Eileen Hickey Irish Republican History Museum

“Iarsmalann Na Staire Poblachtach Éireannach – Eileen Hickey Irish Republican History Museum” is across the street (behind the Conway Mill) from this mural. Eileen Hickey was a Provisional IRA member who served time in Armagh prison; she died in 2006, one year before the opening of the museum (obituary at An Phoblacht).

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Peter Moloney
M10211 [M10212] [M10213] [M10214] [M10215] [M10216] [M10217] [M10218] [M10219]
M10220 [M10221] [M10222]

Australian Aid For Ireland

This Conway Street mural, outside the mill and the republican museum, features banners of two Australian republican support-groups, with supporters holding banners reading “Australian Aid for Ireland QLD [Queensland] Branch [Fb] – The Spirit of Freedom” and “The Casement Support Group – Saoirse Melbourne”.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Peter Moloney
M10208 [M10209] [M10210]

Memorial To The Missing

Canadian physician John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields and the triple arches of the Thiepval memorial to the missing are featured in this Monkstown mural. It is McCrae’s poem that is thought to have given rise to the use of the poppy as a symbol of military remembrance (WP). The names of over 72,000 dead are inscribed on the memorial (WPtravelfranceonline).

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row/That mark our place; and in the sky/The larks, still bravely singing, fly/Scarce heard amid the guns below.//We are the Dead. Short days ago/We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,/Loved and were loved, and now we lie/In Flanders fields//Take up our quarrel with the foe:/To you from failing hands we throw/The torch; be yours to hold it high./If ye break faith with us who die/We shall not sleep/Though poppies grow/In Flanders fields.”

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Peter Moloney
M09936 [M09937] [M09938] [M09939] [M09940]

Rifleman Robert King

Robert King, of the 12th Royal Irish Rifles, who joined the army from the Ulster Volunteers, was “awarded the Military Medal for gallantry in action on 1st July 1916” at the Somme. The two sides of the medal are shown in the top right, with George V on one side and “for bravery in the field”. The 12th Rifles were drawn from the Central Antrim regiment of the Ulster Volunteers including the Newington area of Larne; King, however, was from Ship Street.

Wellington Green, Larne

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Peter Moloney
M09697 [M09894] [M09895] [M09896] [M09897] [M09898]

Impunity

Line drawing in Derry by Carlos Latuff showing an army soldier, with “impunity” across his shoulders, taking aim at a blindfolded woman, representing martyrs’ families.

Latuff is a Brazilian political cartoonist (web site). This piece is outside the Free Museum of Derry. Just out of shot (to the right) is an actual bullet-hole from Bloody Sunday. He also added a drawing to Free Derry corner (M08306). On the same visit (July 2012), he worked in Belfast on a mural expressing solidarity between Palestinian and republican POWs and also did a line drawing on a café wall.

(See also: Latuff cartoon used in a flyer for a rally to End Imp unity.)

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Peter Moloney
M09634

Time For Peace

A three-stone memorial to army soldiers in Tullycarnet, featuring a line from the gospel of John (“Greater love has no-one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” 15:13) and a song by Randall Wallace for the 2002  movie We Were Soldiers called ‘The Mansions of the Lord’: To fallen soldiers let us sing, where no rockets fly nor bullets wing, our broken brothers let us bring, to the mansions of the Lord. No more weeping, no more fight, no prayers pleading through the night, just divine embrace, eternal light, in the mansions of the Lord. Where no mothers cry and no children weep, we will stand and guard though the angels sleep, Oh through the ages safely keep, the mansions of the Lord.”

By Ross Wilson with support from the International Fund For Ireland (IFI)

The garden of reflection is in front of a mural reading “Time for peace. Invest in kids … not war!”. The image of a boy playing with a ball against a wall is based on a 1994 photograph by Crispin Rodwell. The slogan in the photograph, originally, was “Time for peace; time to go” but for publication, as here, the second part was cropped out.

King’s Road, Tullycarnet

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Peter Moloney
M09579 [M09580] [M09581] [M09582] M09583

What Do We Forget When We Remember

Two poems are featured prominently and another two alluded to in this Newtownards mural and memorial garden to WWI soldiers. The central panel features part of an anti-war work by by Owen Griffiths, Lest We Forget. Robert Laurence Binyon’s For The Fallen is featured on the stone, above a line of Latin from Horace’s Odes (III.2) – On Virtue (which most famously re-appears in Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est). On the left and right there appear the mottos of the Royal Irish Rifles – ‘Quis separabit’, which comes from Romans 8:35 – and the Royal Artillery – ‘Ubique – Quo Fas Et Gloria Ducunt’, which comes from Kipling’s Ubique.

For the (WWI) 13th battalion RIR, see Regimental List and similarly for the 16th (rather than the 17th) “Pioneers”. For the (WWII) 5th Anti-Aircraft battery, see Newtownards History.

Tower Court, Newtownards

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Peter Moloney
M09549 M09550 M09551 M09552 [M09553] [M09554] [M09555] [M09556] M09557 M09558