Helen’s Tower at Clandeboye contains a beautiful room in which are inscribed poems by Lady Helen Dufferin, Lord Alfred Tennyson and Rudyard Kipling, amongst others.
Tennyson’s reads:
Helen’s Tower here I stand,
Dominant over sea and land.
Son’s love built me, and I hold
Mother’s love in letter’d gold.
Love is in and out of time,
I am mortal stone and lime.
Would my granite girth were strong
As either love, to last as long
I would wear my crown entire
To and thro’ the Doomsday fire,
And be found of angel eyes
In earth’s recurring Paradise.
This poem is replicated in the Ulster Tower at Thiepval, only slightly altered to make it a fitting tribute to the Sons of Ulster and their comrades–in–arms, who fought and died in the First World War:
Helen’s Tower here I stand
Dominant over sea and land
Son’s love built me,and I hold
Ulster’s love in letter’d gold.
The Somme Association has therefore through its “Battlelines” publication emphasised the literary attributes of those who fought and died in the First World War. Amongst these were Professor Thomas Michael Kettle, Lieutenant of the 9th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who died in September 1916 in the second phase of the Battle of the Somme, and Francis Ledwidge, who was killed in action in Flanders on 31st July 1917. These two poets were specially remembered at our services that year. Captain Lord Dunsany wrote “I gave my opinion that if Ledwidge had lived, this lover of all seasons in which the blackbird sings would have surpassed even Burns, and Ireland would lawfully have claimed, as she may do even yet, the greatest of the peasant singers”.
But in September of that year we also remembered J R R Tolkien and his two groups of friends in the TSBS (Tea Club and Barrovian Society) and the Inklings, the latter of which included CS Lewis, from Belfast. J R R Tolkien never forgot what he called the “animal horror of trench warfare”. The sights which he experienced at the Somme, the images, sounds and the people he met stayed with him until his death in 1973. But from that horror came the inspiration of his great works including “The Lord of the Rings”. During the war J R R Tolkien enlisted in the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers as a Second Lieutenant. Late on Sunday June 4th 1916 he set off for London and on to France where he was present at the Battle of the Somme.
Tolkien’s Battalion disembarked in Amiens, the capital of the Somme area, and marched to a hamlet called Rubempré ten miles away. Here they were billetted in those conditions of the Western Front to which they would soon become accustomed. On Friday 30th June they moved near to the front line. The great attack began early the next morning but the men of Tolkien’s Battalion were held in reserve. They were to go into battle several days later when it was planned that the German line would have been smashed open and the allied troops would have penetrated deep into enemy territory.
At 7.30 a.m. however on Saturday 1st July the troops of the British front line including of course the famous 36th (Ulster) Division went over the top, the latter from Thiepval Wood. On the right flank were the 15th (Service Battalion) of the Lancashire Fusiliers, The 1st Salford Pals, known as”Gods Own”. To the south were Tolkien’s friends Rob Gilson of the 3rd Salford Pals, the 19th (Service) Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers and at La Boisselle, Rob Gilson of the 11th Suffolks.
Soon the awful truth dawned that on the first day of battle 20,000 allied troops had been killed. The 36th Ulster Division had suffered 5,500 casualties, the 1st Salford Pals had been almost completely wiped out, apart from those who joined the remnants of the 36th Ulster Division on the right flank, and Rob Gilson had been killed at La Boisselle, where the great mine had gone off in No Man’s Land. Only the heroic Ulstermen had been able to penetrate the German lines, which generally had remained intact.
On Thursday July 6th, the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers went into action, but only “A” Company was sent to the trenches and Tolkien remained at Bouzincourt with the remainder. Finally on Friday 14th July “B” Company went into action. Tolkien’s first day in action had been chosen by the allied commanders for a major offensive and his company was attached to the 7th Infantry Brigade for an attack on the ruined hamlet of Ovillers which was in German hands.
The attack was unsuccessful and many of Tolkien’s Battalion were killed around him by machine gun fire. Rob Gilson however of the 3rd Salford Pals had survived. Day followed day in the same pattern; a rest period, back to the trenches, and more attacks. Tolkien was among those who were in the support at the storming of the Schwaben Redoubt, a massive fortification of German trenches, upon which Northern Ireland’s National War Memorial – the Ulster Tower – now stands.
