“Dedicated to the memory of the men and women who served with the UDR C.G.C (Conspicuous Gallantry Cross) under OPERATION BANNER during the Troubles. Lest we forget. Also in memory of local veteran Geoffrey Lindsay who passed away on the 12th November 2022.”
The Conspicuous Gallantry Cross is shown (in the close-up below) at the top of the board; it was awarded to the UDR retroactively in 2006 for its role in ‘Operation Banner’, i.e. the deployment of British Army troops to Northern Ireland – the regiment had been folded into the Royal Irish Regiment in 1992. The mural is specifically to the 5th (Co. Londonderry) battalion – here is a list of the 11 battalions (and bases).
There is also a UDR information board (and an Ulster Volunteers board) in the green-space in front of this mural – see Leckagh Remembers The Fallen.
The memorial mural to the 36th (Ulster) Division on the end wall has also been completed since last (2023) year – in-progress images for both murals from last August are included below. For the previous murals on these walls, see C07766.
Two other pieces are included, below: the UVF mural was seen last year in Pause, Reflect, Remember; the ‘Ignite the fire’ board appears to be new.
Leckagh Drive, Magherafelt
August 27th green-washing of previous mural:
August 27th in-progress image of mural immediately above:
A new board was unveiled on July 1st 2024, by the 1st Raven Somme Society and The Loyal (Fb) at the Raven social club (Fb), putting together the Ulster Tower (see e.g. A Thought Is Not A Lot), JP Beadle’s painting of the 36th going ‘over the top’ (see The Trenches Have Vanished Under The Ploughs) and Wilfrid Spender’s famous quote about the first day of the Battle Of The Somme (see I Would Rather Be An Ulsterman).
This board takes the place of the King Charles board (seen previously in Long Live The King), which has been moved to the other side of Castlereagh Street and joined by the board that it replaced, to Queen Elizabeth (both on top of some old (2012) panels depicting east Belfast of yesteryear – see Shipyard Workers).
This images in this entry depict, above and below the information board about the park, the World Wars installation inside the park and the banners on the fence along Derrycoole Way.
There is an annual commemoration of the fallen in the World Wars in Rathcoole each year. The monument consisting of mourning soldiers and sandbags) was created in 2020 (Fb group | News Letter) and the bench was perhaps added in 2022. Images from the 2023 ‘row on row’ commemoration can be seen at NI World. The Row On Row group (web) hope to create a permanent memorial on the spot.
Rathcoole People’s Park was renamed the Sir James Craig Play Park by Antrim & Newtownabbey council in September, 2021, as part of the council’s celebrations of the centenary of Northern Ireland (NI World).
The banners on the side are from the Rathcoole Protestant Boys flute band (Fb) whose annual parade was at the end of June, and the Whitehouse Williamite Historical Society (Fb) whose fun-day on June 15th included a historical re-enactment of William’s army landing at Whitehouse. (For more on William’s connection to Whitehouse, see June 14th, 1690.)
The Millbrook arch has three panels: “36th (Ulster) Division, Battle Of The Somme, 7:30 am 1st July 1916”; the Clyde Valley (Mountjoy II) “The SS Clyde Valley achieved notoriety for its role in the Larne gun-running operation 24th-25th April 1914”; “Sir Edward Carson signing the Ulster Covenant, Belfast City Hall 28th September 1912”.
The grenade at the heart of the ‘Grenadier’ emblem is an old spherical grenade, with a spout of fire; the classic “pin-and-pineapple” design dates to 1915 (WP Mills Bomb). Various regiments then put a symbol on the surface of the grenade (see e.g. East Belfast Volunteers); here, the Ulster Grenadiers flute band (Fb) have added Carrickfergus castle flying a Union Flag to the grenade at the centre of a new board erected on June 7th, 2024 (youtube video of the launch).
The battles listed on either side of the central emblem are battles in which the 36th Division took part, though by that time, grenadiers were not a specialised unit and each infantry platoon (of about 60 men – Schilling) would have both hand-grenade and rifle-grenade sections (Reddit) equipped with 100+ grenades (The World War).
Here are some more UVF boards (in addition to those seen in 2022’s Bowtown UVF) that have been added along the length of Abbot Drive. Both “East Belfast” and “North Down” rival factions are included.
The “Lest we forget” board in the final image has been seen before, but has been moved to the location shown after being in the memorial garden.
‘Four Lads Had A Dream’ is the name of Rangers song (youtube) but here the dream is not “to start a team” in Glasgow but to start a flute band in Monkstown, Newtownabbey. The result of the efforts of the four men – John Black, Freddie Maltman, Brian Crothers, Trevor Wilson – was Monkstown YCV flute band (Fb), formed in 1974 and so celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, 2024. To mark the occasion, the band has installed the series of boards shown here along a low wall in Cloyne Crescent; it will also visit the Somme and play at the Last Post ceremony which takes place at eight every evening at the Menin Gate (web).
The information board is transcribed (verbatim) at the bottom of this entry. A Bo Kerr from Rathcoole is also mentioned in the creation of also mentioned in the creation of the KAI tartans in Rathcoole – see the IWM link in The Famous.
