After many years of talking, a small group friends finally took the plunge
and travelled to France and Belgium to visit the burial sites of the brave
young men of the 36th (Ulster) Division who made the supreme sacrifice
during the Great War of 1914-1918.
This first trip was truly a shocking yet exhilarating and extremely moving
experience as nothing that we had ever heard or read about could have
prepared us for the emence sight of the row upon row of white headstones
that stand proud but lonely across this region of France and Belgium.Upon
our return home we knew that we would have to revisit as we had opened
a craving for more information about this War and in particular the part
that the Ulster Volunteer Force had to play in it. Several more people
had now shown an interest in joining us, so we decided to form ourselves
into a proper organisation and would call ourselves The South
Belfast Somme Society. We contacted the Somme Association
Ltd whose base and research headquarters are located in the Somme
Heritage Centre at Conlig, outside Newtownards, with an aim to
affiliate with them. Acting upon their advice we became members of the
'Friends of the Somme' support organisation, which has hundreds
of members throughout Northern Ireland and abroad and renamed ourselves
the South Belfast Friends of the Somme Association.
We held our first meeting in September 2000 where, after much local interest,
we decided to limit our membership to 12 in the hope that we could control
our members to only those who would have a genuine commitment to our Association
and its objectives.Of course since then, and due to the huge amount of
local interest because of the work of Association and this website we
have received numerous requests from people wishing to become members
of the Association and are currently looking into expanding our membership
due to demand. Details will be posted here when we are open for membership.
We are self supporting and all of our travel expenses and hotel bills
are paid for out of our own pockets, but we have however held a few fund
raising exercises to raise money to pay for wreaths, poppy crosses, stationary,
this web site etc, and we have made several donations to worthwhile related
appeals, of which you shall be able to read about within the pages of
this website.
In March of 2002, before we set off for our second pilgrimage to the Somme
we decided to take a more active role in our communities history during
1914-1918, so we visited a local Church in the Donegall Pass area of South
Belfast and listed some names from their War Memorial Plaque of those
who lost their lives during the First World War, and after some research
we were able to locate where five of these brave young heroes had been
buried. We also had requests from various locals, who asked if we could
find and visit the graves of their Great Grandfathers / Uncles. During
this visit to The Somme we managed to locate eight of these graves that
were scattered over Northern France and Belgium, where we then laid a
small poppy adorned cross suitably inscribed with the Soldiers name regiment
and the date that he laid down his life for King and Country at each of
these sites, and we also laid several wreaths at the grave of The Unknown
Soldier in the Connaught Cemetery. Details and images of these findings
and others are contained in the following pages. From the gratitude and
thanks we received from locating these final resting places, and from
the huge influx of requests we have since received, the Association now
operates a soldier research and grave location service where the Association
will endeavour to research the soldier in question and locate their burial
site or place of commemoration if one exists during our travels to France
and Belgium.You can find out more about this service in the Research section
of this website.
We are hoping this website will be used by schools and colleges to educate
our children in the brutal history of our forefathers and to let a worldwide
audience appreciate the honour and respect that the people of Ulster have
for these heroes.
An on-line store is also planned for this site, where we will be selling
various World War One, Ulster Volunteer Force, Young Citizen Volunteers,
36th (Ulster) Division and South Belfast Friends of the Somme Association
merchandise such as badges, t-shirts, posters etc. Money made from these
products will also be used to run and maintain this website, a website
and Association that like Carsons Volunteers, who were the “Peoples
Army”, are the “Peoples Association”, where we aim to
display articles, stories, images and details of your relatives that served
in the 36th (Ulster) Division during the Great War of 1914-1918.
If you have any information that you would like to see included on the
site, or if you pocess photographs, diaries, documents etc that you think
would help build up the factual information or just to tell the story
of a relative, please email us at info@belfastsomme.com
Newspaper
clipping taken from the Herald and Post Telegraph, Thursday 21 August
2003
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