I apologise for not writing sooner but the preparation for this trip took over my life but it is now over and here is my report on the sadness and the happiness of five moving days in Belgium and France for 48 lucky people.  We of the Connaught Rangers Association try to have a trip of remembrance every year, next year Gallipoli, but this experience was extra special.

CONNAUGHT RANGERS TRIP TO YPRES AUGUST 7TH TO 12TH 2014

We were awake early on 7th August and set off for Dublin at 2.30am our objective was Terminal 2 for 4.30am to meet our party, 44 people from all over Ireland, Cork, Kerry, Carlow, Dublin, Belfast, Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon, Leitrim and Westmeath, with four more to meet in Belgium who had made their own way from England. A large party with a big responsibility to rein in the stragglers, but by 12.30 we were well ensconced in our hotel in Ypres. The Ariane Hotel everybody agreed was as good a hotel as was to be found; the staff, the food, the rooms were superb and the calm ambiance relaxed our bodies as stories were told and people got to know each other. The Belgian beer had many qualities but the one I noticed above any was its ability to gel strangers into long lost friends. Always on a trip such as this you will get characters but the whole 48 of us seemed to be larger than life.
We spent the evening in splendid conversation and most sensible people were in bed at a reasonable hour for the long hard day to come. However Committee men and pipers stayed to the end ensuring the regimental motto “Non Separabit” was strictly adhered to.
Up at 8.00am for a magnificent breakfast, either English/Irish or continental was catered for, some of us motored through all three not knowing if further rations would reach us during our sally into the trenches of South Ypres. Our first objective, Hill 62 at Sanctuary Wood was reached in good time, three and a half miles south of the town and it became obvious the advantage the German Army had at 1st Ypres in 1914. From here the German artillery could pepper the town with high explosive and at the same time keep control over the advancing English infantry with a view over two miles of ground.
The Connaught Rangers 2nd Battalion were in the thick of this battle in early November 1914, just across the Menin Road at Polygon Wood. After losing so many men on the retreat from Mons and at Soupir on the Aisne, as the French and the British Expeditionary Force drove the Germans back, they eventually brought themselves back to strength at Poperinghe with Special Reservists from the 3rd and 4th Battalions stationed in Cork. They were immediately thrown into action at St Julian and a week later sent down to Polygon Wood. These unfortunate unexperienced troops were blown to hell over the next few weeks when German artillery proved how good they were. So much so that the poor 2nd Battalion could fight no more and its survivors were incorporated into the 1st Battalion who were suffering a similar fate elsewhere, on 5th December.
Onto Essex Farm famed for John MacRae’s writing of the poem “In Flanders Field” and the subsequent growth of the poppy as the symbol of the war dead. Lots of Irish Guards graves here from 1915 and only a short distance from Mauser Ridge where the reformed 1st/2nd Battalion again met their fate in April 1915 during 2nd Ypres. They lost hundreds that day in a gas attack, their bodies never recovered as the gas and the oncoming Germans forbade it. The names of most of these men are on the Menin Gate.
Vancouver Corner was our next stop commemorating the brave Canadian Army who had just come into the war in this sector North West of Ypres town. They drove the Germans back suffering 2000 dead in their Division of 18,000 men from gas, bullet and shell.
Our last stop of the day was at Tyne Cot Cemetery the biggest military cemetery in the world, where 28,000 names are etched into the back wall of the cemetery and where 12,000 men are buried, unfortunately that badly hurt, the burial parties could hardly recognise the bodies. “A soldier of the British Army” or “A soldier of the Australian Army” or “A soldier of the Middlesex/ Leicester/Yorkshire Regiment” being the grim reminder on most graves. The deaths in this cemetery are from 1917 and 1918 and mainly from 3rd Ypres or the Battle of Paschendaele as it has become known. It is here on the back wall that John Robert Higgins aged 34, grandfather of the Higgins family on the trip is remembered. His leg blown off by a shell and he obviously bled to death with no chance of survival or recovery His wife and children repatriated themselves back to Belfast some months later after a daughter, a young child, was killed in an accident with a lorry in London where they were living.
Only one Connaught Ranger in this Cemetery out of the thousands of names, Lance Corporal CH Pretty 9056 6th Battalion, a stretcher bearer/ bandsman, one of the unsung heroes of this war is buried. We found his grave and stood a while as we remembered him and the three Rangers commemorated on the back wall, all 6th Battalion men from October 1917.
We were back at the Hotel for an early dinner, this night was our big night, the Connaught Rangers Association was leading the Ceremony of Remembrance at the Menin Gate. A ceremony which has been performed every night since the Menin Gate was built in 1926, except for the years of German occupation in WW2. We marched behind our pipers from the Main Square down the cobbled streets of Ypres. The pipers played the regimental marching tunes of the Connaught Rangers, St Patricks Day and Brian Boru as, although I say it myself, we cut quite a dash with the crowds of tourists and the local population, as we marched at military pace into the arms of thousands of people gathered at the monument to 60,000 dead whose bodies were never recovered but who fought at Ypres in 1914-1916. The Last Post Association managed the event smoothly with the firemen on their bugles playing the Last Post, our pipers replying with the lament “Oft in the Stilly Night” whilst the four kids of our party were signaled to lay the wreath to the Connaught Rangers. It was all over quickly it seems and we marched off to our pipers playing a slow “Raglan Road” and to the applause of thousands as Gary Egan paraded our colours. A night to remember for us all and I hope the onlookers got a lot from it as well. It was all done so respectfully, so measured, so tastefully and it echoed my thoughts from over twenty years ago when I saw the ceremony first and I said to myself then how nice it would be to take part in that Ceremony, little thinking that 20 years later I would be there and my dream fulfilled. Day 2 finished with a celebratory gush of the renowned Belgian Beer.
Day 3 was an early start to a long day in Northern France, a day following the exploits of the 1st and 6th Battalions in 1914 and 1916. Our first stop was Cabaret Rouge Cemetery where 23 Connaught Rangers are buried of the 1st Battalion, all killed either side of their disastrous trip up to Ypres for the beating they took on Mauser Ridge at 2nd Ypres in April 1915. This northern Loos sector never had a big battle but the daily attrition rate took care of thousands of men. In amongst the 23 dead are two Sligo men, 20 year old Lt. Benjamin George McDowel and Pte P Conlon, one of five brothers who joined the Connaught Rangers and died in this war. There are 7650 graves in this cemetery and our pipers played a lament and our colours were lowered as we remembered every one of those lads.
Our next stop brought us to Vimy Ridge where we explored another element of the fighting in the war, tunnelling. Where men fought men in dark tunnels many yards under the ground both sides trying to outwit the other in this grim game of subterranean chess. The Canadians took the ridge in April 1917 and it is generally considered to be the place where, just as the Australian and New Zealand nations came of age at Anzac in Gallipoli, the Canadians came of age here at Vimy in 1917. The four Canadian Divisions fought side by side overcoming the Germans who held key strategic positions on the ridge. The Canadians lost two thousand men and had 5000 wounded in the two days of battle. Every year the students of Canada come out here and also to Beaumont Hamel on the Somme and guide tourists through these horrible encounters. We had an enthusiastic and knowledgeable young French Canadian girl to show us around. The two days of fighting followed 18 months of preparation as mainly Welsh miners dug the miles of tunnels through the chalk of the ridge.
From there we went into the thick of the Battle of Loos in late September 1915 where first day advances led to wholesale slaughter as Generals French and Haig squabbled over who commanded what and although Haig eventually won that little spat, thousands of men died as mistake after mistake took place as the two men huffed and puffed. Our first stop was just outside Loos en Gohelle, south east of Mazingarbe at Dud Corner Cemetery where two men belonging to our party are commemorated. Pte John White 6250 of 6th Battalion is buried here and Brendan and Eleanor White of Dublin two of our party paid their respects and Eddie Lenihan of the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards is remembered on the stone panels of the Loos Memorial which surrounds the cemetery. Eddie was a Waterford man who came to Manchester in the 1890s, married at the turn of the century and left his wife and four children and went to war with the Guards and was blown to hell by a large German shell three days into his baptism of fire, his body parts scattered over this part of Northern France. Rudyard Kipling’s son, John, Eddie’s platoon commander is on the panel next door. Poor Jack died on his first day of war, the 26th September 1915.
On to Le Touret Memorial near Bethune where 13400 regular soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force are remembered who died in the first year of the conflict, there are 63 Connaught Rangers with no known grave and three who were lucky enough to be found in one piece, a really lovely memorial and cemetery where 900 graves are situated. On a few miles to the Royal Irish Rifles Cemetery at Laventie situated on a lonely country road outside the village. Here 12 Connaught Rangers are buried and one in particular Pte Patrick Feeney 5547 1st Battalion is buried, a veteran of the 2nd South African War 1899 to 1903, he is the grandfather of one of our party, Michael Feeny of Castlebar, who in his eulogy after the pipers lament, Michael explained how Patrick Feeney was the inspiration that made him drive forward that magnificent memorial in Castlebar, The Mayo Peace Park, dedicated to the dead of all wars and the forlorn hope that there will be no more. After his oration Michael sang the song Willy McBride, his voice hoarse with emotion and not a dry eye at the grave, one of the truly moving moments on this memorable trip.
Day four beckoned and our last day of action spoilt a little by some extremely unpleasant weather  we took in Messine Ridge, the scene of a great victory for the British in the lead up to 3rd Ypres in 1917 where 29 large mines were excavated under the ridge and blew the German line to smithereens. Only 26 of these mines erupted but enough to create havoc in the German front line, another went off a few years back, luckily killing nobody. However there are two mines extant and unfortunately now the authorities do not know their location. A constant reminder to locals and their cattle that although the war was one hundred years ago, death could be round the corner still.
In the pouring rain our pipers played another lament at the Irish Cross in Wyschaete dedicated to the Irish 16th Division of which the 6th Battalion Connaught Rangers were part. Intrepids were soaked, the wise stayed on the bus. On to Kemmel Chateau Cemetery where 38 Connaught Rangers are buried, all 6th Battalion men from late 1916 through to 1917. Two graves of interest to me at this lovely cemetery were those of a Dublin lad, Sgt Augustine John Hackett 2486 Connaught Rangers, killed in a trench raid at the age of 20 on my birthday 19th February 1917, 29 years before I first saw the light. Augustine’s family had contacted me only three days before we flew out of Dublin knowing absolutely nothing about his war. As soon as we returned I sent them photographs of his grave and the promise over the next few weeks to send them his story. They are over the moon with the prospect and with Oliver’s help we will piece together his short life. He must have been quite a lad to be Serjeant at 20 years of age. The other man at this cemetery who I had a special interest in was Lt. Joseph Patrick Dignan of Roscommon, who had attended the same school as myself, St Bede’s College in Manchester. I wrote a long article a couple of years ago about him and his three brothers who all enlisted, one of whom also died at Ronsoy on the Somme on 21st March 1918 whilst serving with the South Irish Horse. Joseph Patrick was in a cadre of 9 Connaught Rangers officers who landed in France in July 1916 and after six weeks trench training were attached to the Enniskillings who had taken a terrible pasting in the early days of the Somme in July, within a few weeks they were all dead at Guillemont and Ginchy, Joseph Patrick lasting the longest of the nine before being killed on a night patrol with the 8th Enniskillings on 16th October 1916.
Soaking wet we entered the town of Poperinghe after an interesting and educational stop at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery where there is a museum to medical care and the graves of 10784  soldiers from 30 different countries proving how true was the title World War given to this terrible four years of death. The museum explained the progress medical science made at this place known as Remy Sidings where there was a collection of Casualty Clearing Stations catering for the wounded of four years of war. On one wall was a timeline chart showing the dead of Ypres reaching a massive climax in the late, wet summer of 1917.
On our way into town we paid a visit to Poperinghe Old Military Cemetery, there are seven Connaught Rangers all having died from their wounds sustained in their action at Polygon Wood in early November 1914. Wounded, they were brought to Poperinghe, to the Casualty Clearing Stations in the town which were moved to the countryside outside of the town when the Germans managed to find their range and peppered the place with artillery fire. Although we remembered all seven two had pride of place. Sgt M J Murphy 7404 2nd Battalion of Drogheda whose family had contacted me in the few days before we travelled and Pte J T Holian 4283 2nd Battalion of Roscommon Town, both of course regular soldiers. In our party we had two Holians, mother, Margaret and son, John, from Kiltevan outside the town of Roscommon and decendants of Pte Holihan and has it turned out there graves were almost side by side. The pipers played, the colours lowered one last time and John gave a word of thanks to the Committee of the Association for bringing the two of them there, phone calls to Ireland humming with gratitude, sadness and emotion and finally a group photograph at the foot of the monumental cross in the little cemetery tightly surrounded by the houses of Poperinghians.
Poperinghe is a lovely little town deserving more than the few hours we spent there. Eight miles west of Ypres, it was a place of rest and relaxation for all the troops wearied by their exploits at the front round the salient. Edmund Blunden, the poet, in his memoir of his war years, Undertones of War, described Poperinghe as the next thing to heaven. It is also the centre of the hop industry in Belgium which we learnt to our cost that evening in the town.
After a long night of retrospection we awoke late to Day 5. No hard graft today just gentle ambulation through the pretty streets of sun kissed Ypres, a coffee here and there and for me a magnificent lunch in a brand new restaurant a few hundred yards from the hotel called Souvenir. Then a last count up, everybody reported for duty and off we went to Brussels, a last word of thanks from our driver, Marc, and into the airport. We were back in Boyle at midnight, tired, hungry and thirsty. We slept long and awoke next day reminiscing over the jokes and laughs and mainly the sadness of a memorable five days in little Belgium.

Well after over two weeks of inactivity due to technical problems outside of my control, I am back to wonder, pester and generally get on the tits of all that is holy, glorious and nasty in the lying , cheating world that is Britain, Ireland and the Catholic Church, especially the Salford Diocese.

Let me first of all get rid of the trivia.  It seems that St Bede’s College in Manchester, after all the hullabaloo of the last few weeks of last term, still have not decided who the new head is.  Either that or they do not know how to update their own website, because by just now 10.10am Friday, 5th September, taking a peek at the staff roll, good old Sandra Pike is still Acting Head.  Old Sandra can always be relied on to step into the breach, especially when as is often the case the legion of new governors do not know what day it is, never mind who is supposed to be doing what and when.

It is a bit like Manchester United buying that black footballer from Crystal Palace last year, I forget is name but it matters nought.  Anyway they bought this fine young man, told him to sit on his arse for a year then they gave him back to Crystal Palace without him even kicking a ball in practice.

Are we to presume the play actor from down south somewhere, it seems that the news was so long ago I have also forgotten his name and where he comes from as well, but are we to presume a similar scenario.  That he fiddles off stage waiting in the wings whilst Bede’s goes about doing what they are good and bad at, then he is returned to quieter, lusher pastures down south, where little fish swim elegantly in large ponds.  I hope for everybody’s benefit that somebody lets me know so that I can stop this vicious tirade against my alma mater.

Just another thought about Bede’s: a couple of weeks ago I stood at the grave of an Old Bedian, James Patrick Dignan of Ballinagard House, Roscommon Town.  I was stood in the pouring rain at Kemmel Chateau Cemetery, south of Ypres in southern Belgium.  He was just leaving Bede’s when the infamous Thomas Duggan was starting, he took a German bullet through the head whilst on night patrol outside of Wyschaete. I asked him what he thought of the old place now.  He did not answer me.  Was he being polite?

