Foggy view of our own history

I WISH to congratulate the Irish Examiner for airing all the views of various correspondents to the letters page on the Gallipoli issue.

It is a welcome development that awareness has been created about the Great War on Turkey and Ireland’s part in it. Dr Gerald Morgan letter headlined ‘Let’s honour Great War dead as our own’ (May 3) comes from a perspective similar to that of a previous writer in urging equal status for all commemorations. I think the nub of the issue contested can be summed up with reference to the song, The Foggy Dew.

In that song there is a line about Gallipoli which says: “Twas better to die neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud el bar”.

I think that line sums up the fundamental worldview of independent Ireland and its traditional foreign policy.

In recent years some historians have emerged who would wish to rewrite that line in favour of: “Twas better to die at Suvla or Sud el bar than ‘neath an Irish sky.”

In doing so they have disparaged the efforts of those who died at Easter 1916 and those who later fell in achieving our independence and democracy. And they have, by implication, viewed our independent presence in the world as something of a mistake.

Others have not gone as far as that. But our current President, and correspondents to your letters page, seem to be in the camp of those who would wish to rewrite the words of the song to: “Twas equally good to have died at Suvla or Sud el bar as it was ‘neath an Irish sky.”

This is the political and historical logic of the arguments for remembrance commemoration.

Could we honestly imagine Americans saying it was equally valid for their countrymen to have died in supporting the British as it was to be a patriot at Lexington or French people saying it was equally honourable to have died for Vichy France as for the French resistance? I think not.

If we depart from the view that “twas better to die ‘neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud el bar”, we are effectively giving away our independent view of the world.

It is a credit to the Turks that they have never done this and have defended their history vigorously.

Perhaps that part of their character is one reason why they won the battle of Gallipoli.

Pat Walsh

Leyland Crescent

Ballycastle

Co Antrim BT54 6QW