success north of the Bapaume road that day, and Ulster Tower, a copy of Helen’s Tower at Clandeboye, near Belfast, where the division did much of its training, stands on the ground it captured at the cost of 5,000 of its officers and men.
Yet we must be careful not to jam 10th and 16th Divisions on the one hand, and 36th on the other, into the obvious political niches. Some Irish regiments (notably the Royal Irish Rifles) had always recruited both Catholics and Protestants, and there was more than a little sense of a deep and common Irishness that expunged more superficial divides. ‘Once we tacitly agreed to let the past be buried,’ observed an officer in 10th Division, ‘we found thousands of points on which we agreed.’ The same music could speak to both. When the pipes of the Royal Irish howled out Brian Bora, that tune ‘traditionally played by some Irish Regiments to lift hearts and square shoulders’, in the assault on Guillemont on 15 September 1916, a man did not have to come from the South to feel his spirits soar. And when a northern-raised battalion of Irish Rifles met a southern battalion on the march with its band playing the old rebel air She’s The Most Distressful Country, there were cheers of approval.160
The apotheosis of the fighting Irish came on 7 June 1917 when 16th and 36th Division attacked side by side in 2nd Army’s great assault on Messines Ridge. John Redmond’s brother, Major Willie Redmond MP, who had last spoken in the House of Commons just a month before to demand immediate Home Rule, was, at fifty-six, too old for front-line service. But he begged to be allowed back to his old battalion, 6/Royal Irish, and was hit as he walked forward with it, and the 36th Division’s stretcher-bearers picked him up. The wound would probably not have killed a younger, fitter man, but it was too much for Willie Redmond. A Roman Catholic chaplain told how:
He received every possible kindness from Ulster soldiers. In fact, an Englishman attached to the Ulster Division expressed some surprise at the extreme care that was taken of the poor Major, though no Irish soldier expected anything else, for, after all, Ulstermen are Irish too.161
Father Willie Doyle of 8/Royal Dublin Fusiliers, killed soon afterwards, enjoyed a reputation which went far beyond those who shared his faith. ‘Father Doyle was a good deal amongst us,’ wrote an Ulsterman.
We couldn’t possibly agree with his religious opinions, but we worshipped him for other things. He didn’t know the meaning of fear, and he didn’t know what bigotry was. He was as ready to risk his life to take a drop of water to a wounded Ulsterman as to assist men of his own faith and regiment. If he risked his life looking after Ulster Protestant soldiers once, he did it a hundred times in the last few days. The Ulstermen felt his loss more keenly than anybody and none were readier to show their marks of respect to the dead hero priest than were our Ulster Presbyterians. Father Doyle was a true Christian in every sense of the word, and a credit to any religious faith …162
The stone tower that now stands in the Irish Peace Park on the southern end of Messines, heavy with Celtic symbolism, gives Protestant and Catholic soldiers the recognition they deserve: a recognition mired too long in politics.
The period between the raising of the 1st New Army in August 1914 and the departure of the first of the New Army divisions to France a year later was marked by shortages of weapons, equipment, accommodation and ammunition, and men remembered the sharp contrast between enthusiastic enlistment and the confusion and boredom that often followed. Even joining was not always easy, as Percy Croney discovered when he reported to the recruiting office in December 1914. ‘I took my place in the queue outside,’ he recalled.
Allowed in eight at a time by a smart sergeant, we stood in a row, stripped to the nude and a medical officer gave us a swift examination. The great majority seemed to be passed fit, and redressing we made our way to tables where soldier clerks sat.
‘What regiment do you wish to join?’
‘7th Essex, please, all my mates are in that.’
‘Sorry, 7th Essex is long ago up to establishment, why not join the R.E.s, much better pay and conditions than the infantry.’
‘No, I want to be a soldier.’
‘What about the Royal Field Artillery then, or the Garrison Artillery, a gunner’s life is good and interesting.’
‘No, I want to join my County regiment.’
He at last admitted that the 12th Battalion was not yet quite up to establishment, and I was seen out into the street again, the King’s shilling and 2/9d, one day’s subsistence money and pay rattling in my pocket, and holding in my hand a railway warrant to carry me to Warley Barracks on the morrow.163
The Rain brothers, trying to enlist in a regiment of their choice before conscription overwhelmed them in early 1917, found it even harder. They were too short for the Royal Marine Artillery. Rejected by a Territorial Royal Field Artillery battery at Islington, they went on to try RFA units at Moorgate and Camberwell ‘besides several others’. They managed to pass the medical at Woolwich and then ‘by means of tips’ secured a promise to be enlisted into the Royal Horse Artillery. But they turned out to be too young for that: and the Field Artillery there was full too. Eventually they struck lucky with the Queen’s Westminsters, even if the stew they were served for dinner was ‘so unwholesome that we were unable to eat it’. It was a happy choice, for their training battalion was still sending men to its 1st Battalion in France, and there was a real sense of family feeling and, by this stage in the war, no shortages of weapons or accommodation. Their company commander, Captain Gordon, ‘was an officer of exceptional popularity’, soon to be killed at Cambrai.164
Young Harry Ogle, still undecided about his future (which was in fact to see him go to the front as a private and return as a decorated captain), thought that:
A wave of fear seemed to have spread over the country and young men not in uniform were presented with white feathers by young women (also not in uniform). Men over forty, thinking themselves safe behind ‘important’ jobs, urged those to enlist who were too young to have anything to lose but their lives. The elderly and painfully religious couple whose lodger I was were cold to me, loudly praising Ted Pullen who, as the newspapers had it, had gallantly ‘placed his young life at the service of the Nation’. My fellow lodger, no less liable to military service than I was, openly asked me why I didn’t enlist. I answered nobody, for my own thoughts were forming.165
In September 1914 Clifford de Boltz was ‘accosted by a young lady in Great Portland Street’ and presented with a white feather. ‘I felt quite embarrassed,’ he admitted, ‘and threw the feather away in great disgust.’ But he enlisted in 2/6th Norfolk, a territorial cyclist battalion, soon afterwards. The battalion was already straining its resources, and he spent his first night in the army on a pub billiard table, and regretted that: ‘it went on like this for days and nobody seemed to know what to do next’. As his was a territorial battalion there was at least some uniform, but ‘whether it fitted or not did not seem to matter to them but we all felt very uncomfortable. Boots – asked for size 5. CQMS “we haven’t got any bloody boy’s boots, take these size 7 and wear three pairs of socks and you will be alright”.’166
Much depended on what men joined, and falling into the dark maw of a freshly-raised New Army unit, with few trained officers or NCOs, no proper accommodation, no clear sense of regional identity and pre-war kinship,
