50,000 Irish soldiers no longer forgotten

Adam, Ahern, Black, Bolger, Brennan, Breslin — the names read like poetry under the Menin Gate. Molloy, Moran, Morgen, Mulvihill, Murphy, Murray — all buried in unknown graves in Flanders soil.

All denied a hero’s memory. Even Major Willie Redmond, who like the rest fought for the rights of small nations and, shattered by the execution of the Easter Rising leaders, asked not to be buried in a British grave when he died on a June day in 1917.

He, like all 50,000 Irish dead, denied. All 50,000 officially forgotten for well nigh a century. Part of the ambiguity of Irish history: they left as warriors and those who returned in 1918 were vilified as traitors.