Sadly his other friend Geoffrey Bache Smith died at 3.00 on the morning of 3rd December 1916 , at Warlincourt, having been hit by fragments of a German shell which had been fired from 4 miles away in the dying days of the Somme. British losses continued to be severe and many more of Tolkien’s Battalion were killed. On October 27th 1916 he was rescued from the Battle by pyrexia of unknown origin or as the soldiers simply called it “Trench Fever”, a highly infectious disease carried by lice. By November 8th he remained ill and was put on a ship back to England.
CS Lewis arrived at the front line trenches on his 19th birthday , 29th November 1917. Lewis was also to suffer from trench fever at the beginning of February 1918. He returned to the front on 28th February. The Germans launched their great Spring offensive on 21st March, utilising all the additional troops which had been withdrawn from the eastern front following the Russian Revolution. During the first Battle of Arras from 21st to 28th March 1918, Lewis was in or near the front line and next saw action in the Battle of Hazebrouck from 12th till 15th April, when he was wounded by a British shell exploding behind him. The Medical Board described Lewis’ wounds thus “shell fragments caused three wounds in the left side of his chest, his left wrist and left leg” and on 25th May 1918 he arrived by stretcher in London.
The experiences of the First World War which drew Tolkien and Lewis together in Oxford to form that legendary friendship which culminated in the development of the group known as the Inklings when Lewis became in essence a replacement for both Gilson and Smith. The first story which Tolkien put in paper was written during his convalescence in Great Haywood early in 1917. This is the” Fall of Gondolin”, which deals with the assault of the last elvish stronghold by Morgoth, the prime power of evil and these are the elves who form the basis of the Silmarillion in the Lord of the Rings. Discussing one of the principal characters in the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote many years later “my Sam Gamgee is indeed is a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war and recognised as so far superior to myself.”
And so although the Great War had ended over 90 years ago we have been left in the great works of Tolkien and Lewis that atmosphere of pre-battle tension and watchfulness, the plunge from peace to terrifying peril , the mass movement of thousands of men, the wonderful courage of ordinary people, and of love and comradeship, the battlefield now dominated by great machines and the air swept by airborne killers without ruth or pity .
On Monday 3rd November Dr Paisley, the Baroness and I went to see the story of the Salford Pals and the Irish regiments in the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester. Many are buried with their Ulster comrades in the Connaught Cemetery at Thiepval Wood. The Duke of Wellington described the Lancashire Fusiliers as the best and most distinguished of English regiments, just as he said the 27th of Foot (Inniskilling Fusiliers) had saved the centre of his line at Waterloo.
My grandfather Samuel fought with the Lancashire Fusiliers at Spion Kop in the Boer War. My great–grandfather Samuel met my great-grandmother Roseanne Gamble when he was stationed with them at Clandeboye and took her back to Bolton. Like the Inniskillings they dated back to the landing of William of Orange in England in1688. In the Seven Years War they had shattered the charge of the supposedly invincible French Cavalry at Minden. Their allies then were the Germans. It all goes to show how quickly things can change.
On Monday 10th September, 2007, at the Somme Heritage Centre, Dr Paisley as First Minister of Northern Ireland and the head of state of the Irish Republic, President Mary McAleese, shook hands for the first time – another symbolic milestone on Ireland’s road to reconciliation. As Dr Paisley’s Personal Physician and Advisor on History and Culture, this gave me the greatest of pleasure, as it was the culmination of my vow to my relatives that the deaths of William and his comrades would not be in vain.
On the occasion President Mc Aleese said:” It is an honour to be here at the opening of this exhibition commemorating the Battles of Guillemont and Ginchy, part of the heroic struggle of the Battle of the Somme fought over ninety years ago. Congratulations to Dr Ian Adamson, Carol Walker and all the members of the Somme Association for this labour of love which allows the stories of those who fought and died to be honoured and respected and better known by a new generation.
The meeting also led directly to the visit of Her Majesty The Queen to Islandbridge, Dublin on Wednesday 18th May, 2011. President Mc Aleese further honoured us by presenting me , on behalf of our Association, to The Queen. I knew William would have been pleased.