To change the subject somewhat, the happenings at Rotherham, in Yorkshire which have been in the news recently and which as bad as they are all are probably only skims the surface of what actually happened.  It seems that vulnerable young girls were befriended by good looking Asian lads and groomed into removing their knickers for all and sundry in the immigrant population of South Yorkshire and beyond.  The police and local authority social services knew all about it and chose to forget about same for fear of stirring up feelings of racism.  When people put racism above humanitarianism it is surely time to pack up.  The events were so racist it was time to call a spade a spade.  Asian men procuring white girls for the systematic abuse by immigrant males was surely one hell of a racist act.  I did not hear tell of Asian girls being procured.

You might start to ask why this should be and I can only understand that this was organised crime on a massive scale.  The area where these procurers and customers come from produce drugs on an industrial scale which floods into the British Isles and Ireland.  The people who control this business are awash with money and they know of the old adage that every man and woman has his price.  Take the story mentioned in the Jay Report where a suspicious Police Sergeant with a squad of plods raided a house and found five Asian men in a room with a naked 12 year old girl.  He arrested the 12 year old girl.  Now no man unless he was an out and out pervert would have taken this course of action, so there must have been something else involved, money.

I suggest the police and the social services were all being paid off by elements of these criminals, not on a small scale but on a massive scale in a similar manner that the authorities in the immigrants own countries are paid off.  A systemic buy out and what is worse not one person has lost his/her job because of this catastrophic break down in authority.  Of course there has to be a fall guy, so the leader of the council for the last 14 years stood down.  It was time he went any way, his fiefdom passed on to another cheat and liar.  These of course are just the players in this drama but it is just another case of the powerful making hay to the detriment of the vulnerable.

So I suggest the only way out of this predicament is for everybody to fight to protect the vulnerable and not leave it in the control of the endemically tainted social services sections of local government and the definitely corrupt masonic encrusted higher levels of the police force.

Well what the Rotherham outcry did for the government was all to plainly to be seen.  Westminster, which until this time was under siege from a public bent on demanding its paedophiles  be exposed, went into overdrive castigating local government and booting out corrupt local politicians from their political parties.  This and the sparring by the western countries with Russia over what to do and not to do in the Ukraine has certainly taken the heat off Cameron and his cronies.  The farce regarding chairmanship of the Inquiry into political paedophilia has now been swept firmly under the carpet not now to arise for some considerable time.  The Rotherham Inquiry is now far more important and what is more it has got more mileage in it for doing down Westminster’s bete noire, Islam.  The change of tack is right up Big Ben’s street.  But wait a minute news has just come through that the Lord Mayor of London, Fiona Woolf is to be the chair of the politico Inquiry, a Butler Slosh in disguise, establishment written all over her arse and what is worse she is Edinburgh establishment as well, another whitewash.  The Woolf is at the door somebody shoot it quickly, we got rid of slosh let us now derail the lupus bandwagon.

So to cap this varied bulletin off and much closer to home was the news last weekend of Alan Morris and his unromantic tryst with justice.  Morris had been in bother for abusing lads at St Ambrose’s school in Altrincham, his apointed judge seemed to agree with the jury that the defendant was as guilty as hell and sentenced him to many years and back he went to Strangeways to be assessed, where his future home will be discussed.  Down the stairs into the prison van he went protesting his innocence.  These boys, these perpetrators of paedophilia, do not seem to get it.  When you are guilty as hell and I know that which the judge and jury did not know and Morris definitely did know, why not throw your hands in the air and say fair cop guv, it can only do you good.  The trouble is they do not consider they have done harm.  They are like young kids in their actions and speech, emotional maturity stunted.

I’m beginning to think we are a nation of wrong ‘uns.  Are there any decent people left besides me and Alexis Jay and my consultant endocrinologist, Wilma Lourens.

This is an old herring but I thought I would throw it in the ring as it might help somebody.  After my blogging about my weight and my diet and my diabetes etc which I covered in a series of postings in December 2013 regarding weight loss and diet and my posting Justice, Big Money and Big Pharma on the 16th May this year, I thought I would return to the subject again on the advice of my superb consultant endocrinologist, Dr Wilma Lourens.  It was she who planted the seed of transformation in my head 18 months ago.  I had been treated as Diabetic Type 2 since 1995 with doctors ramping up my pharmaceutical intake by the year but I had good control over my sugar levels and at one clinic I attended she told me that if I lost weight I would probably find I was not diabetic.  Immediately that advice was like water off a duck’s back and it was a few months later faced with my third daughter’s wedding that I recalled this pearl.  I slowly started changing what I ate and especially veered away from carbohydrate consumption.  The weight started to slide away by not really trying that hard so that a year later whereas I was 120kgs, I am now 105kgs, a loss of 15 bags of sugar or 33lbs of spuds.

I can do things now that I would not have considered 18 months ago however looking at recent photographs of me in Belgium there is still a way to go albeit then I was slightly bloated by that delicious and sinful drink Belgian beer.

At my last appointment at Dr Lourens clinic in Sligo Hospital both herself and her nurse were amazed when tests proved that whereas once I was a diabetic, I am no longer.  By then I had been off Big Pharma’s books for eight months.  Dr Lourens, although amazed and delighted understood her cure had worked  As old age has crept in I have been full of Damascene moments like this, whereas  once I was a Catholic I am no longer of that ilk, once I could not think but now I am enlightened, once I trusted everybody, now I trust just a few, once I never questioned, now I question everything.  I am slowly but surely empowering myself, putting the governorship of my life into my own hands and mind and not relying on any other person to save me.  When I go, I will decide and not let Big Pharma who fill everybody with poison decide for me.  I was on two 850 mgs of Metformin, a 50mg of a beta blocker, 150mgs of Irbersarten for kidney function and blood pressure and around 8mgs of warfarin for my atrial fibrillation.  On October 7th 2013 I kicked the lot into touch, Helen, my wife, did the same.  She was taking tablets for blood pressure and some other quackery.

I have to say I have never felt better.  Fuck off Big Pharma I say, can I hear you echo the same.  This feeling of contentedness as not come without some thought, my diet has improved remarkedly.  For breakfast I normally eat what is left over from the night before.  For lunch I either have a bowl of fruit and a big dollop of Lidl’s Greek yoghurt or a tin of squid in tomato sauce with fresh tomatoes  and for dinner I have meat three days, fish twice and a vegetarian meal on the other two days something like dhal cooked with onions, tomatoes, garlic and spices.  With all meals I have grated raw vegetables, like celeriac or carrots and a big portion of salad leaves and tomatoes.  Potatoes I eat rarely, pasta probably once a fortnight, bread probably three slices a week.  The milk in my tea and coffee is raw milk from a Jersey cow called Molly who pastures up the road, her milk is probably 30% cream and some days if the milk is undisturbed it will not pour from the bottle, the cream acts as a stopper.  When I get delivery it is still warm from her udders, it is neither pasteurised, homogenised or sterilised.  It is milk of 60 years ago, milk I was used to on my grandads farm in Denton.  Google it to discover the life giving qualities it possesses.  However the supply has just stopped for a while, she is about to calf and mother and child need more attention than me.  I am going to visit her today at the start of her confinement and I will give her a kiss from you

What I do not stint on is refreshing drink.  Most nights it is a large tumbler of vodka, sparkling water and fresh lime juice prior to my meal followed by a bottle of Malbec from the Argentine.  I do not like losing weight too quickly so my alcohol intake acts as my parachute.  I go to bed tired at about 8.00pm and awake refreshed at about 3.30-4.00am and onto my desk top computer picking up the news from the internet.  I breakfast normally about 9.00am.  We do not have a television and I do not buy or read main stream newspapers.  I do not like being led up the garden path or wherever media types and politicians would like me to go.  I am completely independent of any one or anything.  I am my own master and I love mischief especially with authority, but that is the story for another day.

Of course I am not 100% cured, I still have atrial fibrillation but I will live with that and take my chances, rather that than swallowing rat poison and of course Dr Lourens, understanding my intransigence, is advising me how to live with it naturally.  My blood pressure is slightly high but at my age who gives a toss.  I am living how I want to live, my guardian angel and Dr Lourens are looking after me.  Dr Lourens has asked me to keep a diary of my journey as she wants to use me as a role model, she wants me to be a model for GPs in the area, so that they can see the benefits of healthy eating amongst diabetics.  I will not keep a diary as such but I will update as best I can using this vehicle

Far be it from me to brag about the problem, but it was I who dragged the dark sordid story of sexual abuse of young Catholic boys at St Bede’s College in Manchester between 1950 and 1966 out of the locked cupboard that is known as the Salford Diocese and into the empathic world of the 21st century.  It became an international incident as past pupils of the College started writing and e-mailing me from all points on the globe telling me of the gross and systematic abuse they suffered at the hands of Monsignor Thomas Duggan, the Rector of the school during that time and other clerics on the staff.  This abuse consisted of anal rape, cock sucking for want of a better word, masturbation of the priestly member, kissing, massaging and excitement of pupils private parts around the anus and the penis, hugging and mental abuse deemed to keep the pupils in fear.  There was also lots and lots of physical punishment which in reality only strenghthened us rather than cause us psychological damage which the sexual abuse obviously did.

Now the question, or series of questions, I want to ask is this.  In the recent case involving a one time teacher and now Deacon of the Catholic Church, Alan Morris, who used to teach at St Ambrose College in Altrincham, only a few miles from St Bede’s College, who was charged with 41 counts of indecent assault on a male, 1 count of outraging public decency and five counts of inciting gross indecency with a child, whatever all that means, why in one court was he found guilty on all counts,  yet in another the jury could not decide.

I finished that paragraph there as I wanted to end an overlong sentence.  First of all I do not understand why the case was split into two trials, then I do not understand why one jury faced with the same or similar evidence found him guilty on all counts and another jury was hung and could not decide guilt.  Is there something basically wrong with our court process or what.

I wrote a blog posting entitled The Tip Of The Iceberg over 2 years ago shortly after Morris was arrested.  The interest this case had amongst former pupils was such that it became the most commented on article I have written on this blog.  So I am, now calling on St Ambrose ex-pupils to answer my questions.

I had understood the case was about the sexual abuse of young boys very similar to the abuse I have mentioned in my opening paragraphs regarding St Bede’s College in Manchester.  But search as I did in the crappy press we do have these days I could find no mention of any sexual abuse.  The words sexual abuse occurred on numerous occasions but was never described.  Am I to understand then that this was psychological sexual abuse and not the more damaging physical sexual abuse that occurred at my alma mater.  If so I think the punishment harsh unless of course you can be hung for anal rape.

I am not poking fun or speaking lightly on this matter but I would like to know off the old boys of St Ambrose how bad it was.  Just being beaten with cricket bats and other implements for ones gratification to me is nowhere near as bad as having a fully engorged mature male penis stuck up the immature anus of a young boy.

I did open up the aforementioned posting a few days ago, after shutting it down during the two trials on popular demand for fear of jeopardising the legal process but nobody hardly has commented.  Certainly nobody has explained anything about the trials. So I thought I would write this short piece in the hope that my questions might get answered.  For a start David Nolan who stood down from giving evidence in order to film and comment on the case for ITV and who made a compelling fist of the job as I have seen the finished product, could start the ball rolling and answer some of the unanswered questions that have arisen since the second trial collapsed.  David has just commenced writing a book of his journey through Ambrose ending with the Alan Morris guilty verdict.

If you are there David!!!  What I want to know is, did  or didn’t Morris physically sexually abuse these kids.  I do not want awful bloody sexual assaults on the body wrapped up in painless anodyne phrases like sexual abuse.  These attacks if there were any, need spelling out as it was, otherwise it goes over the heads of 99% of the people.

Yesterday morning dawned brightly around 6.30am but by that time I had been up and at it for a couple of hours, answering e-mails from Canada, America and the Antipodes and generally filling myself in with what was going on around this lecherous perverted world of ours.  The untidy goings on in Rotherham were still making the news with fresh victims of abuse still coming forward and as ever the people with the power in this benighted United Kingdom, the lords and ladies, the judges and the lawyers, the politicians and officers of the state, the Royal Family and all its friends and the dignitaries of the Church were all getting a verbal and expatiational bashing from anybody who could think outside of the box that we have now nearly all been put into so that these holy’s nefarious deeds cannot be chronicled.

Well nothing new there then, when all of a sudden at around 8.15am an irate comment came onto my blog posting, The Tip Of The Iceberg from an Old Ambrosian.  The writer referring to the scandal that had hit St Ambrose College in Altrincham recently but was in fact historic dating all the way back to the early 1970s and proceeding until the early 1990s, where a lay teacher and later a Church official, Alan Morris, an admitted homosexual, had been grossly abusing boys at the school and where until very recently he had been teaching religion to prep school children in his new role of Deacon in the Catholic Church in the Diocese Of Shrewsbury’s parish of Holy Angels which was adjacent to the school.  The commentator wanted to know why those who hid Morris from the authorities had not been rooted out?  Who had given him the safe passage to be edged out of Ambrose and into the vestry (was that sanctuary?).  Who allowed him back to give a talk on ecumenism in 2011?  Why was the first complaint in 2001 dropped like a hot spud?  Who persuaded the complainant to drop the case against Alan Morris all those years ago as it would “damage the Catholic Church”?  Someone helped him.  Who and when, we need answers?  They aided and abetted his crimes, accessory after the fact, joint enterprise, call it what you will, same crime, same sentence.

Well that was all stirring and intriguing stuff and I answered him to the best of my abilities, went to press the publish button and the word error flashed across the screen.  Fearing outside activity, I wrote my answer out again in different form but with the same result.  This happened a couple of more times and then my blog went down.

I am used to this third party interference and relying on Louis Van Gaal’s mantra of the last line of defence needing only three, I got my defensive wall onto the problem.  These three guys I rely on for my every transmission.  Many times have they fought this war against belligerent third parties and they always win.  These three trusty souls set to work on the problem caused by a tricky right winger and his industrious mid-field partner.  It took them about seven and a half hours and I was back up and running by 4.00pm but by then other things had crossed my path, so I determined to write what I thought in longer fashion in a new posting giving it the importance I knew it deserved.  That is why I am here now writing the piece at 4.30am the following day.

I have to say that I know nothing about St Ambrose College although my school, St Bede’s College is only a few miles away.  When I was a pupil there in the 1950s and 60s my cohort consisted of the sweepings of the back streets of Manchester, whereas Ambrosians were the scrapings of the bags, the pride of the Cheshire nouveau riche, who had had an easy war  in the leafy lanes of Northern Cheshire.  However intellectually Ambrosians were not a patch on us street wise scum and it shows to this day.

I wrote this blog posting The Tip Of The Iceberg in December 2012 just after Morris had been arrested and I compared the sexual abuse of the Ambrosians with what my generation suffered at Bede’s and it became the most sought after article I had ever written with over 300 comments emanating from it, many from Ambrosians expressing their disgust at Morris’s abuse.  It wasn’t a particularly well written article, I have produced far better but it became a vehicle, Ambrosians had no other way of expressing themselves and they were certainly very careful in what they said which made me wonder.

Anyway the story I am about to relate started in May this year, I was over in Manchester for a court case that never came off.  The two litigants  had accused the Salford Diocese of a lack of duty of care when they were sexually abused by Monsignor Thomas Duggan, the then Rector of St Bede’s College in Manchester in the 1950s.  The Diocese offered them a few quid and they cut and ran as soon as it appeared on the table, obviously advised by their lawyers, Slater and Gordon, that that was the best they could do.  Because of the out of court settlement the case did not appear in the papers, the Salford Diocese escaped virtually unscathed, the lawyers got their money, everybody was a winner.  Except of course the thousands of victims of clerical abuse in the Salford Diocese who will never get their day in court.

