boys, the crack's great but I'm away for a smoke!"

And I went inside, there was little notches that you could sit in,

so I sat down there and had a smoke.

And I wasn't smoking two minutes, when a high velocity shell burst in the centre of them.

There wasn't a man living. Only myself.

And I was buried up to my waist.

And deaf. For six or seven months, I heard nothing.

And eight dead men - and I was the only one alive.

We saw the same types of headstones down at the Somme,

where both those brave groups of men are represented.

But I found it almost more moving here,

in the sense that it was together.

And as they lie here together, I'd love the luxury of being able to ask a question.

Was it worth it?

Was what you did together, was it worth it?

My mate, big John Hunter...

was wounded in the arm at the Somme on 1st July.

He went out again to the front...

..but he got killed at White Sheet.

He gave me his watch.

Something told him that he was going to get killed that night.

Says I to him, "Have a bit of sense. Nobody knows that."

But he had it in his head.

"See, I'm going to get it up here tonight."

And, by God, he did get it.

-The 16th Irish Division...

-Yeah.

..fought with valour.

Whatever their national perspective, whatever their religion,

the words that stick in my mind for the people who lie here is that,

"They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old."

"Age shall not weary them,

"nor the years condemn."

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

"we will remember them."

The mine crater is now full of water.

It's a nicer place now than it was then.

So...peaceful.

But very sad.

See, in that cemetery

were so many men from the Rifles buried there.

But they are at peace now.

"Royal Irish Rifles".

-"7th June...

-19...

"Known to be buried in the cemetery".

My God. Look at this one.

-"William TH Bridgett".

-That's the one you talked about.

"Royal Irish Rifles. 7th June, aged 20".

"Better to go out with honour

"than to survive with shame".

Why this stone is important to me

is his mother, Annie Bridgett, is buried in the City Cemetery.

Oh, right.

'Well, I do it for West Belfast during the West Belfast Festival.'

I used to go into Milltown Cemetery and do the Republican graves,

until one day I said to myself, "I don't go into the City Cemetery."

So I started to go into the City Cemetery.

What I started to come across

was family inscriptions

of First World War soldiers,

and I've come across about 70 of these inscriptions.

One of the graves that I do on my tour

is a woman called Annie Bridgett.

On her stone, it says, "Ireland's first grand mistress.

"Ireland's first women's Orange Lodge".

But on the side of the stone,

there is an inscription to her son, William Bridgett,

who was killed at Messines.

And it's this, in a way, so an Orangewoman...

leads me into the First World War

and then leads me into the broader picture

of Irish service in the British Army during the First World War.

And that's why I think history is exciting,

because you start off at point A

but you don't quite know where you're going to end up.

And so for me,

it really makes something very real here,

in that there's a bridge between this spot here,

and this grave

and the grave in the City Cemetery on the Falls Road.

Amazing.

-It's another piece of that history that...

-Yeah. Our connection.

Two months after the Battle of Messines,

the Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division

fought together for the second and last time at Langemark,

which was one of those series of engagements

which collectively make up the Battle of Passchendaele.

And Passchendaele is, after the Somme,

the most terrible of all the battles of the Western Front.

SHELLS AND MORTAR FIRE

And there, both the Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division

were torn to bits.

The Ypres battlefield just represented

one gigantic slough of despond

into which floundered battalions, brigades

and divisions of infantry without end

to be shot to pieces or drowned

until at last, and with immeasurable slaughter,

we had gained a few miles of liquid mud.

I'm numbed by what I find here.

There's 12,000 soldiers buried in this graveyard

and another 34,000 whose names are on the screen wall at the back of the cemetery,

and their remains couldn't be found.

And one gets the sense the more I see

of Ypres and the Ypres salient, and indeed the Western Front,

the more I get a sense of thousands and thousands of men

just being poured into a vast mixing machine.

SHELLS AND MORTAR FIRE

One fella, lying down,

I'll never forget the words he said.

"Aye," he says, "how you feeling?"

"Not too well," he says.

"Do you know what I want?" he says.

"I want the Lord to take me out of here."

I find it hugely emotional.

I find the whole concept of Passchendaele hugely emotional.

Um...

Maybe, you know, in a foolish sense,

I picture all of these people standing up.

I'd love to hear those men stand up,

those ranks of now what are gravestones stand up

and give us an appreciation or definition of war...

Because maybe if we heard them...

It might be impossible, but if we heard them,

maybe out adherence to militarism and war might be changed.

And so the curtain fell over this tortured country

of unmarked graves and unburied fragments of men,

murder and massacre...

The innocent slaughtered for the guilty...

The poor man for the sake of the greed of the already rich.

The man of no authority

made a victim of the man who had gathered importance...

..and wished to keep it.

David Starrett, 9th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles.

This is, you know, a journey to the Somme.

In a way, that journey doesn't end,

because I see it in the context of the broader subject

of the history of the island of Ireland,

and indeed the history of the relationship between England and Ireland.

I think the memory of this will be fairly strong in me

for a long time to come.

Wars have to end.

And no matter how cruel and bloody

and enormous this war was, it ended...

..and people had to rebuild.

It was also the recognition that to carry the bitternesses

was to mean further war

and that people had to come to terms with the fact that the war was over.

How do I, as an Irish Republican,

deal with all those Irish men who served on the Western Front,

how do I come to terms with

their sense of duty, the way they saw the world,

the way they saw their commitment?

Because, of course, my experience of the British Army

is a very, very negative experience,

and the experience of my community of the British Army

is very negative.

And so the challenge is coming out of conflict,

is to deal with memory and to find some common ground

and to find a way of dealing with memory that doesn't hurt our dead.

In watching and trying to understand the death, the carnage, the destruction,

it seems strange that out of it what I'd like to create

is peaceful co-existence.

I think the exploration,

whether it be on the Somme or other explorations yet to come...

..are vitally important, I think, for all of us.

What happened to us and what is happening to us?

Two very valid questions.