Nick Maxwell WHAT WAS THE IMPACT ON THE IRISH SOLDIER? By Lar Joye The Battle of the Somme has been described as the blackest period in the history of the British Army, and 100 years later its consequences are still in dispute.The year 1916 was to be a key one for the British Army, the first whentheir … Read more
By Seán Downes During the months that the 16th (Irish) Division was based in the Loos salient, its divisional headquarters were located at the town of Noeux-les-Mines, about five miles from the front line. It was here that the men paraded and were drilled, and it was to Noeux that the Irish often returned to … Read more
WHY WAS THE BATTLE FOUGHT? By Jennifer Wellington By late 1915, the war in the west had been effectively at stalemate for months. Repeated attempts to rupture the lines of trenches, barbed wire, concrete posts and dugouts had made little real difference, despite the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of lives. The Allies and the … Read more
Within weeks of the famously bloody first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, audiences in the UK were crowding into cinemas to see the reality of combat for themselves.The feature-length film The Battle of the Somme,shot by official cinematographers Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, opened in August 1916. It showed the … Read more
A VERBAL SMOKESCREEN OF AMBIGUITY, REPETITIONS, IRRELEVANT DATA, DECEPTIONS, OMISSIONS, EX CATHEDRA PRONOUNCEMENTS AND DISINFORMATION By Paul Hyde The results of the 1959 test cannot be found; the 1972 test was amateurish; the 1993 test was inconclusive. Then in 2002 the Giles Laboratory was commissioned by Professor W.J. McCormack to examine the controversial diaries and … Read more