Whilst in Manchester a man contacted me, I knew of him but did not know him, he had been a friend of my brother’s and he had been a year or two below me in school.  His brother had been a priest in the Salford Diocese but had succumbed a few years ago with cirrhosis.  We arranged to meet at a cafe in Chorlton and for three and a half hours I listened as he told me this amazing and incredible story of an Irish Catholic multi-millionaire from Manchester, who in search of a knighthood or even lordship had supposedly given millions to various charities and who always mixed with the great and supposedly good and in particular with the likes of those I mentioned  in the first paragraph above.  He had already received a CBE from the Queen and had become a queen’s lieutenant and he had a free pass into Westminster and was on committee after committee deciding the fate of country.  This man had left Ireland in the middle 195os with little or no education and here he was consorting with those we thought were the great and the good but now we know to be the scum of the earth.  However he had two gifts, he could mimic the sound of musical instruments and he was cunning, both of which stood him in great stead when dealing with the select few of the population of this shit hole that calls itself the UK.

I remember shortly after myself and Helen were married in 1973 going round to a house he owned in Chorlton to meet his parents who had retired there from their pub in Maygo and while Helen’s relatives chatted to the old folk, this man was playing an orchestra full of instruments in the corner.  Of course there was no flutes or fiddles just wind issuing from one of his orifices, talented indeed.  For my sins I have played golf with him on a couple of occasions and he turned out to be the slowest, most spaced out individual I had ever come across.

However As we sat and drank coffee in this Chorlton cafe my interviewee was telling me a story I at first found hard to comprehend, although even before this meeting I had read stories of him on the internet.  In spite of him being an icon of the Catholic Church, he sits on the Council of Bishops of England and Wales, he is on first name terms with Vincent Nicholls, Archbishop of Westminster and Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Cardinal and chief cleric in England, who some say is a satanist, but my Irishman has a mistress, Roberta McGirl, who he openly flaunts, having taken her on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  Was he taking her for an Islamic blessing on his union?  A truly unique piece of ecumenism.  He installed her in a house in Cheadle Hulme in Cheshire although nominally living with his wife.  He had made a mockery of the Mahon Tribunal, a state Inquiry into the financial double dealings of the once Minister of Finance and then Prime Minister of Ireland, Bertie Ahern.  In fact for his sins he had been made a governor of Liverpool University by another pal Lord David Alton,  He had been knighted by the Pope and lauded by Cardinals and Archbishops and by all the high and mighty of the day.  Yet there was another side.  I thought who does this remind me of.  A rags to riches story mixing with the  finest of the land having come from the bogs of County Maygo, as I call that land bordering the counties Sligo and Mayo in North Western Ireland.  Saville immediately came to mind, limited education, from a dance hall manager to honoured guest of the Royal Family and Prime Ministers.  They seemed alike in projection.

It seems my man in the cafe rode shotgun for this buccaneering Irish man for some years, fending off the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune which I suppose you get when you tread this type of path.  He spent years at the great man’s side ensuring any problem was quickly dealt with and covered up.  Before he came along Alan Morris, our vulnerable Deacon and erstwhile teacher at Ambrose did the same job until the clerical life seemed far more attractive.  He had left Ambrose under a slight cloud in about 1994,

From what I was told sometime after the turn of the 21st century money had been used and plenty of it to settle a particularly nasty inconvenience concerning an ex-pupil and Morris.  So when my commentator came on my blog yesterday morning asking who this Morris protector was, I eventually contacted him by e-mail.  I said you could start by investigating my Irish contractor.  He exploded “I know exactly who this man is….  He runs the SAOBA, Saint Ambrose Old Boys Association and has unsurprisingly blocked all my comments on SAC”.  Now I did not know of this role in my contractors life but when I heard it, it felt like QED.

Could I introduce you all to John Kennedy CBE, KSG, KHS, KMCO, DL, FIHT.  A man who has God and the Catholic Church on his side but as I have always said Charity begins at home Mr Kennedy and, some of the boys would like to ask you a few questions  Here are two links and long ones try to read it all, see who the friends of this great man are.

http://www.johnkennedycbe.blogspot.co.uk

t0htp://corruptedpower.blogspot.co.uk/2008/1/john-kennedy-esq-hon.html

I have just found out that the information I received off an Ambrosian is wrong and I have to apologise to our John Kennedy for that.  He is not the chair of the SAOBA.  A case of same name but different man. but I do stand by the story of monies being used to ease the early inconvenience case against Morris who at the time came pleading and weeping at JK’s door, not knowing what to do to get out of the pickle his unnatural urges had got him into.  I added this at 4.40pm on 16th September 2014.  Fifty minutes after publishing.

Following David Cameron’s speech on terrorism at the United Nations recently, where he spoke at length on the war on terrorism world-wide and what all countries needed to do,  He stated that non-violent extremist were as bad as the violent terrorists we see on our screens every day of the week.  These people spitting out lies on the internet saying that the official line on 9/11 is wrong, that 7/7 was a Secret Services construct, that the holocaust was a hoax, that the Boston Marathon bombing was another finely produced farce and most of the rest of the other modern tragedies were tunes from the same fiddle.

He said these non-violent terrorists are sick, sick people who need reining in and arresting because they are messing up the minds of the good god fearing folk at home.

Well considering all this that David said I think that I must be one of these non-violent hicks, a dangerous terrorist.  In my blog of the last few years, I have refused to believe the official line on everything.  I have looked, studied and then written my own interpretation of incidents concerning the pillars of our world and every interpretration seems to go against the official line.

I started off with the Catholic Church in 2009 and with every investigation I began to see what an unholy bunch of satanic monsters the ruling cabal of the Church really were.  So if the Pope and his minions could be so at odds with their prostating faithful, surely our political masters must think the same way about their honest population.  The more I looked the more I realised what a total shower of shite governments generally are, fooling around with and messing about with  the minds of their electorate.  The so called truth is nearly always a lie.

9/11 was an obvious hoax and it shows the length of deception governments will go to, to get their hidden agenda pushed through.  You only have to look at the destruction of Building 7 at the World Trade Centre to realise that there were dark forces afoot that day when 2500 people were wiped away.  Building 7 could be nothing more than a controlled demolition operation.

The Zionist lie that was the holocaust is more and more being understood to be a hoax by brave and intelligent people around the world.  Even figures released by no less an organization than the Red Cross back up the belief that death was not anywhere near as plentiful as the Zionists want us to believe.  Why do you think it is a criminal act in most countries to suggest that this whole ruse was an elaborate lie set up before and during the Nuremberg trials of 1947.  The Jewish authorities themselves have said that the world Jewish population increased rather than decreased between 1930 and 1950 and a world Jewish population of 15, 000,000 would surely miss the 6,000,000 supposedly killed by the Germans.  Jews died there is no doubt, the concentration camps were not health farms but millions more Russians died in the atrocious conditions of the camps.  There is now a consensus that suggests that probably 200,000 to 250,000 Jews died which is nowhere near this mythical figure of 6,000,000 mooted by Zionists as early as 1918.  This figure is annually being revised downwards as the years go by.

In fact all these fantastic constructs are spun out to keep you, the mindless morons who cannot see beyond the end of your nose, scared to death and thankful that you have such good government that is looking after your health and safety.  I pity the poor Germans who have been paying billions in reparation every year and the poor American taxpayer who has paid out similar sums in order to keep the Israeli nation in bombs, bullets and booty, while the Rothshites and their ilk cruise on to world denomination.

So stooges like Cameron must be right if he believes that I am as much a threat as the violent terrorist organizations round the world.  By the way I learnt this morning that retired US General Paul E Vallely is commander of the ISIS forces running amok in Northern Iraq and Syria.ISIS/ISIL and IS is an American/European construct to keep our brains controlled.

Because of my extremism, I should be arrested while Cameron and Obama lead the rest of you down the garden path.  But it ain’t that easy offering yourself up for arrest, a mate of mine, Matt Campbell, whose brother was murdered at 9/11 by those same dark forces as I mentioned earlier, realised that with the thoughts and words he uses regularly, our David must rightly consider him to be a non-violent terrorist.  So being a good citizen and to save our overworked police force the trouble, he decided to hand himself in and fall on the mercy of the law.  Well he tried and tried to get a willing policeman to arrest him but all to no avail.  He presented himself at Scotland Yard, the Houses of Parliament  and other locations round London hoping to find an honest copper to get out his handcuffs and arrest him for his alleged offences viz non-violent terrorism but news had not come through to them of the atrocities Matt had committed.  In the end Matt had to slink away, tail between his legs, he went home, put his feet up and tried to think up more terrorist bile to make Cameron’s blood boil over.

See this link below which in video sets out Cameron’s points in the UN speech and follows with Matt’s efforts to get himself arrested for terrorist activity.  We have a hard job, us terrorists, when we speak the truth nobody believes us, especially the guardians of the law.

http://www.wearechange.london/node/6

It must have been in 1964, having been intrigued by Brendan Behan’s antics on television, that I first read Borstal Boy, which led me on to reading everything he wrote and other things that were written by others when he was incapable of writing towards the end of his short life.  His vocabulary with its Dublin vernacular extended mine no end and he became a folk hero of mine and many others.

I heard the Gaiety were putting on a a re-make of Frank McMahon’s adaption of the novel which had been first put on at the Abbey in 1967 and I determined to go.  I also heard that at least one of the original cast, Des Cave, was still strutting his stuff and was about to do it in this.  I had another reason as well, my daughter, Paddy Jo’s beau had secured a part in the Borstal section of the production and I later discovered that to gain entry into a Borstal young offenders unit of 1940′s Britain, it was well that you attended the Gaiety School of Acting first.  The beau, some hick from the Cork/Kerry border was given the part of Ken Jones, the posh English lad, who had pushed his paraplegic brother off a cliff in his wheel chair.  I wondered how a Ballyvourney boy, with the upsy-downsey accent they have round that quarter, could ever enunciate the beautiful sculptured tones of an upper class Englishman.  I was about to find out.

We left Boyle on the 9.33am train bound for Dublin for the 4th October 2014 matinee performance.  It is a lovely day out, the two and a half hour journey up to Dublin armed with my kindle, the Indo’s Super Sodoku and the spouse, a little lunch, the performance and back on the last train, alighting in Boyle at 9.30 pm, a late snack and the best part of a bottle of Malbec.  With the Super Soduko nearly done and with good connections we were outside the Gaiety by 12.15 to meet our friends, the actor and daughter, who only had to come from Sandymount, but were late and I was ravenous.

We ate in a Chinese restaurant next door to the Gaiety, where the sour faced head waiter held a mis0gynistic grip on his gaggle of young waitresses.  The lunch was needed rather than admired, the young Cork gent went off to make-up and we enjoyed a coffee in an adjacent cafe.

The play started in boisterous mood with the Liverpool police kicking the shite out of “Beehorn” on arrest and the Scouse crowd baying for blood after recent IRA atrocities in the Midlands.  The action was snappy, the dialogue what you would expect from angry police and prison warders, who all their lives only see the worst.  With the political scene set and the brutality of imprisoned life not at all exaggerated, it was time for routine slopping out and showers and the Director, Conall Morrison, took us right in to the communal wash house where a crowd of inmates were going through their weekly routine and some admirable routines there were.  I was keen to see Corky’s dangly bits because they might become part of the family, but as keen eyed as I was, one dangly bits merged into another dangly bits so that the opportunity was lost, a good end though to the first half.

Most of the second half was set in Hollesley Bay Borstal, located in a remote area of England’s East coast where the regime was easier, the warders more forgiving and the violence amongst the inmates was what you would expect from incarcerated young bulls, there was also much humour as the lighter and darker sides of these men were portrayed.  After the dark first half both writer and director injected much needed lightness into the characters.  It turned out that all these young men from different parts of the British Isles and Ireland having committed all sorts of heinous crimes were really all the same, all they really wanted was to give and receive love, which had been denied to most during there upbringing.  I finished the play weeping at the underlying pathos and thinking “there but for the grace of God…”.

Of the main characters I thought Gary Lydon treated his important role as the elder Behan with a little disdain and although he looked like Behan and spoke like Behan, for me he did not seem like Behan.  Behan to me was a man of intensity, Lydon’s Behan was a dejected, miserable old fart in his meanderings.  However Peter Coonan’s young Behan, exuded intensity, humour and the vitality you would expect from a young rebel.  Faced with a mountain to climb, he just laughed and jumped to the top of it.  As for my boy the Cork crooner or Jamie Hallinan as his family like to call him, I thought him impressive.  He had all the right vowel sounds as though he had gone to school with that horrible wretch Cameron.  With his command over dialect he could get a job as a con man any day.  Well done young man.  Paddy Jo has got a rare one there.

So after a brief  but exciting stroll down Grafton Street we arrived at Connolly with 40 minutes to spare, a couple of glasses of station red and back off to Boyle.  I finished the Super Sodoku for the first time in a few weeks, a ham sandwich washed down with the stipulated Malbec and to bed for a well deserved sleep.  I thought the production was superb, the action real and intricate, the thespians in the main earned their corn and most importantly, I came home happy and content with my day and glad to see there was a healthy disrespect for the Catholic Church in the 1930s/40s as there is today.

Well with Bishop Terence Brainless back-scuttling it out of the Salford Diocesan door, we have another criminal being inserted into his troubled seat.  Bishop John Arnold, Auxillary Bishop of the dark and dirty Diocese of Westminster has been elevated by the pope and just in time for Nichols of Westminster to thank his lucky stars that he is going.  Why?  Because next week John Arnold is up in Luton County Court.

Mr Michael Docherty asked Arnold for information under the Data Protection Act, a perfectly reasonable and legal thing to do, as to what file they had on him.  Arnold said he had the file but he refused to give a copy to Docherty and in fact was going to destroy the file.  The matter referred to the illegal removal of a child by the diocese from her home.

Mr Docherty asks the question “why is it that men who profess holiness and to be ‘Men of God’ are capable of both perpetrating and concealing crimes against children”.  The full story can be read on www.justicenow.co.uk/news/41- injunction-on-the-bishop

So with his work cut out to escape this criminal prosecution in Luton next Wednesday, 15th October, he cannot spare much time in dealing with the burgeoning problems and law suits leveled against his new position as Bishop of Salford and in fact against the Diocese itself.

Not that Brainless, the present incumbent, who had, since his appointment in 1997, been trying to put a lid on the transgressions of his clerics.  Trying to dissuade them from going down to the homosexual nightclubs of Canal Street in Manchester in busloads of a Friday night and covering up the carnal urges of the half straight men in his stable.  Promising victims everything and delivering nothing.  In 2011 before he made his miserable half-hearted apology in the Manchester Evening News to the victims of Monsignor Thomas Duggan’s sexual rampage through St Bede’s College in Manchester in the 1950s and 60s, he promised through his factotum, the idiot cleric Barry O’Sullivan, Co-ordinator of the Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese, to give counselling to the victims.  He promised to meet the victims personally and to offer whatever other help he could.  All of which never happened and in fact all we have seen since is bile and scorn laid on these poor old men who have suffered silently for the last 50 years.  Brain went out of his way to deflect criticism and defend resolutely the actions of his priests.

Well with Brain’s back-scuttle, Arnold will have to have his wits about him to prevent the extradition of Canon Mortimer Stanley from his stately retirement home in Ballybunnion in Kerry.  After returning twice to Manchester for questioning by the police, the Diocese of Brain told him to stay put in Kerry and not to avail himself of GMP hospitality.  He is wanted on 17 charges of sexually abusing 11 year old girls at St Vincents Primary School in Norden near Rochdale over a 25 year period between 1977 and 2002.

The Diocese of course are putting up their usual claptrap to say that it is “co-operating fully with the police and the statutory agencies in these investigations in line with the robust safeguarding policies put in place by the Catholic Church in this country in recent years”.  Which in Manchester English translates into “it has got fuck all to do with us”.

Well in fact it has a lot to do with the Bishop and the Diocese as the forthcoming court cases reach fruition.  Arnold looks as though he is jumping out of the frying pan into a fire or escaping the leper colony of Westminster and joining the Ebola clinic of Salford.