The board showing words from a soldier’s diary, along with an image of soldiers marching, also appeared in the Village, south Belfast – see May I Never Hear Such Cries Again.
“Four lads had a Dream. Back in 1974, a group of lads were having a card school in the old rent office in Abbeytown Square. One of the lads, John Black, asked they group if they would go with him to meet Billy Greer about asking for help to start up a band. Freddie Maltman, Brian Crothers and Trevor Wilson all agreed to accompany him. So off they went to see Billy Greer, who gave them a look of disbelief and replied “son, do you realise what it would take to do this?” John replied “no.” After a while, Billy Greer said “leave it with me, I will go and get back to you.” A couple of weeks later, the lads once again met with Billy Greer, and he introduced them to a man named Robert ‘Bo’ Kerr.
The following week, Robert had brought a book with him and the amount of names in it was amazing. A lot of the people in the book were from Rathcoole. At this stage, Robert also brought down his brother, Brian ‘Bo’ Kerr, to help. The band managed to get a lend of some old side drums, some flutes and a bass drum. Roberts father also repaired some flutes for them. A lot of fundraising followed, such as street collections in the Monkstown area, and the community was very generous to the cause of the band. Robert ‘Bo’ Kerr was due to get married that year and he gave up his wedding fund money towards the purchase of four new side drums from Matchetts in Belfast and a bass drum from Willy Hewitts over in Sandy Row.
The bands first parade was an invite to Glenarm where Hughy Brown was the first band captain. The band numbers were rising, but it didn’t take too long to see who was going to make it and who wasn’t, and therefore the numbers fell slightly. John Black for one learnt his lessons very quickly to never lie to the band captain. Hughy Brown gave all the fluters a tune to learn at home, the next week they all arrived at practice and Hughy went along and asked, one by one, “well lads, did you learn The Ducks for me this week?” And they all replied “yes.” He picked out John Black to stand on the chair and play it. That was him in the bad books straight away as he had told lies and hadn’t learnt it! Hughy went mad and told him “Blackie, never in your life waste my time again if you want to stay in this band, don’t come back next week if you haven’t learnt what I give you!” After that, the flute corps was second to none.
Throughout the years the band has had its ups and downs like every other band we lost quite a few members due to being incarcerated during the troubles or by passing away. However, over the past few years we have went from strength to strength! The hard work and dedication from our members is second to none, with some of our members travelling from various locations in Newtownabbey, Carrickfergus, Shankill, East Belfast, Scotland and Liverpool.
This year 2024 we will be celebrating our 50th Anniversary with the purchase of a new uniform and a pilgrimage to the Battlefields of the Somme, culminating in playing at the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate, this will be one of the milestones that Monkstown will proudly mark.”
“The Battle Of Messines June 1917. Men from the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and Royal Irish Rifles celebrating their victory at Wytschaete.”
“We surge forward. Bayonets sparkle and glint. Cries and curses rent the air. Chums fall, some without a word … and others … Oh, my God! May I never hear such cries again! There goes the YCV flag tied to the muzzle of a rifle. That man had nerve! Through the road just ahead of us we had crossed the sunken road. We could see khaki figures rushing the German front line. The Inniskillings had got at them.”
Queen Elizabeth II died, aged 96, on September 8th, 2022, and is now (according to this board) queen of the angels in heaven (Matthew 28:2), which perhaps allows her to send other angels to Earth (Matthew 24:31) to deliver messages to chosen people.
Also included (below) from the same street is a memorial tarp to British soldiers in the Great War and WWII, including Vickers machine guns, Spitfire aeroplanes, and a WWI tank (perhaps a Mark V (Tank Museum)).
Each quadrant of Down (north, south, east, west) gave rise to a battalion of Ulster Volunteers, and North Down comprised 15 companies, almost doubling the typical British-Army size of eight companies (History Ireland; see also another History Ireland article on the initially sporadic development of the Volunteers out of Unionist Clubs).
Upon the outbreak of the Great War, the Down volunteers joined the 13th battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles, which were assigned to the 108th brigade of the 36th Division of the British Army.
The mural shown in this entry is a recent repainting; the previous version was painted in 2017 (and originally c. 2007 – see M03697).
See also: Only A Few Minutes – a memorial mural to Bangor native James Samuel Davidson, of the 108th and a North Down volunteer.
Clandeboye Road, at the bottom of the Kilcooley estate.
153 men of the 12th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles (which included men from Ballymena and other Central Antrim Volunteers) died on the first day of the Battle Of The Somme, July 1st, 1916, as they and the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers attempted to take German trenches near Beaucourt railway station (Royal Irish). According to the account of the movements of the 12th Royal Irish Rifles by Des Blackadder on the Great War Forum, “they were cut down like corn before a scythe”. In all, more than 2,000 men from the 36th Division were killed that day (WP).
The new mural in Drumtara, Ballymena, was painted by Craig Gilmore, who also did the recent tribute to Elizabeth II (see The Crown) (Ballymena Guardian article on the mural, also by Blackadder). The cut-outs (in the third image) are on a wall at the bottom of the estate; the machine-gunner is unusual.
Paddy Duffy Collection 