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In the approach to
Remembrance Day, the Carrickfergus Borough begins to think about all
those men and women who died in two world wars and in subsequent
conflicts. One of the most dramatic of all locations for solemn
remembrance in the whole of Northern Ireland is the recently restored
monument on the heights of Knockagh, where the war-dead of County Antrim
are honoured each November, overlooking the waters of Belfast Lough.
One of the most important things about remembrance is to ensure that it
serves a healing and positive purpose for the community. It is the debt
we owe to all those who once died so that our community might retain its
freedom. In that regard, it would be good for our borough, with its very
strong Protestant presence, to recall the contribution made by
Carrickfergus’s Catholic community to the defeat of German militarism in
two world wars.
During the early part of the First World War, the local parish priest at
St Nicholas’ Catholic Church was Father Henry, who was a chaplain to the
hundreds of Catholic soldiers who resided at Sunnylands camp. There were
hundreds of men from Counties Cavan and Monaghan in the battalion of
Royal Irish Fusiliers which was sent to Sunnylands to train at the
outbreak of the war. There were known locally as the ‘bhoys’ and the
Carrickfergus Advertiser welcomed them with ‘cead mille failte’ – Irish
for 100,000 welcomes. The Catholic parish entertained these men and
Father Henry looked after their spiritual needs. When this priest died
as a relatively young man, the soldiers from Sunnylands lined up outside
the chapel to pay their respects at the funeral.
The new parish priest was Father McKay and he maintained his interest in
the welfare of the soldiers, raising money among his parishioners to
send to the Tyneside Irish brigade of the Northumberland Fusiliers,
where a Presbyterian friend of his was serving as an officer. In fact
quite a number of local Catholic families sent men to the front, often
out of a family tradition of soldiering or sheer financial necessity in
an era of much poverty. The obituary columns of the Carrickfergus
Advertiser bear sad witness to the deaths of several Catholic soldiers
and sailors from Whitehead, Carrickfergus and Greenisland in this
horrible and wasteful war.
Sadly for various reasons during the 20th century, the process of
remembrance became a divisive one throughout Ireland. Nationalists
became distressed at the activities of British troops in Ireland in the
1920s. Unionists tended to see the sacrifice of so many local young men
as an emblem of enduring Britishness and Loyalty. However, even in the
Second World War, despite divisive local politics, many Irish Catholics
still went to fight against Hitler and almost as many men and women from
the neutral Republic died in that conflict as men and women from British
Ulster.
It would be a healthy thing if the sacrifices of all of our borough’s
population could be fully recalled and honoured on Remembrance Day,
including of course the Polish ancestors of many of our recent
immigrants from Eastern Europe. This might mean that more local Catholic
Christians take the step of attending a Remembrance Service or holding
their own church ceremony. It might also mean changing the thinking
around existing Remembrance traditions, so that Protestant clergy learn
to feel less theologically compromised by the active presence of
Catholic clergy and so that Unionist participants in commemorations do
not regard any absence of a poppy in a lapel as an indication of
betrayal and disloyalty.
If we became a little more creative, gentle and inclusive each November,
in remembering the death of loved ones, ancestors and neighbours, it
might pave the way towards the day when all who take the name
‘Christian’ can remember the death of their Saviour by worshipping
together rather than apart.
Philip Orr
for Carrickfergus Borough Church Forum |
