This metal gate of poppies opens onto a cluster of blue metalworks showing scenes from WWI and a map of the area around Messines. The silver emblems are of the 36th and 16th divisions.
For more, including the panels to John Cordon and William McFadzean, see M07770.
Mount Vernon Gardens, north Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
[T01298] T01299 T01324 T01325 [T01326]
The memorial garden in Mount Vernon, has a “cut-out” mural to the 36th (Ulster) Division and memorial plaques to six UVF members who died between 1974 and 2000, including (lhs of the final image) Joe Shaw, who was shot by the UDA during the 1974-1975 feud. (For details of the killings and its aftermath, see this Balaclava Street article.) The stone in the centre is dedicated to the “3rd battalion North Belfast” Ulster Volunteer Force.
Mount Vernon Gardens, north Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
T01293 [T01294] T01297 T01295 T01296
These Kitchener Street boards commemorate the “Young Citizen Volunteers Of Ireland” and the battle of the Somme. The text in the side-wall board (shown below) is from the diary of a Somme soldier: “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.”
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
T01129 [T01130] T01131
Part of the most recent development of the upper streets in the Village was not to rebuild the two rows of houses on Ebor and Nubia/Moltke streets and in their place construct a park – the Village Green – and playground. This new board on the outside railings make the park a “community park of remembrance” for WWI, showing an Ulster Banner with a Union Flag in the canton.
There is also a memorial to “loved ones and friends”, “volunteers, defenders & civilians” of the South Belfast UVF (though there is 36th (Ulster) Division emblem in the corner) who were “cruely taken away from us by republican scum”: Dinah Campbell, Francis Campbell, Alexander Scott, Frankie Smith, Stevie McCrea, John Hanna, Sammy Mehaffy, William Kingsberry, Jackie Campbell, David Poots.
Also in the park: Crying, Sighing, Breathlessly.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
T01127 [T01126] T01128
Territorial markings of the UVF are posted on the new development on the east side of the Village. These images are all from the Kitchener Drive, which has new houses in Kitchener St and Soudan St.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
T01121 T01122 T01123 T01124 T01125
Young Conquerors Flute Band mural in Pine Street, south Belfast, connecting the band to local soldiers who died in WWI. The two boards to either side show a photograph of the original Donegall Pass Defenders Flute Band, which lasted a short time in the 1970s before the formation of the Conquerors in 1977 (Fb). The second shows the patch of the band.
Video of the launch at the Young Conquerors Fb page.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
T01079 [T01080]
This is the scene at the Rex Bar at (the old) Moscow Street on the Shankill, including, below, three boards describing the formation of the Ulster Volunteers (‘A Force For Ulster’) and using the Thiepval Memorial To The Missing Of The Somme against a background of portraits to commemorate the losses suffered by the 36th (Ulster) Division of the British Army, which the Volunteers became, at the Somme and in other battles, mowed down by “the Hun machine guns” (‘The Great War’). 32,186 men from west Belfast were killed, wounded, or missing. “To them bravery was without limit, to us memory is without end”.
On the Shankill proper (at the newly-christened “Scots Corner”) is a board and plaque to the UVF’s “Scottish Brigade”: “Aye ready they stood, aye ready they fought, through conflict, blood and tears, loyal to the end, every one, the Scottish volunteers.” “Aye ready” was the motto of the 59th Scinde Rifles of the British Indian Army (and later of the Canadian Navy) but is best known from the label of Camp Coffee, in which a Highlander was served a cup of Camp by a Sikh servant (nowadays, they both have a cup of their own).
A Scottish soldier plays the pipes over a list of the “Battalion Of The Dead”, Scottish volunteers from the (modern) UVF. The list is led by William “Big Bill” Campbell, who has had a small plaque in his memory at this spot since (at least) 2014. Preacher and DUP politician George Seawright (see A Crown Of Life) is also included – he was born in Glasgow in 1951.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
T01073 T01070 T01071 T01072 T01074
“In memory of the men and women from the Orangefield area, who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the defence of our freedom in all theatres of conflict, both foreign and at home.” These boards are memorials to the members of the 8th battalion 36th (Ulster) Division, formed from men from Avoniel and Strandtown.
Grand Parade, east Belfast, next to the gun-running board.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
T01052
As the plaque indicates, the mural was originally painted in 2006 for the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. The side wall was painted for the 100th anniversary.
The plaque was originally in the plinth below the headstone – see Killed In Action.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
T01045 T01046 [T01044]
This board commemorates the action and deaths of the British Army’s 36th (Ulster) Division in World War I’s Battle Of The Somme, of which Captain Wilfrid Spender wrote, “I am not an Ulsterman but yesterday, the 1st July, as I followed their amazing attack, I felt that I would rather be an Ulsterman than anything else in the world. My pen cannot describe adequately the hundreds of heroic acts that I witnessed … The Ulster Volunteer Force, from which the division was made, has won a name which equals any in history.”
For images of the launch (on 2016-03-08) see Belfast Live.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
T00985
Paddy Duffy Collection 