And not only that but the burghers of Ballybunnion are not to happy to have this nonce Mortimer camped on their doorstep only a few yards from their school.

It was the morning of the 1st November 2014, my youngest son’s 21st birthday, but he was far away trying to earn his corn on some foreign field.  I had just come back from South Africa, where for three weeks I and four friends had been following in the footsteps of the Connaught Rangers, our local regiment in the British Army that were disbanded in 1922 on Irish Independence.  We had travelled through KwaZulu Natal, the Orange Free State and Cape Province and I was very tired after a non-stop journey home of 34 hours duration, but more of that in the coming days.

Over breakfast that morning Helen told me that there was going to be a water charges protest meeting at 1.30pm that afternoon in town.  I warmed to the idea and determined to go as Irish Water  had been my bete noire since early March this year when I forbade them installing a new smart meter on my house supply line.  They insisted and I resisted and they insisted and I resisted and the Garda were called and I resisted, telling the Garda chap my prison of choice would be Castlerea rather than Mountjoy because it would be easier for my beloved to visit me and they all insisted and I resisted and then they desisted and by then it was late April and the circus left the town leaving me meterless.

Now to get my position straight, I know how much, the gathering, filtering and supply of good clean water costs and I have no objection to paying for the cost of this infrastructure which enables every household in the country to avail themselves of its benefits.  However what I do object to is the installation of these insidious smart meters  that tell Irish Water boffins in Dublin and Cork how many times a day I empty my bowels whilst at the same time giving off electro-magnetic radiation that can affect the mental health of our young and the physical health of pregnant women.  I also object to the State poisoning our supplies with the introduction of fluoride into our water which they have been doing for the last 54 years whilst the water was free but are continuing to do so and charging us for the privilege of  giving us a smart set of gnashers whilst filling our bodies with carcinogens which are meant to lower our mental and physical health.

Irish Water have to get their product fit for purpose just like any company going to market but unfortunately cannot rid chrytospiridium from our supplies because of a lack of a proper filtration system which should have been their No 1 priority.  Instead they have decided to spend €3.5 billion on the introduction of these meters, a cart before the horse, arse about face situation for this semi-state mistake instead of upgrading their antiquated infrastructure first.  So until it is fit for purpose no way can I pay for “piss” as our ex-TD, Luke Ming Flanagan memorably called the product in the Dail.

Anyway Helen and my good self presented ourselves at the proposed meeting place for protest, the car park on Shop Street at 1.30pm.  I expected 20-30 people at best, because for the last eight months I thought myself a lone voice of protest.  I was measurably surprised as there were around 100 people in quiet conversation and looking round there were dozens approaching along every street.  Within 10 minutes the 100 had grown to 500 and I was warming to my adopted town, I had never realised how strong a voice they had, they had taken enough and now it was time for retribution.  By the time we marched off another 100 had joined the fray with pedestrians lending their support as they followed the march, 25% of the population turning out in protest.

There was no traffic control as we linked arms in a show of solidarity and marched off.  Passing motorists having to stop when confronted by this superb gathering but they seemed to be at one with our aims and there was no hassle.  I remarked that I saw no priest, politician or policeman whereas the lovely lady who had linked arms with me said she had seen a Fianna Fail politico in the car park but I suggested he was there to observe and report back rather than walk, I certainly did not see him on the march.

Certainly all the political acolytes were missing plus all the social hierarchy of the town who had been leading Boyle backwards for the last 50 years.  The situation and atmosphere was crying out for an independent leader to take over Ming’s position.  Boyle needs independent leadership to thwart these arcane, fraudulent, self-serving Fianna Failers and Fine Gaelers that have brought the town to its knees for the last number of years.  Toeing the party line was not de rigueur in this situation as news came in from the country that the honest burghers of every town in Ireland had offered up their Saturday afternoon to see that fair play will take place and that the political system was in disarray.  The people’s voice was being heard and we all agreed we did not want the bandwagon jumpers of Sinn Fein anywhere near us.  We cannot forget their deeds and we cannot forgive this horrible excuse for a political machine.

So with the dearth of honourable politicians and with the Garda politely staying indoors to let this peaceful protest expend itself and with the priests these days preferring to remain on retreat rather than suffer the spleen of their congregations, we marched and were urged onwards by a van and an old car sporting PA equipment.  Now here comes the rub.

When I entered the car park at 1.30pm I saw a man I knew and I asked him who our leaders were.  He said there was no leaders.  Then all of a sudden this van and car combo drove up filled with scruffy men and women in boots and jeans who appeared to run the show.  Typical activists expecting to get their way.  Who they were nobody in my immediate circle knew, but from chaos had come organisation, but from whom or from where was the question.  Is there some dark force behind this social and political revolution country wide?  I do not know but this had not forced the crowd to congregate, this was all done by self will.  Each of the assembled wanted to be the last straw to break this political camel’s back and I am certain that that back will be broken soon.

Last night after the country wide protest the political animals of the Fine Gael party gathered at their presidential dinner in the Hilton in Dublin and they must have realised their day is done.  Enda Kenny’s reflex reply to enquiring journalists was to state that taxes would rise 4% unless the people kowtow.  A typical politicians reply when cornered, designed to put the fear of god into people but these modern day people do not scare easy, their day has come, they have regained their power.  Kenny then became placatory and told the press that “in the next number of weeks we will set out what people really want to hear”.  Why in God’s name did he not do that before it came to this and what do we want to hear, well no less than no water charges and its doubtful whether this particular policy will be thrown in the bin until Fine Gael self destructs..  The political system has failed us and not for the first time.

I am absolutely proud of the people of Boyle, I am glad to be part of their movement, I am delighted they have found their voice when it mattered.  600 people showing their faces to the world, standing up and being counted.  According to early media reports it happened in every small and large town in Ireland.  Our day has come, you politicos have got about 18 months to crawl back into your historic woodwork, your day is done and never was that more aptly put when as the hundreds marching strolled down Main Street and turned left into Bridge Street the procession came to an abrupt stop at the old deserted newspaper shop on the corner, like a funeral procession stopping at the house of a deceased on its way to the cemetery.  It was once the abode of our local TD, a nice sign of respect for a man that toed the party line.

It was Day 1 of our trip, 13th October 1914, five intrepids gathered in the concourse of Terminal 2, our destination KwaZulu Natal.  There was the Colonel from Limerick, Mad Mullingar from you guessed it but with a birthright of Tipperary, Flash Harry from Liverpool with 50% Roscommon heritage, our trip photographer, Boyling Scouse from that gem in North Roscommon but with Liverpool pretension and myself, who I shall politely call the Scribe, resident of Boyle but with that haunted look of a man who spent too long in Manchester.  We were all off on a trip of a lifetime to follow our own fantasies in marching in the footsteps of the 1st Battalion Connaught Rangers as they chased the Boer 114 years ago in the South African War.

My fantasy lay in the opening up of Connaught Rangers history, Boyling Scouse was trying to prove that The Kop at Anfield was bigger than Spion Kop near Ladysmith, Flash Harry was determined to take more photographs than all the media did in the near three years of the war as well as anticipating orgasms when touching the hundred year old ordnance, Mad Mullingar wanted to look at the weaponry of the war and hoped to drink South Africa dry, The Colonel wanted to understand what made the Irishmen tick who sparkled on both sides during the conflict.

As the organiser I was especially concerned that we gelled.  The Colonel was an officer and gentleman, Mad Mullingar an ex private. corporal, sergeant and back again several times and I suspected never the twain shall meet. Flash with his scouse barrow boy attitude to life would make it difficult for any decent chap to engage him in conversation.  Boyling Scouse had the superior advantage of not knowing where he originated and therefore had already determined to remain aloof.  I of course, the nurse maid of the other four wanted above all just to stand at the back of the bus and calm everybody down in what I perceived would be many moments of crisis.  My equable and hail fellow and well met aura, I felt would manage this onerous position very well but three weeks in the jungle with strangers could well test the nerve never mind the temper.

Just to fill you in with a bit of history 864 men of the 1st Battalion Connaught Rangers set sail from Queenstown in Cork on 10th November 1899 on the SS Bavarian and they disembarked at Durban on 1st December after stopping in the Canary Islands and Cape Town en route and immediately entrained for Pietermaritzberg and then headed on for Frere Camp.  They first met the Boers at Colenso on 15th December where because of General “Reverse” Buller’s idiocy they received a bloody nose and 150 casualties.  They were involved to a limited extent at further attempts to relieve the town of Ladysmith, at Spion Kop and Vaalkrans before making the final breakthrough at Tugela Heights on the 23rd/24th February 1900, losing another 140 casualties at Harts Hill.  Ladysmith was relieved and they sat around for six weeks expecting the Boers to return whilst a good few more of them died of enteric because of the dirty water supply.

On April 10th they were withdrawn to East London in Cape Province where for the next two years they combated the guerilla warfare that the Boers had taken up in the Northern Cape and the Orange Free State and mainly round the town of Aliwal North on the Orange River.  In June 1902 they returned to Ireland after losing 68 men killed, 49 died of disease including one officer 279 men wounded including 17 officers and 39 taken prisoner of war whilst receiving drafts of 857 men and officers bringing strength at withdrawal to 1286.  In the next six years they were mainly stationed at Mullingar before leaving for India in 1908, France in 1914, Mesopotamia in 1916, Palestine in 1918, Dover in 1919, India again in late 1919 and extinction in 1922 when Ireland gained Independence losing over another  1000 men on the way.

So there were the quintet at Terminal 2 looking for the Emirate Airways desk and furtively eyeing each other up as to alphas and betas.  Considering the time of early evening we sailed through the booking in, Ryan Air be aware, and security and over a glass of beer we awaited our call for boarding.  Whereas it took the Connaught Rangers 20 days to reach Durban in 1899 we were about to do it in about 16 hours.

After about 7 hours in a large Boeing with about 500 other people, being well fed and watered and attended to by a bevy of beautiful women who could converse in most of the world’s languages we disembarked in that city they call an airport, Dubai having flown over all the world’s worst trouble spots.  Only 35,000 feet had separated us from death as we flew over Liverpool, Manchester, Holland, Southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria where the 5th Battalion Connaught Rangers came to grief in December 1915 helping defend Serbia after they had already come to grief that previous summer in Gallipoli.  Our journey continued over Greece, Turkey, Syria and Iraq following the line of the Tigris down to Basra, a river the 1st Battalion got to know very well in 1916-1917.  We then flew down the eastern side of the Gulf and dropped into Dubai, which for us was the start of Day 2.

Still fresh from our attentions we skittered through the airport on a robotic train and before we knew it we were boarding a similar Boeing with similar beautiful attendents who would feed and water us extremely well on our journey to Durban in KwaZulu Natal.  We had one criticism of Dubai and that is unfair really but because the Arabs are a bit like camels and only drink every blue moon, they have no need of pissoires.  Dubai airport was lamentably short of urinals and those that did exist had queues like it was Sales Day at Harrods.  We closed our eyes, thought of our country, tied a knot in it and waited to board, where we knew there was ample accommodation.  The problem was that 500 other people had the same idea.

The flight down to Dubai was easy, the pilot did not need a map, he took off over United Arab Emirates, turned right over Oman, Saudi Arabia and the Yemen before touching base with Africa at the Horn in Somalia and down for 6500 miles through Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Swaziland before landing in South Africa.

Our host/guide/traveling companion Des Armstrong was there to greet us outside baggage reclaim and he shoveled us into an eight seater Mercedes while he and Ulla is wife brought us to a lovely little hotel, The Fern Hill on the outskirts of Howick where we ate, drank and quickly fell asleep after our marathon journey.

An early start beckoned Day 3 so after a sumptious breakfast we hit the road.  It was to be a busy day and our first stop was the Lion River vineyard, the only winery in KwaZulu Natal.  We waited there while Ulla took Mad Mullingar into Howick to buy a pair of runners, living up to his name he had only brought a pair of dancing slippers and he realised they were not suitable for the bush.  Reunited we pressed on our next stop was the Mandela capture site where young Nelson was captured in August 1962 by the Special Branch.  Nelson Mandela is the patron saint of South Africa and the government have turned this site into a museum which tells the story of his life.  Overlooking the spot where he was caught is a remarkable sculpture  by an Italian consisting of hundreds of steel serrated posts set into a concrete base.  From afar the thing looks unremarkable but as you close to a hundred metres Nelson’s face becomes apparent through the serrations, an amazing sight.

As we sat looking back at the monument, the railway on the far side of the road was obvious.  It was on this line the Connaught Rangers traveled 115 years ago in open topped cattle wagons (30 men or 10 cattle) up into the hills bound for Frere Camp some 15 miles from Ladysmith.  We travelled on and we became aware of the original settlers of this area, the Dargle Valley, Athlone Coach Tours, Ardmore Ceramics.

At Estcourt we take a deviation and turn left through Winterton into the jagged heights of the Drakensberg Mountains and some unbelievable scenery.  Our destination was the Champagne Castle Hotel, a luxurious hotel set high in the mountains with a backdrop of rock wall ascending into the heavens topped by the serrated dragon’s teeth  from which the mountains are named.  After a splendid lunch we were off to school and not just to any old school but to The Drakensberg Boys Choir School.  An internationally famous school of about 100 boys who have been selected on musical ability alone.  They tour twice a year to different destinations and give a concert on most Wednesday afternoons.  My initial reaction was how can I get out of this, I was to be massively surprised.

We were led into a packed 500 seater auditorium, the whole school were in the choir and aged from 9 to 18.  They sang songs in all languages and notably Zulu.  I wrote at the interval in the concert “What a performance, what a truly emotional experience.  I cried, I laughed, I clapped, I was enthralled with their mixture of international, Zulu, Afrikaans arrangements directed by a choirmaster under full control of his choir.”  The choir was 84 strong with 35 black lads amongst them.  These black lads tended to lead the animation and the choreography with great zeal and their voices were heard in many solo performances.

The interval contained a guest performance by a mainly black girls choir with a scattering of boys, obviously choral music is strong out here and it does bring people together which is badly needed where above all time is needed to try and bring these disparate cultures together.  At least here it seems to be working.

I return now to my contemporary writing, “We now have the second half.  It surely cannot beat the first half.  For a while we will forget about the travails of the Connaught Rangers and concentrate on the present day, a day of forgiveness, acceptance and brotherhood and they did and it was wonderful.  It seems that the fees are 115,000 Rand per year, about £8,000 which seems cheap but the real equivalent is about £35 to £40,000 per annum, obviously there are scholarships and bursaries.  In the grounds after the concert whilst everybody was buzzing with the performance we met an old man of Irish stock by the name of O’Neil.  He was over the moon to have met us and he told us the peace treaty to end the first Boer War in 1881 was signed in their farm house.  History is only yesterday in these parts.

We wandered back to the hotel, the sun peeping between the dragon’s teeth on top of the mountain.  It is 6.oopm and time for an apero before dinner, a wonderful meal in truly magnificent surroundings, our tiredness a thing of the past and in our enobled state we drank our fill and went to bed late.  We regretted it the next day but at least my plan is working.  We are all the best of pals.

This unraveling of the trip looks as though it will take several postings to reveal so I hope all you readers hang in there because it really was the trip of a lifetime

After our late night in the Champagne Castle Hotel high in the Drakensberg Mountains are bodies were unwilling for the early start that was programmed.  Mad Mullingar had secreted his private stock and so was longer packing than us unburdened lot, however we dragged our sore heads to breakfast with the thought that he would not be carrying his burden for long.  Not knowing of future vittals we packed our complaining stomachs until it hurt, dragged our cases to the van and bade the wonderful hotel adieu.

