During the last week of April 1916, Irish republicans fought British soldiers on the streets of Dublin. Should the events of that particular week be of any interest whatsoever to you, you might find a series of posts, to be found in the Ireland category, worth checking out (they will NOT appear on the home page). If not, please ignore.
Fusiliers’ Arch, at the northern end of St. Stephen’s Green, commemorates the men of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who died fighting for the British in the Second Boer War at the start of the 20th Century.
Above and below: The names of the dead, inscribed beneath the roof of the arch.
The north eastern side of the Memorial is still spattered with British bullet holes from the Easter Rising in April 1916, as explained elsewhere on this website.
Bullets holes on the western side of the memorial, most likely fired from the Royal College of Surgeons after the Irish Citizen Army evacuated their trenches and fled there on the 25th April 1916.
And finally a new photo, taken in November 2016, just because. For a complete tour of St. Stephen’s Green itself, and the story of its significance during the Easter Rising, click here.
Last Saturday, finding myself with an afternoon to spare on a brief visit to Devon, I decided to head for Plymouth, where three awe-inspiring cemeteries contain very nearly 1500 burials from the First World War, and more than 850 from the Second.
These places are vast…and I mean seriously vast. Continue reading
About a mile south of Ledegem another small cemetery provides a last resting place for some of the final casualties of a long war. Continue reading
The weather is foul, the roads are closed (cycle race), and Baldrick is not in one of his better moods. Still, we’re here, so I suggest we head for the centre of town and find our way to the cemetery from there. Lead on, Balders. Continue reading
I paid a flying visit (literally) to Dublin last weekend (Baldrick was unavailable due to his forthcoming audition for ‘Belgium’s Got Talent’) to visit the little known Grangegorman Military Cemetery in the north west of the city, and to fill some photographic holes left from my previous visit to the city nearly three years ago.
The cemetery is a fascinating place. Opened in 1876 for the burial of British service personnel and their families, there are 613 First World War graves here, alongside 12 Second World War graves, and a number of post-war burials. Many of the burials are men killed either during the 1916 Easter Rising or the War of Independence between 1919 and 1921. Others were wounded in France or Belgium and evacuated to Ireland (under British rule, remember, at the time) where they later died of their wounds. And there are the graves of men, many of whom were either going on, or returning from, leave, who died on 10th October 1918 when the R.M.S. Leinster was torpedoed in the Irish Sea. In time I shall post the full results of my Irish wanderings (yes, I know we aren’t in Flanders, but as you know by now, we do sometimes head elsewhere, and anyway it’s my site and I can go exactly where I like), but for the moment here’s a few photos of Grangegorman Military Cemetery to keep you going. Continue reading
The magnificent Animals in War memorial in Mayfair, London. You will find more photos, if it’s of interest, in the London section of the ‘Back in Blighty’ category.
