For many of us, its a time to remember family and friends who served and sacrificed, not just in the First and Second World Wars, but in conflicts ever since.
At 11 am, I will - like many across the nations - pause for a few moments reflection as I especially recall members of my own family, sadly no longer with us, who fought and died in those conflicts.
The list includes: my grandfather John Coulter (after whom I am named) who served with the Royal Flying Corps in the Great War; my great uncle William Holmes, killed at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 and has no known grave.
He was a bachelor who agreed to swap places with a married chum to allow the latter to have leave to visit his wife. Great uncle William was blown to bits when he was hit by a German shell.
Another great uncle, Billy Coulter, served with the Northumberland Fusiliers in the Great War and the Home Guard in the Second World War.
Yet another great uncle, Ricky Coulter, served with the RAF in the Second World War. His bomber was shot down over Norway and he has no known grave.
My wife’s grandfather, William Ferris, served with the British Army during the Second World War.
My cousin, Arthur Henderson, was an RUC Reservist who was murdered by the Provisional IRA whilst on duty in Stewartstown in the 1970s.
My late dad, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, who served as a chaplain to the Ulster Special Constabulary.
In the First World War, which erupted in 1914, nationalists and unionists joined up in their tens of thousands, fighting and dying side by side in the bloody trenches of Flanders. German bullets and shells did not distinguish between those who supported the Union and those who wanted Irish Unity.
Perhaps if Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand had listened to his military advisors and not gone to Sarajevo in 1914, he would not have been murdered by Serbian nationalists, the spark which lit the fuse which was to erupt into the Great War.
Perhaps if the other leading monarchs in Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom - who were all related - had held a royal conference to sort out the Austro-Hungarian/Serbian situation, the Great War need not have happened and millions need not have died across the globe.
But the real legacy issue is not who started these wars and conflicts, but how we commemorate those who served and sacrificed in them.
For decades, those from the 26 counties of the Irish Republic who fought in these conflicts were airbrushed out of Irish history.
For many republicans, the only patriotic dead during the Great War were those rebels who tried to take advantage of the British Empire at war and launched the failed Easter Rising in 1916 and were later executed.
Indeed, for many decades, Southern Irish soldiers who were awarded the British Army’s highest award for gallantry, the Victoria Cross, lay in unmarked graves across Ireland until a campaign in the new millennium was successful in getting their headstones adorned with the VC symbol.
In Southern Ireland today, there are many commemorations to remember IRA terrorists who fought against the British in the War of Independence.
Likewise, rival republican factions will remember the anti-Treaty IRA terrorists and the pro-Treaty Free State Army who butchered each other in the following Irish Civil War.
No doubt, if the Southern political polls become an electoral reality at the next Dail general election and Provisional Sinn Fein forms either a majority or coalition government in Dublin’s Leinster House, the republican movement will have a commemoration a day for every terrorist it can dig up historically.
Indeed, given the bitter rivalry between Sinn Fein, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, there will be one heck of a cultural war erupt as these political adversaries compete to claim dead republican terrorists as “one of our’s, not their’s!”
One of the most notorious IRA terrorists of the War of Independence was Dan Breen from Co Tipperary. Will he be claimed by Sinn Fein for killing two policemen, or Fianna Fáil because he was anti-Treaty, or Fine Gael as he eventually served as an independent republican TD?
One of the most effective units of the British Army in combatting IRA terrorism during that War of Independence was the Black and Tans. Would any Southern administration agree to a memorial to murdered Tans or Tans who served in Ireland of that era?
In modern times, Sinn Fein elected representatives have earned the wrath of unionists for attending commemorations for dead Provisional IRA terrorists.
It has only been in recent times that Sinn Fein elected representatives have attended commemoration events organised by the Royal British Legion, although I suspect this is only to try and attract middle class Catholic voters away from the SDLP.
If nationalism and republicanism wants a debate about Irish Unity and the myth of a shared island, then they need to have an equally valid debate about what constitutes Ireland’s patriotic dead - is it the Catholics who fell by their hundreds in Flanders during World War One, or the so-called South Armagh ‘Volunteers’ who butchered innocent civilians during the Troubles.
Nationalism and republicanism can have one, but not both. So its make your mind up time.
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Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. |
By definition those who fought and (partially) won Irish Independence were patriotic freedom fighters and not terrorists as you derogotorally refer to as terrorists. Whereas, those who fought under the Butchers Apron on behave of a terrorist Empire that plundered and pillaged all around the world were terrorists -I'm sorry your grandfather and other relatives fought for a foreign country -or did your ancestors invade and oppress the Irish?
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