Embracing the battlefields

In addition, Londonderry, as a port, played a hugely important role in world conflict, arguably the most significant of which was the Battle of the Atlantic. It was also synonymous with accommodating the US forces, and was a home from home for the Navy, as well as being a massive draw for the curious onlooker.

One man who has devoted his working life to recognising the role of both the British and Irish soldiers in world conflict is Glenn Barr, who heads up the International School for Peace Studies based at the Ebrington Centre on Glendermott Road.

Sacrifice

The sacrifice of so many sons of Ulster is something he is very serious about, but he is equally passionate about remembering the forgotten heroes of world war who came from the Irish Republic, and does not mind admitting that he was also shocked when he first travelled to Belgium to see the neglect not only of the tiny monument to the 'Irish fallen' and the mass graves, marked by a concrete slab, which were used like nondescript 'markers' for the German war dead.

So impassioned by the story of the young men on all sides who died as a result of war, Glenn also now works closely with school groups to ensure the slaughter that occurred in places like The Somme is never forgotten and that young people learn to work together by learning about their shared past, including joint trips to the battlefields.

"We go through the history of how the First World War has effected our relationship with each other on this island, and that for me is the most important thing - the myths that have grown and the lies that have been told and the history that has been told by either one side or the other side, but when you go out there and actually experience the truth of what actually took place, it's a different experience.

"We focus on one particular story and that is the story of John Meeke and Willie Redmond. Major William Redmond was a great nationalist and his brother John was the leader of the leading nationalist party in the Republic, and Willie Redmond at the time because he was fighting against the British to get them out of Ireland, they joined up. The16th Irish was created out of the nationalist paramilitaries who had joined to fight for a united Ireland, and the 36th Ulster Division was born out of the UVF which opposed that. So here were these two opposing factions in Ireland who went out to war and they were kept apart in the early days in case they would kill each other.

"They were brought together through time, and this great battle in Messines, and Major Willie Redmond, who was 56 years of age, his superiors wanted him not to go into the battlefield, but he insisted he was going to lead his men. The 36th Ulster Division had the greatest respect for Redmond, and he was fatally wounded on the battlefield and a young lad from just outside Ballymoney, who was part of the field hospital staff, made his way across the battlefield to tend Redmond and was then wounded himself.

"Redmond, who was wounded with shrapnel, ordered Private Meeke off the battlefield and Meeke refused to go until he got Redmond to the field hospital. Redmond died later that night and Meeke received a military medal for his effort.

Embraced

"Now, here is a story for us, and one which should be embraced by the whole of Ireland. Here you have two men who would have tried to kill each other in Ireland, who were enemies in Ireland, bitter enemies, who joined up to fight and kill each other, and here they were in a common cause on a foreign battlefield, and Meeke risked his life to save his natural enemy.

"The whole thing for us becomes a human story. They were able to forego all the bitterness that had been created and they found comradeship on a foreign battlefield. So we say, my God, can we not use that as an example to our people. When we go there we see the hundreds of thousands of people who were slaughtered for no cause, for nothing, no reason at all; and you see the hundreds of thousands of names on walls and they don't even know where their bodies are...

"You say 'Here is your choice. Here you stand at Tyne Cot Cemetery, 13,000 graves, 33,000 names on the wall', and that was only from 1917 until the end of the war, before that the names were put on the Menin Gate, and you say to them 'Here is your choice, here is war, this is the reality of war, graveyards. Or, we learn to talk and respect each other. Now, which do you want?' And that has an impact. When the kids go to the German cemetery, and they see an entirely different image of what war is to them. A grave, a small grave with 25,000 bodies in it, and there is a whole stark reality and a difference in how the Germans were treated and how ours were treated," says Glenn.

"The children go to John Condon's grave, who was the youngest boy to die in the First World War. He was killed a week before his 14th birthday in a gas attack. He was from Waterford and a young Catholic, and this is exposed and the kids embrace it, and the adults embrace it, it and it gets so emotional for them that by the end of it I have seen people who were out there from Sinn Fein in tears for four days. I know a well known Sinn Fein person who took a poppy from the battlefield and now has it hanging in their home, and described the trip as their Road to Damascus. There is an unbelievable effect that it has on people."

Emotion

Glenn says of the thousands of people he has taken to Belgium he could count on one hand the number of people not effected by the journey because of the poignancy and emotion involved.

"It is an emotional roller coaster, but at the end of it, that this is the point of what we do, people want to change. They are full of the enthusiasm of trying to make a change, and it has changed their lives and they want to change others. This is what is happening," he says, going on to note that we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain this year, and troops from Londonderry were among the Irish Regiments now serving in Afghanistan.

He asks why so many lives have been wasted by war: "For what? Look at The Somme. We thought we had learned our lesson; 60,000 wounded in one day on July 1, 1916, and 20,000 dead before lunchtime. It's just a waste of life."

Asked what he cherished most about his personal journey working with people through the School, Glenn pauses for a moment: "It has to be the first trip out in 1996, and it was November. The weather was atrocious. We had just left the Ulster Tower, a magnificent monument to the 36th Ulster Division, and then went down to Guillemont a few miles away in Picardy in France, and we went into this small village and here was a Celtic cross with a rusty fence round it. It was dilapidated. It hit me so hard."

The memory of what he saw makes Glen draw breath and almost reduces him to tears. He is unable to speak for many moments.

"It was the difference in respect for their own people," he says, adding: "It was the difference in how the loyalists viewed the 36th Ulster Division, with this magnificent monument, and how the nationalists had viewed the 16th Irish."

Gathering himself, he continues: "That is why we built the Island of Ireland Peace Park. It was simply to bring together Guillemont and the Ulster Tower in one monument for both sides. It still hits me hard."

"I think this was well summed up on one of the first trips we had when we had St Cecilia's, Lisneal and a group from Buncrana, and the head of history in Lisneal or as it was then, Clondermot, she made the point that she did not know what to expect and she said what she had seen before her eyes in six days was something she had been trying to teach in school for 14 years. When the kids from St Cecilia's got back they held a remembrance service that year for the first time in the school and wore poppies.