Our first stop on Day 4 was Spioenkop, that great lump of rock that rises 1400 feet out of the valley floor.  The Connaught Rangers had only one company involved in this useless fracas and then only on supply duties but they still lost a man, 678 L/Cpl M Staunton.  The regiments taking a hit in this unthought out mess were two south Lancashire regiments, one from Manchester and the other the Liverpool area and as such was of interest to 60% of the group.  Now you can drive to the top, records tell us that on 23rd January 1900 a four hundred men met their deaths here, most of them on a flat area at the north end of the rock which is now called the Acre of Massacre.  The area is scattered with graves where men fell and most bodies were thrown into a trench originally dug by the Boers, more a shallow scrape than a trench but with parados and parapet built up with stone it formed a raised catafalque in which to dispose of the dead.  It is still there snaking across the field, the built up stones now painted white.

Walking the field that morning, we shook our heads and wondered why.  Why did Warren not just keep marching along the Valley, we could see the outskirts of Ladysmith, he could have saved the four hundred dead here, the 500 dead at Vaalkrans and the five hundred dead on Tugela Heights never mind the thousands of wounded but I suppose he was being brow beaten by Buller who always wanted more than I’s dotted and T’s crossed. old Redvers was living up to his nickname of Reverse.  We drove back down the haul road saddened by the sight we had seen relying on titbits to soften the blow. Gandhi was up here for three days after the battle with his large party of stretcher bearers he had recruited, carrying the wounded down to ambulances and burying the dead.  Winston Churchill was up and down the hill at least twice while the battle raged trying to inform Warren of the calamity that was unfolding.

We passed by Vaalkrans where again the Rangers had limited engagement and moved on t0 Chievely, now the site of a military graveyard and a small Zulu township but then the site of No 4 Hospital up the railway line from Frere Camp where the British had their base camp.  This hospital took the wounded from Colenso, iNthabamnyama, Spioenkop and Vaalkrans and as a result men died there and a cemetery was formed.  Probably the most famous of them being Lt Fred Roberts, the only son of General Roberts, who won a posthumous VC in trying to save the guns at Colenso.  In the graveyard were three Connaught Rangers buried, 1668 Pte J Brennan who was wounded at Hart’s Hill on 23rd February 1900 and died here in hospital, 5021 Sgt E Nash who died on 10th March of enteric after Ladysmith had been relieved and 4673 Sgt G Worrod who had been wounded at Hart’s Hill on 23rd February and who died of his wounds here six weeks later on 10th April 1900.

We moved up the road a little to Clouston and realised our efforts at the breakfast table had been in vain.  Des’s wife Ulla had driven up from Howick  70 miles away with her son, Robert and provided us with a splendid picnic lunch, she had set it out under a tree where Buller had set up his headquarters at the Battle of Colenso in December 1899.  But first a lecture from Des as he spoke of the build up to the war, its characters and its incidents.  It was here that we met our piper, Dougie McMaster, who is a farmer and engineer from Ladysmith.  We left Clouston and headed for Ambleside Cemetery in the infamous loop at Colenso.

The Connaught Rangers were part of the 5th Brigade under General Hart on the extreme left flank of Buller’s attack.  He had been told by a native scout that there was a drift (ie. a place where the river is shallow enough to cross) at the end of the loop in the Tugela River, it had already been reported to him by a troop of cavalry that the drift was to the left of the loop but he chose to believe the native scout who disappeared into fresh air once the battle started.  Hart poured is troops, about 2500 men, into this bottleneck, surrounded by water on three sides.  The Boers thought they were on a turkey shoot picking off Rangers and Dublin Fusiliers at will.  It was late afternoon before Buller realised his mistake and told Hart to pull his men back, easier said than done but has dark came they managed to extricate themselves.  The British had about 1200 casualties to the Boers 38.  The Rangers themselves had28 men killed, 114 men wounded and 13 men taken prisoner.  Two days after the battle the local people helped to bury the dead where they lay but in 1972 their remains were exhumed and re-interred in a mass grave at Ambleside within the loop.

Which is now where we find ourselves all kitted out for a little ceremony.  We gathered outside the gate and Dougie playing a lament, followed by Mad Mullingar with the regimental flag led us into the cemetery.  If there is one thing soldiers and ex-soldiers do with sincerity and pride it is in the remembrance of their dead.  Mullingar acted out the lowering and draping of the flag with absolute majesty, I laid the wreath at the memorial giving the names of the 28 Rangers dead, few minutes silence, a tear shed and the Colonel said the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be in Irish and we slowly looked round the other monuments and retreated silently.  A lovely simple ceremony carried out at the side of a farmers field in the middle of nowhere by a respectful band of men and one lady, Liz Spiret, our guide for the day.

We quickly moved on to Tugela Heights and Hart’s Hill.  This is where after five attempts Buller and his army of 50,000 men eventually broke through the cordon that the Boers had placed round Ladysmith.  After preliminary skirmishes Buller tried to take Wynne’s Hill with the 11th Brigade and got pinned down, He then tried to outflank them by taking Hart’s Hill to the east with the 5th Brigade and although successful they were stymied on the far side by resolute Boer defence, another outflanking movement east again on Pieter’s Heights proved successful and Ladysmith was relieved on 28th February 1900.  Buller had finally won the day with sheer weight of numbers

We are here halfway up Hart’s Hill at a similar memorial to the Connaught and Inniskilling dead.  The Inniskillings had the worst of the day losing over 100 men killed, the Connaught Rangers lost 23 killed and had 114 wounded.  Another sad and emotional ceremony with our two ex-soldiers playing their parts well and again I laid the wreath and again Dougie played a lament, followed up with the Colonel and what was to become his party piece Irish prayers.  To see where these Irishmen dashed up this hill makes you stare in amazement.  It is a steep 30 degree gradient covered in small boulders and sharp rocks, even goats would approach it with care.

Enough was enough for us that day as we headed into Ladysmith but one last stop on the side of the road at Red Hill where Louis Botha had his HQ and guns at Colenso.  We stood there 50 metres above the loop and about a mile off it and pitied the poor soldiers of the 5th Brigade who had suffered on that day 15th December 1899.  The first time the Connaught Rangers had fired a shot in anger since the 1st Boer War of 1880, 19 years of peace and then disaster.

We spent the night in that famous hotel in Ladysmith, The Royal Hotel.  During the siege it was used to getting a Boer shell through its roof.  A brass marker on the footpath outside marks the spot where the local doctor was killed when a shell landed in the entrance way just as he was leaving.  The seige lasted four four months and Ladysmith was in a very poor state towards the end with enteric striking hundreds.  The Connaught Rangers were posted to Modder Spruit a few miles north of the town and waited for the Boer to return, they didn’t because they realised their resources were now stretched and for the next 27 months carried out a guerilla campaign against the British.  At Modder Spruit as the Rangers waited, my old friend Peter Dunne died in hospital at Hyde’s Farm from enteric.  A Carlow man married with one child in Dublin, Peter had served his seven years in the Rangers and was in the last of his five years in Reserve when he was called up on mobilisation in October 1899.  He left his pregnant wife and daughter and offered himself up at Athlone.  The rest is history.

After our celebrations of the night before and the prospect of another early start on Day 5, we scoffed our dinner had a couple of beers and we were all in bed for 9.oopm.

Well Day 5 started early as most days seemed to do.  The world here shuts down at dusk because everybody seems scared of the night.  They might have good reason for it.  Our first words of advice after getting the South African welcome was do not go out at night.  A quizzical why was mooted.  Because you have to be aware was the answer.  Which makes me think that unless you are toting an AK47 and are team handed, you are a virtual prisoner for half the year, but more of my queries on the country later.

Breakfast at 6.30am, bags once more packed and meet with Liz Spiret for 8.00am, again she is our guide today, Ladysmith is definitely her patch.  She took us off to the Ladysmith museum, an excellent piece of work in an historical building.  It was the grain store during the siege and the townsfolk queued every day for their rations.  It told the story of the siege very well with some great models explaining what was happening whilst the Boers were in the supremacy.  With lots of people dying of disease because of the filthy water in the town, the Boers let them move their hospital out to fresher cleaner pastures some miles out of town, it saved a lot of lives and ensured the good name of the Boers lived on in history.

We were shunted outside for press photographs and interviews, a look round the artillery parked in the forecourt of the museum and then away to the Soldiers Church, All Saints, the Anglican Church on Murchison Street.  A splendid little church reminiscent of the small Anglican Cathedral, St Georges, in Ypres.  Around the walls of the side altars on marble slabs set into the walls are the names of every soldier who had lost his life in the Relief of Ladysmith, under the Connaught Rangers there were the names of 66 soldiers.  With no piper this time Mullingar carried the flag up the main aisle, Des read a few words from a book, Mullingar lowered the flag, I laid a wreath by the names of the soldiers, the colonel said his Irish prayers, a minutes silence and another moving ceremony was over.  If we carried out this ceremony ten times a day , seven days a week, I would still get tearful.  Everybody plays out their part so magnificently and Flash Harry gets a chance of some emotional pictorials.

It was time for lunch and a date had been fixed at our Piper, Dougie McMaster’s house, a few miles out of town.  Dougie’s house was a splendid example of a 120 year old working farmhouse house, it reminded me somewhat of my grandfather’s farmhouse in Denton.  Dougie’s wonderful wife had put on a superb spread of South African food and she made sure Mullingar was topped with whisky after all his efforts with our standard.  We ate and talked, the atmosphere was so relaxed, I could have stayed there all day but things had to be done.  However before we left we spent an hour in Dougie’s private museum.  He told us that a lot of the artefacts on show had been gathered by a local historian, Edmund Llewellyn (Wally) Hyde, immediately after the battles of Colenso, Vaalkrans and Hart’s Hill.  In fact Wally had helped bury the dead in the loop at Colenso.  As an old man he had befriended Dougie and asked him to look after his legacy and Dougie has done this magnificently.  Previously when looking at my old friend Peter Dunne’s life I had presumptiously thought he had died of enteric and Dougie had the original Medical Officers Report Book which listed the death of every British army soldier who died in chronological order during the Relief of Ladysmith, an unbelievably important historical document and there was Peter’s death recorded on the morning of April 10th 1900 of enteric and signed by the doctor officiating.

Dougie told us a story about Wally Hyde after the battle in the loop at Colenso as he was burying the dead.  He was right at the end of the loop as far as any soldier had got, on the banks of the Tugela River he found this dead Connaught Rangers.  The body was in the first stages of decomposition, the man still had his pith helmet on, so he took it off and the soldier’s ginger hair came away with the helmet.  The soldier’s dog tag showed him to be 1190 Cpl W Doherty, they buried him and put up a simple cross but he kept the helmet with the hair attached.  When he got home for whatever reason, he scraped off the hair and put it in a jar and there it remained for over 20 years sitting on his shelf.  He then got wind of a party of Irish relatives in Ladysmith wanting to know about the conditions at the loop.  Wally the historian was contacted and he showed them the battlefield and its tragedy and then he learnt these travellers were the relations of Corporal Doherty.  He took them home and presented them with a relic of their relation.  In history every little thing is important.

We left Dougie and drove up onto the Platrand, this is a long hill overlooking Ladysmith and ownership was of high strategic importance, the besieged garrison owned it from the beginning but on the night of the 3rd January the Boers tried to take it and force the town to submit.  The hill was flat topped and about four kilometres long and about 120 metres above the town.  It had three defined zones, Caesar’s Camp at the eastern end occupied by the 1st Manchesters throughout the seige, Wagon Hill in the middle and Wagon Point at the east end.  The area was under the command of Col Ian Hamilton, who was later to be famed for his lack of success in Gallipoli in 1915.  About a 1000 Boer undercover of darkness attacked and quickly put paid to two companies of Manchester’s but a bayonet charge by the Gordons drove them off the hill.  Meanwhile after rallying again the Boers attacked Wagon point the following evening in force and were slowly gaining the edge when a critical bayonet charge by the Devonshire regiment finally threw the Boers off the hill.  Casualties were high with 18 British officers and 150 men killed and 18 officers and 224 men wounded with the Boers losing 68 men killed and 135 men wounded.The action was awarded with five VCs, Lt Digby-Jones of the Royal Engineers, Lt Masterson of the 1st Devonshires, Trooper Albrecht of the Imperial Light Horse and Pte J Pitts and Pte R Scott of the 1st Manchesters.  The day was saved in some brutal hand to hand fighting and Ladysmith lived on.

Up on the hill that afternoon we could see how important it was , we were looking out over Ladysmith and any force with artillery could have brought the town to its knees in a matter of hours.  Everything seemed as it was 114 years ago, gun emplacements almost as good as new, trenches and especially graves scattered about the hill.  Cattle and antelope grazed at will untroubled by history.

Our last stop before we left Ladysmith was to visit the Town Cemetery.  This spot was most important to me I was visiting Peter Dunne’s grave.  There are only two Connaught Rangers buried here both dying of enteric while in hospital at Hyde’s Farm, 1005 Pte T Heal;ey who died on 6th April 1900 and 3058 Pte Peter Dunne who died on 10th April.  I could not help thinking of Peter’s great granddaughter, Vivian Roche, now in Saudi Arabia, who had found Peter’s campaign medals only a few days before we set off and who donated them to our museum in Boyle.  She would have been so proud to see us five stood at Peter’s grave.  It is a funny moment when you stand at the grave of a soldier you have researched, you are one of the family, I had spoken to Peter often and shared a cup of tea with his wife Jane and played with his two daughters, Molly and Annie.  I thought I knew them well and I looked at his gravestone and realised he had died 114 years and six months ago.  If I shed one tear on this trip I must have shed a hundred.

We left Ladysmith, it was a town I liked and journeyed on to Dundee, town born on coal and named after the town in Scotland when a past resident and then a farmer by the name of Smith found the stuff by the thousand ton in his back garden.  Day 5 ended for us at Lennox Farm just outside Dundee where we were going to put our feet up for a few days.  We had a great meal and washed it down with some cheap wine we found.  I was staying in the honeymoon suite but unfortunately without the honey.

Well Day 6 started with one mighty fine breakfast.  Lennox Farm is run by an ex-Springbok, Dirk Thonemann and his wife, Salome.  Dirk is the farmer whilst Salome is what you could call front of house.  However she is away in Ullapool in the far north west of Scotland, attending the birth of her only daughter’s first child.  Now Ullapool is as far away from South Africa as you need to get, she is married to a fisherman up there.  I just wondered during the week was she perhaps trying to give her parents a message, that South Africa is not for the young, but I am stepping out of line, the Scottish fisherman could hardly catch fish in KwaZulu Natal.  Dirk reckons nobody should be made to live that far north.  However Dirk’s wife has taught the Zulu women who work on the farm how to cook in a Cordon Bleu way and they are sending us up some great food.

The boys themselves are settling down to a routine, no squabbles so far but plenty of chiding and everybody trying to get in the favoured back seat of the bus.  I have decided not to get involved and usually sit in the cramped middle seat alongside Mullingar or if we have no accompanying guide act as co-pilot or shotgun in front left.  Flash Harry as now perfected his style and his acting like a David Bailey in taking photo shoots of the young women of the various towns, Boyling Scouse has chosen to be reasonably friendly and has started talking to Flash.  The Mad Mullingar has started to involve himself in a paperchase by leaving items of toiletry and clothing and the odd camera where ever we spend the night.  We have a fleet of couriers chasing us round KwaZulu Natal with all things Mullingar.  The Colonel now he can spot his moment of fame is practising saying the Lords Prayer, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be in Donegal Irish, Galway Irish and Belfast Irish.  He is like a Trappist monk of an evening repeating his mantras.

