WW1 – Slugger O'Toole

The poppy. Not a celebration of war but as an expression of sympathy for those who were wounded or who lost their lives in a tragic and unnecessary conflict…

Soapbox on November 11, 2022, 7:00 am

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Arnold Carton is a retired schoolteacher from Belfast. The controversy over the wearing of the Poppy in Ireland, with vandals throwing paint at the door of the Royal British Legion office in Dublin, got me thinking about my community’s reasons for wearing the poppy. Approximately 50 years ago, I was a Year 10 (Form 3) pupil in a North Antrim school. Like most of my peer group, I was wearing a poppy, and my school had made an effort to …

Time cannot silence the Voices of the Somme

Ian Malcolm on July 31, 2016, 10:36 pm

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At the start of July I posted on Slugger O’Toole to introduce Somme Voices, a month-long series of daily tweets in remembrance of that dreadful World War One battle. I’m returning to Slugger to bring the Somme Voices project to a close with a final poem. The reason is that I’d like to quote this one in its entirety and Twitter is a less-than-perfect medium for something of considerable length. It does, however, give me the chance to make a …

Listening to the quiet voices of The Somme

Ian Malcolm on July 1, 2016, 12:20 am

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As a child I was forever fascinated by a random collection of oul ‘things’ in a rarely-approached cupboard at home. It was the sort of place where unflattering school reports and old medical cards lay alongside broken spectacles and stringless yoyos, the theory being that they might some day be read, repaired or resurrected. There were a few medals – the full relevance of which I never discovered – but what especially caught my imagination was a bloodstained Nazi armband, …

Somme: May Trench Raid – death of a great great uncle

Kilsally on May 7, 2016, 12:51 pm

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Tonight is the one hundreth anniversary of the death of my great great uncle during a German bombardment of the trenches after a succesful trench raid by the Ulstermen – a talk was recently held in the Masonic Hall (the old Tamlaght / St Lukes Church of Ireland Church Hall), Coagh on Private Robert Sands and other men from Coagh who died in the Great War. In this centenary year of the Battle of the Somme the tragic and brutal slaughter of the Great …

From Bannisters To The Iron Harvest. 1916 and all that…

Samuel Thompson on January 3, 2016, 7:00 am

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I saw an unusual tweet a few weeks ago. Someone had posted a picture of a bannister. That seemed strange until I read the caption and discovered the bannister was in a house where James Connolly had once lived. The tweeter expressed pleasure, perhaps awe, at sliding his hand along an object his hero had once used and it got me thinking about our relationship with the past and how objects and places and can make it come to life …

Testament of Youth (QFT 16-29 January) – powerful on-screen adaptation of Vera Brittain’s extraordinary WW1 memoir

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on January 14, 2015, 9:05 am

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Most war films focus on the lives of those who join up, concentrating on the action at the front. Yet many more people are left behind at home than enter the military. Testament Of Youth quite brilliantly captures the life of Vera Brittain (played by Alicia Vikander), an intelligent and boundary-pushing young woman who in 1914 dreamt of becoming a writer and fought with her father (Dominic West) in their rural middle-class Buxton home to be allowed to sit the …

More Than A Flag – East Belfast bandsmen poignantly look back at WW1 as the audience see potential #BelFest

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 23, 2014, 9:07 am

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Twelve young guys who couldn’t be much older than twenty. Most with no acting experience. Some haven’t been in a theatre never mind standing on a stage. Bandsmen. Proud of their community, proud of their culture and their flag. Often derided, stereotyped, and written off. Over the last couple of months, Dan Gordon has realised a long held dream and produced More Than A Flag, a powerful piece of community arts by Happenstance Theatre that will be premièred in the …

Ireland, WW1 and our great false choice.

David McCann on November 3, 2013, 2:10 pm

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Since independence, Ireland or more importantly Irish nationalism, has struggled to find a way properly remember those who died during the First World War. This is largely due to how we have chosen to interpret the 1916 Easter rising. It has been written into Irish folklore that those who took part in the rising were no less than patriots of the highest order while those who fought in the trenches in France and Belgium were considered at best misguided or at …