On this day 101 years ago, the guns of the Great War fell silent at 11 o’clock - the Armistice was in place which brought to a conclusion one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts.
World War One effectively wiped out a generation of people. Tens of thousands of families in Ireland, or families with Irish roots, were affected by that conflict.
Today I will be especially remembering three relations - a grandfather and two uncles - who served in World War One - two with the Army, one with the Royal Flying Corps. Two survived; one was killed when he was hit by a German shell at the Battle of Cambria in 1917.
My great uncle, William Holmes, was a bachelor who was due home leave. However, he took the place of a married chum so that his friend could go home to visit his wife. My great uncle’s body has never been recovered, but his memory is kept alive in a memorial plaque in the family church near Ballyclare in County Antrim.
Across Ireland, many thousands will also be commemorating the Armistice. That Great War saw Nationalists and Unionists alike don the British uniforms to fight against Kaiser Bill’s tyranny.
In today’s society, there is an increasing mocking of the poppy, which has become the symbol of the slaughter of the Great War in particular. While Unionists have been to the fore in commemorating those who served or made the supreme sacrifice in World War One, for generations, those Nationalists who served and died were airbrushed out of Irish history.
German and Turkish machine guns did not differentiate between Unionists and Nationalists in bloodbaths such as the Somme and Gallipoli. They died side by side wearing the same uniforms and fighting the same cause.
Given the political climate at the time in Ireland in 1914 before the outbreak of the Great War, those same Nationalists and Unionists could have died fighting each other in a bloody Irish Civil War over which faction ran what counties on the island.
On one side was the Unionist Ulster Volunteers; on the other, the Nationalist Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizens Army. While the real Irish Civil War nearly a decade later pitched republican against republican, 1914 could have seen Nationalists pitched against Unionists.
Perhaps the Great War could have been avoided if the various Royal families - many of them inter-related - could have organised a conference in a neutral nation, such as America, and sorted out their differences thus preventing millions dying needlessly in the mud of Flanders.
An overwhelming majority of soldiers from Nationalist backgrounds found themselves shunned when they returned from the trenches in 1918. For decades, republicans shunned the poppy.
But did those republicans ever stop to realise that the reason they can make this decision in a democratic society is because of the sacrifice which many Nationalists made in the two world wars?
What sort of Ireland would we be living in today had the Kaiser won the Great War or Hitler and his Nazis triumphed in World War Two? Would republicans be able to openly express their opinions if the Kaiser’s or the Fuhrer’s Storm Troopers had roamed across Ireland in 1919 or 1949?
And it was not just the Nationalists and Irishmen who served in the two world wars who became the forgotten generation in Ireland for many years.
I recall my campaigns during my time at the Irish Daily Star to get Southern Ireland’s Victoria Cross heroes’ graves recognised, some of whom had served in conflicts in the 19th century.
Then there was the ‘Shot At Dawn’ campaign to get posthumous pardons for Irish soldiers executed during the Great War who had in reality been suffering from shell shock, not the desertion that they were branded for.
Like it or lump it, republicans have to recognise that Ireland has a rich military heritage and history with the various arms of the British forces, whether that be the Army, Navy or Air Force.
Perhaps Irish republicans should take a leaf out of the United States’ book on how to honour veterans. The USA does not distinguish between Unionists and Nationalists who served with the American forces - they are all American personnel.
There has been much historical debate as to what role, if any, the IRA played during the Second World War in assisting Nazi plans to invade the United Kingdom.
While it may be the subject of blockbuster movies, such as The Eagle Has Landed, did the IRA try to take advantage of the UK’s dilemma in fending off an invasion from Hitler in the same way as the Dublin Easter Rising of 1916 attempted to use the UK’s involvement in the Great War to stage a coup?
Suppose - with IRA help - Hitler had been able to invade and defeat the UK by using Ireland as a springboard, what would have been the fate of Ireland’s Jewish community? Would we have witnessed the genocide of Hitler’s death camps replicated on the Emerald Isle?
Perhaps those who wish to rewrite Irish history would do well to remember the old maxim - frontline revolutionaries are always expendable!
If Hitler had taken over Ireland as part of his defeat of the British Isles, would the Nazi dictator have ended partition, or would he have made sure the IRA - like Ernst Rohm’s SA during the Night of the Long Knives - did not become a political nuisance and condemned many republicans to the death camps?
While this can be dismissed as needless speculation because Kaiser Bill and Hitler lost the two world wars, republicans need to take account of ‘the big picture’ when talking about Ireland’s patriotic dead.
Instead of branding them as traitors for taking the half crown and serving in the British forces, republicans need to fully embrace the role which Nationalists have had in various British regiments, but also in other armies across the globe, such as the American and United Nations forces.
If republicans’ vision of their ‘new Ireland’ is all-embracing, it must embrace those Nationalists who fought and died against global tyranny.
Listen to religious commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 9.30 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online at www.thisissunshine.com