On the alchohol front Boyling and Flash settle down to 12 0r 15 bottles of Castle lager with a bottle or two of wine with their food, the colonel busy in his devotions, slurps a bottle of wine with his meal and sometimes takes one to bed with him, I tend to tentatively sip a glass of wine and I have taken a liking to a dry Cape cider.  Mad Mullingar in living up to his Army nickname, the Dry Fucker is busy making sure he has enough.  A few sips of strong liquer for breakfast, a bucket of beer for lunch and whatever is going in the evening as long as it is plenty.  Snores and farts accompany his progress and there is not normally a word out of him on the bus as he gently cuddles his half gallon hip flask.  All seems well with the world but I know it cannot last.

Day 6 is our big day we have been selected to lead the big procession through the town of Dundee behind the pipe band of the South African Irish Regiment.  They have travelled overnight in the back of an enormous wagon from Johannesburg, a six or seven hour journey, so they are not too well pleased when they meet us at the rendezvous in a secluded part of town.  Behind us are an assorted few hundred British soldiers, camp followers and a Boer contingent that seem very heavily armed as though expecting trouble on the way.  Mullingar calms the pipers by producing his hip flask, and giving each and every one their tot.  Once a soldier always a soldier I say and then were off down the town with Mullingar’s tot putting a swing into the pipers step.

Flash Harry was like a dervish dancing in, out and around the crowded footpaths to get the right shot, The Colonel was on the left flank giving the orders and keeping us in step, Boyling Scouse was in and around our centre while I was posted to our right flank, in the vanguard was trusty Mad Mullingar carrying our colours and daring any man to relieve them off him.  He was like a Churchill tank as he swept all before him, even the parade marshals looked a little scared.  On the dais taking the salute was a little black man who seemed to have borrowed his uniform off a giant.  He was Colonel of the South African Irish and probably originated from Mayo.  I heard he was third in command in Zuma’s government.  A quick eyes left from the Colonel and four Connaught heads swivelled as though swivelling was going out of fashion.  I have to say the march could have seemed a little in your face to the overwhelming black population of Dundee but everybody and there were lots of bodies in the spectators seem to enjoy the occasion and the local police force came down hard on one or two impatient motorists.  I have to say I enjoyed the spectacle, I enjoyed the pageantry, I can well understand how a soldier would swing his shoulders and march off like a hero.

In the afternoon and evening we were at the Talana Museum for drinks, eats, military re-enactments and general interaction.  The Museum covers 120 acres of land at the foot of Talana Hill where the first battle of the Boer War took place on 20th October 1899.  The result you could say was a draw but the Brits got a bloody nose and leaderless they marched, ran or limped the 80 kilometres back to Ladysmith over the following three days.

The museum is a wonderful example of dedication, management and closeness to history, all done with very, very little state involvement or input.  Gandhi figured highly in the museum because Dundee figured highly in his early life.  It was here in 1913 Gandhi was arrested and sentenced to three months imprisonment for deliberately breaking immigration laws.  Well done to the board of trustees who have turned the place into a masterpiece.

On our way home at the dead of night we were just crossing the cattle grid into Lennox when our headlights picked out a leopard chasing two zebra about 10 metres away, whether it was our presence or the flailing back legs of the Zebra, I do not know, but the leopard took a big leap into a stunted thorn tree and remained still, the Zebras galloped off and the leopard jumped down and slunk off, he was so near to a feast.  So we had to have a drink to calm our nerves, tomorrow was the start of the three day military conference.  I for one was looking forward to it but a bit feared about walking across the lawn afterwards with no bride to offer to the cat.

Day 7 started in blazing sunshine and I have to say the weather we have had has been great 90% sunshine, the odd cloudy period, a couple of five minute showers and the temperatures settled at about 27C.  Often there is a wind which you have to watch, it can burn you quicker than the sun.  However you never feel uncomfortable, it is a dry heat and you do not tend to sweat.

Once more a great breakfast and then off to the early start to the conference.  Unfortunately we were all shown into a little hut, too many for such a crowd and it became weary after a while, this combined with the fact that they could not sort out the PA system and the fact that the Afrikaan’s accent was new to us, made listening a chore especially as the academics had bagged all the front seats.  The speakers were a mixed bag, they were only given 40 minutes to explain their subject and no over-runs they were strictly managed by the chair.  To stand out you had to deliver and it struck me that a lot of them, although university professors, did not succeed.  A few lectures stood out, Meurig Jones from London on Boer War Memorials, Professor Philip Everitt from KwaZulu Natal University on Buller’s Deputy, Lt Gen Sir Charles Warren whose talk rescued Warren in my mind, were the best of a bad day, although Charles Leach’s talk on Constable Charles William Eagle, a Canadian indiginent who came over and joined the Natal Police and was eaten by a lion was interesting when audible.

We went back to Lennox early, prepared ourselves for the evening had another marvellous meal and seven of us settled down with Dirk for an evenings conversation and refreshment.  Now Dirk along with our guide Des does not partake so we did not have long of their company but what we had was intense and mind troubling.  I had not been happy from the start with social conditions as I saw them, I thought that the Blacks were hardly tolerated by the Whites, they were looked down on, patronised and not in their presence, almost spit upon.  They were a lazy, indolent, undisciplined lot who did not deserve anything, not that they got much anyway, the minimum wage was about five euros a day.  In fact all the subservient jobs went to any Black who would take it.  The terms and conditions of employment seemed tenuous to say the least.  Although all children went to school, the conditions looked drab and the hours short, lots and lots only spoke Zulu or variations of same.  Any Black man or woman who had risen out of the ghetto existence was despised.

I cannot say what the Blacks think of the Whites because I was never introduced to one but it struck me that this racist feeling was mutual.  In a way I think they realise that apartheid still exists.  I put this view to a few Whites I met socially and not one denied it.  Because of the imbalance in opportunity in the country the government had to bring in laws and charters to help the rising Blacks to ensure that they were given preference in certain situations in sport and in the professions, the Whites abhorred this bias and said it is no place for young Whites.  The fact is that the Blacks have all the political power, while the Whites in the shape of the multinational companies that abound, have all the economic power.  Neither side seems able to back down from their imagined moral high ground and embrace the other.  The whites can only scorn the tribalism that affects the choice of leaders and grasp for morsels when talking about the present leader, Jacob Zuma, who incidentally has just spent €18 million of state funds on upgrading his KwaZulu Natal home.  They await their hoped for redeemer, Cyril Rhamaphosa, to put matters, in their eyes right.  They might be clutching at straws but I cannot see a Black man giving a white man an advantage.  The problem was for too long on the other foot.  So with this intransigence on both sides the country is slowly going backwards and the average age of the white population is probably getting older.  To me it seems like a first world country with massive third world propensities which is a bloody shame for all those people taking part in this charade they call life here in South Africa.

Now I know I had only been seven days in the country but to a newcomer it is like a permanent elephant in the room, you cannot move without being aware of the problems.  Whites in big houses surrounded by 6 metre high electrified fences and Security signs blocking out the sunshine and 100 metres away hundreds of blacks living in hovels with little in the way of public services, its bound to lead to contention and my thoughts certainly led to lively debate.  It is just a pity that one or two of the farm hands could not have been introduced to the conversation but they only spoke Zulu any way.  Our two abstainers had faded out of the company and we had been joined by a fellow conference delegate, an ex-army man from Durban, who made his living buying and selling military memorabilia.

Well more drink was put on the table and as soldiers do, the drinks were moved off the table and down respective gullets and the previous high brow conversation reverted to the barrack room, Durban turned to Mad Mullingar and said he was dressed like a fuckin’ Christmas tree, Mullingar said to Durban that he would knock his fucking head off his shoulders if he did not take back his words, Durban would not retreat, Boyling Scouse was wondering which side to take, the Colonel was saying an Hail Mary in a language that the clergy did not know, Flash Harry was poised for some action shots and I was quickly weighing up the scene, whether to take flight or grab the Zulu assegai hung on the wall, because Mullingar at whatever age he is, is a sight to be feared by the best of men when aroused.  We quivered between deadly intent and WW3, when a young unassuming accountant from Pretoria staying at Lennox broke the ice by asking how the conference had gone.  By god we were close!

Day 8 was slightly cloudy and as with all aftermaths the sparring partners shook hands, shared an egg and Durban gave me a wonderful news sheet, the type you see outside newsagents telling the passer-by what is the headlines in the paper.  The one he gave to me was from the Natal Witness First Edition timed at 1.20 pm on 8th April 1916 telling of the Irish Revolt and that rebels were still holding various public buildings in Dublin and that General Maxwell was preparing to go over to take charge. It was a present for our museum and what a marvellous present, which set my mind wondering how to start another row that evening if the harvest was that good.

So off to the conference in happy mood, I did not bother with the first three hours and chose to walk round the museum’s grounds with Flash and Boyling but was very interested in not missing the late morning session.  First up was a gem from Ulsterman Professor Donal McCracken from the University of KwaZulu Natal.  The place was still overcrowded and hot and still the PA system had problems but McCracken disavowed the microphone and in a voice that Ian Paisley would have been proud of started his monologue which made me think that he had been so long out of Ulster he probably could not point it out on a map.  He gave a sharp witty, disparaging talk on the ageing Michael Davitt’s visit to South Africa in 1900. Disparaging in that he described Davitt’s whole life as being a continuous  diatribe against Britain and its aims, without explaining how at the age of four in 1850 Davitt and his family were evicted from their rented property by a zealous landlord, how he was a pivotal figure in the restoration of ownership of agricultural land back to the Irish tenant farmer with his activities  in the Irish National Land League and how he became an international socialist revered throughout the world and offered by gandhi as being his biggest influence.  Mr McCracken’s words echoed his Protestant heritage and despised his ancestor, Henry Joy McCracken, for his good work with the United Irishmen of 1798 for which he was hanged by the authorities.  However let us just put Donal’s words down to ill conceived mischief as he said from the floor that he would not take questions from Connaught Rangers.

There was more good lectures from Arnold Van Dyk, a very interesting and likeable fellow but more about this man later, he was aided by a great photographic display, he spoke of the activities of the Isaac Malherbe Corporalship from Pretoria which included the young Reitz brothers in the early part of the war before most of them were killed.  This talk was followed by Sarie Mehl speaking about her historic roots in Boer history but again her very interesting talk was slightly nullified by the stupid PA system.  Why when they went to the trouble of inviting speakers from all over the world did they herd us into a hut and to an extent make a mockery of what people had to say.  Third world or first world?

At this juncture I have to mention the works of Denys Reitz, Boer and writer extraordinaire.  His book Commando sustained me during the many long hours travel and I recommend it to all.  It tells the tale of a 16 year old burgher who rode out with his friends in September 1899 to face the growing force of the British Army, the tremendous hardships they suffered and the bravery of them all and the privations they were put through when politically exiled from South Africa after the treaty was signed: a compelling and literate piece of work.

Enough was enough for me, I skipped the afternoon lectures went back to Lennox and had a very peaceful afternoon on the farm.  We had lunch and Dirk took us for a drive round his estate as well as cattle he has a wild life reserve which he farms.  It seems there is money in farming these beasts and he has a herd of zebra, antelope of all sorts like springbok and eland and bigger animal like hartbeeste, he also has a family of giraffe.  While we were there a zebra was accidentally killed and he went out and skinned the beast, the hide it seems is very valuable and hung the beast up in one of his sheds.  It would feed his workforce for weeks, they were making some biltong out of parts of it when I looked in (marinated and dried strips of meat the indigenous chew during their day).  Like dillisk the Irish seaweed variant, it is very moreish.

A quiet evening followed everybody following last night subdued in body and spirit.  Mullingar contented himself with some sort of Zulu liquer that is supposed to be mind-bending, the colonel brought some Lourdes holy water from his bag and poured a thimble of this juice into hit, drank it did two somersaults and went to bed without praying.  Flash and his mate Boyling settled for a crate of Castle, I contented myself with a couple of glasses of Pinotage, a native South African vine but tasty none the less.

Day 8 was waiting to grab us

Day 8 was the last day of the conference and again I cherry picked and again the PA system was not quite there.  The little hut for so many people, too many speakers and not enough time to say what was needed to be said,   all jarred somewhat on the visitor, some of whom had traveled some distance to be there.  The quality of what was said was a bit of a curates egg.  It was as though they were dragging any one in who was passing to fill the numerous slots but I suppose overall the organisers nearly made it and hopefully will learn the next time.

We had the afternoon off in the pleasant surroundings of Lennox, time to relax, time to write up my notes of the trip so far.  We had been promised a treat in the evening the ex-servicemen’s club in Dundee had offered us dinner and a trip round their museum.  Des was telling us all about these men, the salt of the earth, the food will be great.  However what we got was a salad and a bit of barbecued meat served out in a dingy old bug hut.  Not my idea of a treat, not that I was after treats.  Nor was I after the presence of these two weird women and I have a feeling one of them probably wasn’t.  They had been stalking us for days now  and they were getting on my tits.  However certain elements found them amusing but each to his own.  We had a few drinks and were glad to be out.  Back to Lennox by 9.00pm to find Dirk in bed and the bar shut.  You win some but lose a hell of a lot more.

Day 9 was a tour round Dundee and a visit out to the countryside to look at some sights.  I was not feeling 100% so I demurred preferring my own company and some writing to what was proposed.  A lovely morning, I had a doze and wrote and read and a nice Zulu lady came over with a toasted cheese and ham sandwich and a pot of coffee at noon.  By the time the boys returned I was well on the mend.  This evening we had been promised another treat. Sarie Mehl, the Boer lady , who had given a talk on her ancestors at the conference, had invited us over for dinner at her old farmhouse, Wasbank, south of Glencoe.  She is the great great great granddaughter of Karel Landman, the Voortrekker leader who was second in command at the battle of Blood River and great granddaughter of Lodewyk de Jager who ran a spy ring for the Boer forces behind British lines during the conflict.  During the war the Dublin Fusiliers and the Natal Carbiniers were stationed at the house.  As with Boer tradition the family have their own burial plot in the grounds and there is an extra grave in that space that is not attributed to the family.  The story goes that in 1901 when the Natal Carbiniers were stationed there, two of them over dinner had a heated discussion over a particular lady and one shot the other.  It was covered up by the authorities at the time and there is now no record to suggest anything, except this extra grave with no markings on it to make it unclear as to who lies under.  Sarie has plans to get in an archeologist to investigate.  Meanwhile the house which is 120 years old is deteriorating, Sarie lives now in Pretoria and visits the place once a month and has let the land to a tenant farmer thrown out of Zimbabwe.  The history of the place makes it dear to her heart but her children have no interest.  It is sad really and like with everything kids do not want to be encumbered and parents wish they would attain maturity quicker than nature intends.

We had a lovely meal and drank lashings of good red wine, only once more to be plagued by one of these women I wrote about last night.  From the looks of the other Boer women she was not at all welcome and neither was her history.  The colonel was again asked to do his sacerdotal duty and I am not certain whether is prayers tonight were not in Welsh but it went down a treat.  We thanked Sarie, a wonderful lady, said our goodbyes and we were off, away from the pestilent French woman.

Day 10 looked good after breakfast at Lennox our guide for the day met us, Patrick Rundgren.  A mountain of a man of Swedish lineage and an ex-sergeant in the South African Army.  He was taking us to Isandlawana and Rorke’s Drift, which were about 40 miles south west of Dundee.  On the way he explained the situation in January 1879.

Lord Chelmsford ,the leader of British Forces in South Africa had been persuaded by the British authorities to invade Zululand to put down Chief Cetshwayo and his unruly warriors and claim the land for the British Empire. His army of 4,000 men plus followers, cattle and numerous wagons crossed the Orange River at Rorke’s Drift in early January, the wet season.  So overloaded were they and they could only proceed as fast as the 0x wagons, they were only averaging a couple of kilometres a day.  Eventually after five or six days they came to Isandlawana, a majestic setting, which he decided was to be his temporary camp while he sought out the Zulu.  He gave orders not to entrench or lager as that would take a week so his camp was spread out over many hundreds of acres with the large rocky outcrop of Isandlawana at his back and with a wide expanse of plain to his front and left.

