First World War

Lord Rogan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rogan (UUP)]

My Lords, it is with a degree of reverence that I approach this afternoon’s debate. As a young boy growing up in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Second World War, my youth was filled with the immediate deeds and sacrifices of service men and women who fought in that conflagration.

However, I was also brought up with those from a previous generation who had first tasted the bitter gall of war on an industrial scale on Flanders fields. For me, the First World War was a living history. The men who had survived the Somme, Messines and Ypres—or “Wipers” to the Tommies who served and fought there—were relatives and family friends. Those who did not survive left behind the still visible evidence of broken homes and broken lives.

My grandmother saw three sons go off to Flanders and welcomed home one. This sacrifice was typical of that of many Ulster families and indeed families throughout the kingdom—no more so than those from the “pals battalions”, raised and recruited from whole streets and districts of the industrial cities of northern England. Who can visit the First World War battlefields and gaze up at the hundreds of names engraved on the memorials and not be moved by their sacrifice?

Life, however, does not stand still. While those formative memories remain clear to me, I find it difficult to accept that it is 100 years since hostilities broke out among the European great powers—an event as distant from today’s youth as the Crimean War was from me. “Lest we forget” was the promise of the living to the dead of the Great War, and it is a promise that we should not renege on.

There is and will be much debate about how the First World War should be remembered, and some of the suggestions I suspect would infuriate and astonish the men of 1914-18. That debate I leave to others, save that the programme for commemoration must reflect all of those who served. In that, I am particularly conscious of the immense contribution of the men of Ulster and the rest of Ireland.

Robert Quigg was born on 28 February 1885 in the townland of Billy, outside Bushmills in north Antrim. Like many others, he joined the Ulster Volunteers in January 1913. He went to war with the 36th (Ulster) Division and was serving near Le Hamel on the Somme under his platoon commander, Lieutenant Harry Macnaghten, heir to the estate on which Quigg had worked. On 1 July 1916, they advanced against heavy German machine-gun fire and, by that evening, many men lay dying and wounded in no man’s land, including Lieutenant Macnaghten. Robert Quigg volunteered to leave the comparative safety of the trenches and go out to look for his commander. He did not find him, but he returned with a wounded soldier. He went out again and, having not found Macnaghten, returned yet again with a wounded soldier. He did this seven times, rescuing seven comrades, only stopping when complete exhaustion overwhelmed him and, unfortunately, not locating Lieutenant Macnaghten.

Sergeant Quigg was awarded the VC, survived the war and died on 14 May 1955. Several Bushmills residents decided about two years ago to raise sufficient money—we estimated that £75,000 was needed—to erect a permanent memorial to Sergeant Quigg. I was only too willing to become a patron of the scheme, and I am confident that we will have achieved this by the 100th anniversary of Battle of the Somme. It will be a lasting memorial to men such as Sergeant Quigg, so that future generations may remember and respect.

Much has been written of the sacrifices of the 36th (Ulster) Division. After the war, King George V paid it the following tribute:

“Throughout the long years of struggle … the men of Ulster have proved how nobly they fight and die”.

There is much more that I could and would like to say about the valour of the Ulster Division, but I want to urge those developing the commemorations to give full recognition to the 300,000 Irish servicemen from the whole island of Ireland who answered the call in 1914, the majority of whom came from what was shortly to become the Irish Free State. In particular, the 38,000 casualties drawn from the 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions, who served in Flanders, Gallipoli, Messines and the Middle East, deserve their rightful place in our centenary of events.

As the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, alluded to, the memory of the Irishmen who served with compatriots from across the Empire has been rehabilitated in recent years after a shameful period of neglect in southern Ireland that was in large part manufactured.

“It would be hard, indeed, to estimate the size of the gathering. It did not, however, number less than forty thousand. From an early hour people began to arrive by every kind of vehicle and on foot, and an hour before the ceremony began the wide open space in the Phoenix Park surrounding the Wellington Monument was densely crowded”.

So read the Irish Times report of the Armistice Day commemorations in Dublin in 1926. It is proof that history is rarely black and white.

The centenary commemorations of the Great War will serve many purposes, but one, I trust, will be to encourage greater recognition of our shared history across these islands.

“They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;

They fell with their faces to the foe”.

In death there was no distinction; nor should there be in their commemoration.