A ceremony of innocence, dimmed with atrocious bloodshed.

(From Irish Independent)

THE SOMME: 90 YEARS ON, AT THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE ...

Nightfall, 90 years ago today, and 899 Belfast men, who that morning had risen from their trenches as soldiers and non-commissioned officers of the British army, lay dead on Theipval ridge, in the Somme valley.

One hundred and ninety-one of them were from the Shankill Road. Forty-six officers lay dead with their men. Another hundred officers and men of the Belfast battalions of the 36th Ulster Division were to die of their wounds in the coming week. That day, the British army lost 20,000 dead and 40,000 injured.

The story of these Ulstermen of July 1 is now as widely 'known' in the Republic as once it was utterly unknown: of how the former members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, now in the all-Protestant, all-Ulster 36th Division, many of them wearing their orange sashes, swept to and took their objective, the German strongpoint named Schwaben Redoubt. But unsupported by other divisions on either side, the Ulstermen had to retreat, and the day's gains were soon the day's losses.

This story is only partly true. Perhaps the bravest officer of the day, Captain William Gallaugher from Manorcunningham in Co Donegal, who led the attack on Schwaben Redoubt, was emphatic in a letter home to his family, that absolutely no soldiers wore the sash. They really did have other things on their minds than putting target-markers across their chests.

Nor was the 36th Ulster Division entirely Protestant, or entirely Ulster. Some Catholics were in it, as were men from Wicklow and Dublin. So too were many Britons - the 11th battalion, the Inniskilling Fusiliers was ...