On news from scouting parties of Zulu presence he left the camp with about 3500 men and went off in pursuit.  The Zulus who were travelling at about 16 kilometres a day easily by-passed his force and descended on the camp at Isandlawana with surprising speed.  The engagement lasted no more than an hour 1300 men lay dead, the rest had made off for Rorke’s Drift pursued by Zulus most of the way and being killed as they ran.  The massive difference in numbers 1800 against 24,000 and the fact they were not lagered meant the result was inevitable.  The Zulus also probably lost about 1300 men but gained so much in terms of cattle, armaments and food supplies that it was for them a massive victory both physically and psychologically.

You look at the massive valley floor now scattered with hundreds of white cairns, every cairn a place where a soldier was found and then buried and wonder why they had not lagered, formed a square or even gathered on the hill on the right hand side but it seems it all happened too quick for the inexperienced Pulleine who had been left in charge. Today the place so little changed in a 135 years has a mystical air about it, a place of real sadness inhabited by the ghosts of some very brave men.  Few places impress me on battlefield visits but this place, Verdun and the south west side of Ypres send shivers up my back.

We left there and followed the fugitive’s trail back to Rorke’s Drift where the following night 120 British soldiers held off 4500 Zulu warriors until they were forced to withdraw the following morning.  Rorke’s Drift has gone down in military history as being a unbelievable victory and it is certainly a lesson in being small, well prepared and well managed.  12 VCs were won that night, probably a political gesture after Isandlawana but the two Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead certainly earned their spurs and undoubtedly there was a lot of incidents of remarkable bravery amongst the British regular army soldiers.  But who won the engagement is difficult to say.  The British lost a few men the Zulus possibly a thousand but the Zulus made off with several hundred head of cattle which meant a hell of a lot to them.  I would say a draw with a generous advantage to the Zulus.

Before we actually walked the killing field we had lunch at the Rorke’s Drift Hotel, a splendid place overlooking the Buffalo River and the historic Drift built by an Ex-Irish Guards officer Charles Aikenhead, but it is literally in the middle of nowhere and is approached by a haul road fit only for 4x4s.  It must be the importance of the place that keeps it viable, I did not see any guests but Charles Aikenhead proved to be an excellent host and we spent a relaxed few hours in his company.  We moved on to the station afterwards and we could see what an excellent place it was to make such a stand against overwhelming odds.  I would suggest anybody in the vicinity of KwaZulu Natal should visit both these places, soak up the atmosphere and marvel at the remarkable bravery of the private soldier in the British Army of 135 years ago.

Well that was enough for one day and we retired back to Lennox, a slap up meal, wine by the vineyard and Castle by the crate load.  Everybody in ruminative mood after the stirring events of the day and we all slept the sleep of the just,  Day 11 beckoned.

Day 11 was a lovely sunny day as most of them have been.  We called to Talana Museum to fetch our guide and off to Blood River about 30 kilometres away which I suppose makes Dundee an ideal centre for touring the battlefields.  I can hardly believe that warring factions over 100 years ago could have come up with this policy of centering all their squabbles in an easy arc round the town.

The Boers had decided to give the Zulu a lesson after 60 or 70 of their ilk were murdered by the Zulus in 1838 by tricking a peace party to lay down their arms at a peace conference and then slaying the whole party and then the Zulu king sent out his impis and killed another 500 men, women and children in local Boer camps.  470 Voortrekkers assembled at Wasbank where we had dinner two nights previously at Sarie Mehl’s house, under the command of Andries Pretorius.  They set out in 49 0x-drawn wagons for the Zulu encampment on the Ncome River and practiced lagering every night for a week.  Lagering means the drawing of wagons etc together into a protective circle.  They reached the river and set their lager up on high ground and tempted 15,000-20,000 Zulus to attack.  Each Voortrekker had two muskets and a black servant to load the one just fired.  They killed 3000 Zulu with only three of their rank slightly wounded, the river ran red with blood, hence the name of the battle.  Peace was declared and more or less lasted for 40 years.

It is a proud moment in Boer history and the monument there is massive consisting of a rehash of the original lager with the 49 wagons and three guns finished in bronze and gathered in a circle.  It is quite an amazing sight as you approach with the Zulus having built their own monument across the river.  A bridge between the two was mooted but neither side would have it.  It all happened 166 years ago.  Talk about Northern Ireland and the orange and the green.  Memories certainly rule in this spot.

Back to Talana Museum and lunch and another tour of the parts of the museum we had previously missed.  It really is that big you could spend a few days touring round it.  Then it was back to Lennox for our last night on this lovely farm.   By now the five of us had gelled sufficiently to nod each morning at breakfast.  Flash Harry was boasting he had used up his third memory card having taken 3000 photographs so far, Boyling looked at him askance and took another bottle of Castle from the crate,  Mad Mullingar was mithered with couriers, stuff he had left behind him in various places was turning up and now as he had brought so much stuff on the road he could not fit everything into his cases and he was trying to off load his dirty underwear to any fool who felt sorry for him.  The Colonel, officer and a gentleman that he is, promised to take the most of it but by god it did smell.  I was the only one who had kept up to date with his dhobi and I resonated freshness and violets.  Boyling and Flash had given theirs to the Zulu women on the farm and they had been ripped off with these good ladies wanted all of two rand to clean and iron their nearly two weeks dhobi, all of 15 cents in Euro money.

We had our last drink at Lennox, packed our bags and slept for tomorrow would be another day and it should be Day 12 by my reckoning.

Day 12 and a good day began with our last breakfast, we then settled our mess bills with Dirk and bade him goodbye, a smashing fellow but not taking a dram is a severe disadvantage in our company.

We headed south towards Ladysmith, we had a destination the Nambeti Game reserve at Elandslaagte, the site of a battle before Ladysmith in October 1899.  The 1st Devons and 1st Manchesters attack put the Boers to flight and General French’s cavalry finished them off with sword and lance.  The only plus for Britain in those days.  The victors were recalled to Ladysmith and that is where they stayed for three months until Reverse Buller relieved them.  We found a small graveyard here by the side of the railway track it contained the graves of a few hundred soldiers, victims of enteric which ravaged the ranks at the end of the siege and after the relief.  There were four Connaught Rangers buried there who had died at Modder Spruit, 893 Pte R Gill who died on 27th March 1900, 2058 Sgt T McGarry who died on 4th April 1900, 4799 Pte George James Dowler who had been wounded at Harts Hill but had died on April 23rd 1900 and 2014 Pte R Gough of the 5th Battalion who had died on 1st May 1900 and had come over in a draft of 216 men and three officers on 30th January 1900.  The poor lad did not have long in South Africa.

After this we visited the Boer Memorial for this battle situated high  The monument was in a hell of a state and because it was difficult to access seems not to have been discovered by the authorities.  Grave stones had been turned over and the ground beneath disturbed.  The problem is a social one when you keep ignorant indigenous people on or below the poverty line.  They have to make money where they can, scrap iron is one of their ways.  They also believe that a man’s riches are buried with them, little did they know that the poor old burghers buried here did not have a pot to piss in when they died.

We eventually landed at Nambiti and as I think about it I must have lost a day somewhere because we were at another Game Reserve in Dundee owned by the Klusener family, a big construction outfit, famous for Lance Klusener the South African cricketer.  We went because it was next to Dirk’s place.  It was a freezing cold night and the boys wanted to sit up top in the vehicle while I was forced into the freezing cold cab of this monster 4×4, we saw the usual stuff and a few hippopotami if that is the plural but one animal is like another to me I have no interest, so that is why I forgot about the experience.  One interesting thing is that on our way back from our circuit, it was a black night, we could see a torch flashing in the distance, when we came close, a solitary figure came into view.  It was this man’s job to patrol the inside of the security fence looking for poachers breaking through, all night long he would tramp this solitary path.  Better him than me I thought.

So we could be on Day 13 now not 12 as I suggested before, how things fly.  Well Nambiti is in another league, security is massive.  There are lots of dangerous animals on their land and I suppose onlookers need protecting.  However to my mind I have no interest in enclosed animals, they remind me so much of the enclosed whites of South Africa, hiding behind high fences with the backing of visiting security guards.  By going to Nambiti I am just following our tour organiser, to me it is somewhere to put my head down and what a luxurious head down it is.  We were met at the car park by our personal game reserve guide and brought down to our lodge or hotel, where we were offered warm towels to wipe the dust of travel from our faces and a glass of fresh lemonade and given the keys to our tents.  We are in Springbok Lodge which has about 20 tents scattered round it.  In this case tent is a misnomer albeit that is what it is.  It is a raised structure 1.5 metres off the ground with a wooden floor, the superstructure is canvas, as is the roof but inside is sheer luxury.  The floor area is  10 metres by 5 metres approx and as you walk in on the right are two armchairs and a side table with a decanter of sherry poised delicately on top, in front of you is a bed the size of a 5 aside football pitch with a mirrored headboard incorporating an air conditioning unit.  Behind the bed are the facilities, a large porcelain bath, two wash hand basins, a flush toilet and a large dressing table 3 metres long and through a door at the rear a rather large outside shower protected by a bamboo screen from prying eyes.  To the left of the entrance door is a snack station, tea,coffee, biscuits etc.  The whole a luxurious affair suitable for the likes of a Connaught Ranger on leave.

After lunch of barbecued meats, salads and vegetables we relaxed over a beer and about 4.00pm the lads went off on a three hour game drive.  The reserve is vast and of thousands of hectares in extent and contains all indigenous animals, however I chose the pen and paper drive and sat down to write this report.  The boys unless they are eaten by lions will be back at 7.00pm. I am going to read, write and snooze.  The boys did return full of talk of rhinoceros, hippo, lions, leopards, giraffe, elephants and all forms of antelope and zebra.  While they were gone a massive thunderstorm hit the area, lightening in all its anger lit up the darkened sky and me in my secure, dry, warm, snug tent felt a tinge of pity for my fellow travellers as I settled down in my vast bed, poured another sherry from the decanter and tried to forget their travails.  The rain stopped at about 6.00pm and I walked up to the lodge for a refreshing and much needed apero and waited for my returning and no doubt soaking friends.

They returned with brave faces and discovered while they were away the staff of the lodge had gone to their tents and filled each bath with hot water and sprinkled the petals of many flowers on the surface of the water.  They enjoyed this unexpected soak and dried out over a beer or in Mullingar’s case a bottle of Jameson.  The colonel happy not to have to say mass this evening reached for the wine and kept on reaching.  We had dinner and retired early to our individual boudoirs and gave the decanters a bashing.  What is included should be consumed.  We slept until a probable Day 14 arrived.  Boyling and Flash were up at five o’clock for the early morning drive, Welsh men and sheep come to mind.  They returned, we had breakfast and we eschewed this luxury and hit the road after a very satisfying breakfast.

Day 14 it was and a very long drive round the top of Losotho, an independent country surrounded by South Africa.  We were headed for Ficksburg in the Orange Free State, a journey of about 270 kilometres.  The lads in the back had snuggled up to each other on the journey and were like the Babes in the Wood.  It was early afternoon by the time we got to our destination, The Sandstone Estate which must be the biggest museum of agricultural, locomotive and military hardware in the world as well as being a farm of some 20,000 acres.  The Irish flag was fluttering in the breeze as we made ourselves at home in a cluster of chalets.

However Des had a different agenda and he had us back in the bus to go visiting.  We were already a few miles off the asphalt road and he was taking us further into the hinterland along a track that a tracked bulldozer would find a challenge.  After 30 minutes of this cross-country expedition we arrived at this farmstead and we wondered how anybody could live in such isolation.  The farmer Charles Barrett and his wife were there to greet us and welcomed us into their house as though we were one of the family.  He took us into his museum which contained every piece of weaponry used in the Boer War from machine guns down to bayonets and every piece in perfect working order and licensed for use.  Mullingar and Flash were drooling, armaments like animals do absolutely nothing for me.  The only thing I remarked on was the weight of these pieces, even the revolvers.  Charles was telling us that unlike all the rest of the farmers round there, he has no trouble from the marauding Basuto people from Lesotho who cross the trickle of water that is the Caledon River for rich pickings in the Orange Free State.  The South African army are on constant patrol along the border and have a camp at Sandstone but Charles has told them to steer clear of his place.  He seems to have a relationship based on mutual respect with the very poor native population and it obviously works.  I saw it nowhere else in South Africa which is much to the detriment of the country as a whole.

The Barrett family have farmed this land for over a hundred years and Charles was an officer in a Durban Regiment before retiring and taking up his historic duty at home.  He specialises in making liqueurs and brandy from the acres of cherry trees on his land.  We tasted them all and his wife served us biltong, sausage and pizza and we were nicely set as we bade our goodbyes and headed back to Sandstone.

For all its publicity there was nothing really grand about the accommodation.  The evening meal was a bowl of stew, the meat from undefined source, the bar was basic and spoiled by the manager keeping a large diesel engine running belching fumes into our bottles of Castle.  Bed we decided was our best option.

Day 15 improved matters somewhat.  After a hearty breakfast we were taken on a tour of the place.  Firstly a ride in an ox wagon pulled by eight massive long horned beasts whilst the guide explained how they trained these animals.  It was a bone jarring ride as we covered about half a kilometre in 30 minutes.  We were then piled into a armoured personnel carrier, another uncomfortable ride, but quicker, as we headed out to the border lands overlooking the Basuto town on the far side of the valley.  All buildings round here had had their roofs stripped off.  The guide said that anything they can carry, they take.  He had a different tone than Charles with obviously different results.

Sandstone has a massive collection of railway equipment, locomotives, carriages and other rolling stock.  They even had a large locomotive built by Beyer Peacock in 1900.  Beyer Peacock was the largest locomotive manufacturer in Manchester and exported steam engines and later diesel locos to every part of the world closing down in 1966.  It was dear to my heart, as we demolished the said works in Gorton in the 1970s.

In a way I was glad to be off from Sandstone, it did not offer me much and we had another long drive, 320 kilometres to Aliwal North which was in northern  Cape Province in the Eastern Cape to be exact, over five hours continuous driving again keeping Lesotho on our left hand side We hit Aliwal as it was getting dark and parked up at this twee little place called La Riveria on the side of the Orange River.  It consisted of a series of bungalows around a pond full of birdlife, fine accommodation but no food and no bar.  We ate out at a local pub/restaurant that Des recommended, the beer and wine was good but we waited for hours for the food and when I got mine it was the shittiest plate of grub I had had in years.  I should have had the steak like the rest of them.  You live and learn.

Muted comments by the locals, La Riveria was full of black tax officers on a convention, it was thought that they should not be staying in accommodation as good as this.  I do not see why not, there would have been no comment if these civil servants were white.  Another example of the white attitude towards the blacks.  It wore me down this tongue-biting way the whites carry through their miserable lives. Day 15 was a fine day made better by a good breakfast.

On April 10th 1900 The Connaught Rangers left the Ladysmith area, entrained to Durban, leaving their sick and wounded behind and were put on a boat to East London, a port south of Durban in the cape.  They were taking on the Boers in guerilla warfare as the Boers with depleted resources could no longer take part in set piece battles after wandering around a little the Rangers eventually centred themselves round the town of Aliwal North where they remained until the peace treaty was signed in May 1902.  They created quite a name for themselves in Aliwal and the local population had great time for them but on 14th July 1901 chasing Commandant Myberg’s commando of 170 men, they were led into an ambush on Becker’s farm at Zuurvlakte just off the Jamestown Road about 10 kilometres out of Aliwal, where on open ground Commandant Fouche commando of 300 men opened fire at a distance of 400 yards and killed seven men and wounded three officers and 15 men and took five men prisoner.  Darkness came and the Boers retired.  The next morning two men were brought in off the battlefield and were buried with a man who had died of his wounds overnight in a grave adjacent to the Becker family burial ground

2405 Pte Bernard Hegan 5th Battalion Age 20 of Ballina Co Mayo

6702 L/Cpl Michael Cryan 1st Battalion from Gurteen Co Sligo

6454 Pte M Cullen 1st Battalion

and that afternoon three other bodies were brought in and buried with a man who had died of his wounds that afternoon:-

5368 Pte J Brown 1st Battalion

1682 Pte T Hanley 5th Battalion

6716Pte M Leonard 1st Battalion

1513 Pte T Lohan 3rd Battalion

A young 18 year old Boer officer by the name of Olivier was also buried. Over the nexfew months three other Connaught Rangers were buried in this plot:-

6835 Pte Henry Speers 1st Battalion who died of his wounds after an ambush at Jamestown on 28th July 1901.

6399 Pte J Rooney 1st Battalion captured at Lemoenfontaine on 16th November 1901 and executed

6538 Pte M Cunnane 1st Battalion captured at Lemoenfontaine on 16th November 1901 and executed.

So the little family cemetery at Zuurvlakte contained the graves of 10 Connaught Rangers.  These graves along with other graves of Connaught Rangers killed locally were exhumed in 1972 and reinterred in Aliwal North cemetery.  Others exhumed were:-

4261 Pte R J Casey 1st Battalion who died of disease on 22nd September 1902

4477 Pte M Fogarty 1st Battalion Age 34 who died of disease on 2nd June 1902

Others also in Aliwal North Cemetery who died in town of enteric:-

6927 Pte P McNally 1st Battalion who died on 11th February 1902

3594 Pte P Myers 1st Battalion who died on 22nd August 1901

the name of 925 Pte P Sullivan is remembered on the memorial stone who was accidentally drowned in the Orange River on 23rd February 1901  and his body never found.

We met up with a crowd of local people at the Museum in Aliwal and led by Arnold van Dyk from Bloemfontein, an ordnance expert Johan Loock and Mr Becker who owns the land, we were taken out to Zuurvlakte in a convoy of white 4x4s.  A pleasant open area of about 4 or 500 acres with an artificial lake to the south, a hill to the north and a series of small rises to the east where Fouche commando lay hid. Nothing has changed in 113 years and you can still kick up empty casings of 303 Lee Metford rifle ammunition.  They are all over the place, I picked one up and Mr Loock confirmed by its markings that the ordnance was made at the Kynot factory in Birmingham.  Arnold and Johan talked us through the day of 14th July 1901 and the following day of the burials.  Mr Becker had brought with him his foreman, a black man, who had lived on the farm since 1950 and was present at the exhumations in 1972.  He explained how the grave with the bones of three men in it was recognised as Cryan, Hegan and Cullen’s grave by the presence of a corked bottle with the names of the three men written on a piece of paper.  The contents of the other graves were then recognised by a process of elimination.  The Boer, Olivier’s grave is still there and marked by a gravestone. Prayers were said in Afrikaan and Irish, I read out Jourdain’s description of the day and the burial process ordered by Major Moore at the time and we all came away sadder and wiser men and women.

Back in town we stopped at the Boer Memorial on the site of the Aliwal North Concentration Camp.  These concentration camps were a stain on the history of the British Army and were a result of Kitchener’s scorched earth policy in dealing with the Boer guerilla tactics.  By gathering up the Boer women and children and old men, killing all the livestock and burning down the farms, it stopped the Boers chain of food supply.  In the Aliwal camp there were some 2700 women, children and old men, 735 of them died of disease of which 561 were children under 15 years of age, some 76% of all deaths.  Throughout South Africa some 37,000 died in these camps a whole generation decimated.  We laid a wreath of reconciliation, we lowered our flag, our piper played a lament, the attendant Boers wept and so did we, certainly a highlight of the trip and the most emotional.

We then moved on to the military cemetery where 14 Connaught Rangers are now interred and for the last time another wreath, another lowering of the flag and one last lament.  These occasions never fail to produce tears and the respect by the Boers was palpable.  We then went back to the Museum where the burghers had laid on lunch for us, speeches were made, the Colonel once again proving what a good sort he was and then we were honoured with the presentations of various gifts for our museum in Boyle.

We were then off for our 200 kilometre drive to Bloemfontein our day was not yet done.

I have to raise my hand to the people of Aliwal North for the welcome they gave us and the graciousness with which they accepted our presence, we whose forbears had helped to destroy some of their heritage.  I was talking to a local politician Hennie du Preez, a councillor of Maletswai Municipality.  He wanted the names of the group for the local newspaper and I said I would write to him when we returned to Ireland.

Hennie,

I’m the fellow who laid the wreaths at the impressive and emotional ceremonies at the Boer Memorial and the British Cemetery at Aliwal North on Wednesday last.  Can I just say it was the highlight of our three week tour following in the footsteps of the Connaught Rangers of 114 years ago.  The reconciliation ceremony at your memorial remembering the dead of the concentration camp at Aliwal was mind-blowing.  The fact that 77% of those who died were children under the age of 15 and when multiplied by the number of such camps in South Africa meant a whole generation  of people were wiped off the reproductive map of the country, which is an everlasting stain on the history of Britain.  We were so glad to have been there and meet you all, the survivors of this holocaust.

Those from our party who were there want to express similar sentiments.  They were:-

Paul Malpas General Secretary of the Connaught Rangers Association from Boyle in Co Roscommon in Ireland

Kieran Jordan retired Lt Colonel in Irish Army from Limerick in Ireland

Thomas Gunn flag bearer and ex-Sergeant in Irish Army from Mullingar in Co Westmeath in Ireland

Michael Cryan Committee member of the Connaught Rangers Association from Boyle in Co Roscommon in Ireland

Mark Stewart Connaught Rangers official photographer from Liverpool in Lancashire in England

Please thank all the people from Aliwal North who made our welcome so special.

Paul Malpas

A day or so later Hennie wrote back:-

Dear Paul

Thank you for your communication.

It was indeed an honour and priviledge to share the company of honourable gentlemen (and soldiers) of the Connaught Rangers Association.

We were all deeply touched by your efforts to visit us.  The sincerity of your visits to the memorial sites and the respectful flag ceremonies gave honour and dignity to those before us who made the ultimate sacrifice – on all sides.  War never determines who were right, but only who are left behind.

Thank you so much for reminding us that, even after 114 years, we still need to carry the flag of remembrance for our fathers, mothers, sons and daughters who died and for our sons and daughters still to be born!.. Please convey our sincere appreciation to all members of your party, for sharing your mutual sentiments with us and helping us to reconcile the past with the future.

You will always be welcome to our mutual village of remembrance.  Rest assured that we will look after your loved ones (who stayed behind) even though they are more than 10,000 kilometres away.

I am doing this communication on behalf of our town, the farming community, the friends of the museum and all present during a very special day

Yours sincerely

Hennie du Preez

What a nice man and what a whole nice bunch of people the citizens of Aliwal North were.

On the day we said our goodbyes, we had to go, Bloemfontein was calling and another bloody game reserve this time called Emoya Lodge and we were stationed in the Bantu village, a collection of chalets resembling same.  Inside however was pure luxury but of an earthy nature.  Here cockerels, rabbits and other small animals roamed around, while giraffe, springbok and Zebra looked on as we ate our evening meal.  A nice friendly place who would not charge me for a phone call to Ireland.  A long day, a glass or two of wine and early bed.  None of us have the youth we once had.

Day 17 was another warm day, breakfast at Emoya was followed by a visit to the National War Museum in Bloemfontein.  I ducked, I had enough of museums, I preferred solitude and the pleasantness of my own company to catch up with my writing and actually do nothing if I liked.  For me solitude is one of life’s great gifts and I revel in it.

However the real purpose of the trip to Bloemfontein was to visit Arnold van Dyk.  He had invited us back to his house for a meal and a chat.  He is a really nice man and probably the nicest man of all the people I met on this trip and I have to say I met some decent people.  He is a doctor and historian and a world expert on the Boer War.  We drove up to the estate he lived on and our way was blocked by an imposing prison gateway structure with I think two gates in and two gates out with guard rooms on both sides.  There were six or seven security men in uniforms hanging about.  Going off on either side of the gates was a 6 metre high wall surrounding the estate.  You would not get in unless you had made previous arrangements and our driver Robert had a pin number he pressed into a keyboard and the gates opened and in we went.

Arnold met us outside his stately pile and welcomed us in through various rooms until we came to the heart of the house.  A pool through the sliding doors and a massive built in barbecue with its own flu fired by lumps of logs.  Whilst his lovely wife came round generously pouring out wine and beer into large glasses, Arnold was throwing what looked like two sheep onto the grill.  Satisfied that things on the barbecue were under control, he took us round his house which really was a literary museum of the Boer War.  I was amazed at the high quality in terms of original documents from political and military leaders that he had collected over the years.  As I said before if there was such a person as the world expert on this conflict, Arnold is your man and so affable and modest.  About a dozen of us sat down to this ovine feast and we ate the lot, a delightful meal.  More wine and it was time to go.  It was an absolute pleasure to be in the company of the pair, our farewells were brief, we had an early start the following day.  Back through the charade of the security gate; I could not live like that if you paid me to do so.  All the people within the walls were white being guarded by security that was black and serviced by people who were black.

Because I had left my hat at Arnold’s house we had to go back there at 6.00 am next morning, Arnold met us at the gate, the servants were being dropped off by vehicles that had to stop 100 metres from the gate and everybody had to walk down to security and be let through by very diligent guards.  Who is sheltering who from what and because of that South Africa could never be my country. Day 18 started with a 670 kilometre trip across the heart of South Africa.  We set off at 6.30am and Des nosed us into Durban Airport at 4.00pm for our 6.30pm flight to Dubai, an eight and a half hour flight, a break of an hour and onto a six and a half hour flight to Dublin and seamlessly into a taxi for a trip to Boyle dropping Mullingar off at the place he knows best, the Colonel had gone off to Houston Station for his train to Limerick and Flash started looking for Terminal 1 and good old Ryan Air.  Boyling and myself arrived back in Boyle at 3.00pm after 33 hours continuous travel but a glass of wine and a quick reminisce with our loved ones, for those that had loved ones to reminisce with and then to bed.  So ended this unbelievable trip of a lifetime.

I would like to thank Des Armstrong of Howick in KwaZulu Natal for planning, organising and driving us round.  In retrospect there was a lot of hard work and long hours put in to make the trip such a success.  I would also like to thank Des’ wife Ulla for coming so far with such a lovely lunch as we had at Clouston and Robert his son for spelling the old man in the driving seat.  I would also like to thank my travelling companions, Flash Harry for his constant attention to duty, Boyling Scouse for his patience in always hogging the back seat in the bus, Mad Mullingar for parading the flag so well and always being able to curb his natural tendency to drink South Africa dry and a special thank you to the Colonel for being able to say his prayers in 30 different languages and keep a straight face, four honourable gentlemen.  I suppose I should give myself praise also, I took all the flak, I was the one to always face their irritability, to cover up their bad manners and to always look into my glass that was always half full and certainly never half empty.

I hope the reader forgives my thoughts on South Africa because they are only the thoughts of a man there for three weeks.  I could only look at it from the white man’s side, we were never introduced to a black man.  I did not like the way the whites were as nice as pie on the surface and then spitting on the black man’s culture and philosophy once his back was turned.  No matter what you say and think racial prejudice runs riot in South Africa and until that is sorted out the country will continue to drive itself backwards.  There are signs of improvement, I could see it in Drakensberg School, I saw it at Charles Barrett’s house but those signs were few and far between.  I saw a lot more of the Apartheid South Africa than I wanted to see, the South Africa that was internationally blanked until 20 years ago.

For future reference the high spots were  and purely in chronological order, The Fernhill Hotel in Howick, The Champagne Castle Hotel, the Drakensberg Choir School, the battlefields and cemetery’s of Spion Kop, Colenso, Harts Hill. Isandlawana, Rorkes Drift, the luxury of Nambiti, Aliwal North in all its forms, Sarie Mehl and Arnold van Dyk.  The low spots were few and it is not really decent to mention them but I had indifferent thoughts about the Sandstone Estate, Game Reserves in general, racial prejudice, long hours spent driving, the mucky ex-service man’s club in Dundee and those pestilent camp followers in Dundee.  We did not really need their presence and in fact they scared me to death.

Well it was on March 10th this year when I started my protest against the Coalition’s new tax construct, Irish Water.  It was then I parked my trusty old Land Cruiser over my stop cock and told GMC/Sierra, the contractor appointed by Irish Water to go from whence they came.  Well GMC/Sierra, new to the game of protest, new to anything in fact, took a hissy fit and called in their allies, Irish Water and the Garda Siochana, who made several visits to my home.  I told Irish Water the same as I told GMC/Sierra that whence would be better for them.  I was more polite to the Garda as you have to be to the boys in blue as although their Oath of Office states that they “will faithfully discharge the duties of a member of the Garda Siochana with fairness, integrity, regard for human rights, diligence and impartiality, upholding the Constitution and the LAWS and according equal respect to all people”.  We all know that if you do not jump when they tell you to, they can make it hard for you. Just like the Kerry Garda did for the cleaning lady when naked he asked for the ride.  We also know that if your nice to them they might even wipe the points from your driving licence.

I kindly and submissively asked the garda who was telling me that I was committing an offence that when he sends me to prison could he get me a place in Castlerea, as it was a lot nearer than most prisons and it would be easier on my wife to travel to as she is a frail old lady.  The garda gave a grin or was it a grimace, took a photograph and was off and I have seen neither GMC/Sierra, Irish Water or Garda since.  Obviously they were all to busy sorting out rebellions and mass protests up and down the country to be bothered with little old me.

So there it was yesterday in Dublin, another mass protest in a chain of mass protests with even more mass protests to come, I suppose until the Coalition government open their eyes and realise they will not have a job at the next election unless they back down from this high and mighty stance they have taken.  Did you notice that the Garda Siochana, forgetting their Oath of Office and taking on their true mantle of Government bully boys, closed off sections of Merrion Row, Kildare Street and Molesworth Street not allowing the public to stroll down the thoroughfares they own.  I thought to close a street you had to apply for a licence to do so from the city council.  I bet that procedure did not occur.  Thousands of people were stopped going about their business because the Garda were favouring one party and not “according equal respect to all people”

Meanwhile in the Dail yesterday while the shananikins was going on outside, Catherine Murphy, the Independent TD for North Kildare was asking questions of Enda Kenny, our beloved and utterly decent Taoiseach who huffed and puffed as only he can.  She wanted to know after the Government had failed to respond to previous repeated questions, how GMC/Sierra, which is owned by a Denis O’Brien company, Millington Ltd, won their metering contracts.

She told the Dail that there were some “known facts” about the tendering process.  She said “we know that the bids had to be in by 30th June 2013.  We know that one of the companies awarded one of the major contracts did not exist until 15th July 2013, weeks after the closing date for bids.  If the closing date for applications to be considered for the contract was 30th June 2013, according to a parliamentary reply last year from the former Minister, Mr Phil Hogan, how did GMC/Sierra, company registration number 530230 and which did not come into existence until 15th July 2013, manage to win a contract?  How could a company that did not satisfy the requirement to have a tax clearance certificate be considered for the contract?”

Enda stuttered and farted in that great Mayo style of his and said that he would immediately get answers for the good lady and “I hope that we do not get a watery reply” he said trying to put a little humour into a subject that did not need it.  “I will see that the detail the Deputy has asked for is provided.  Of course it should be on the public record.”

Catherine Murphy also asked about Millington Ltd acquiring the utility support services company Siteserv owned by IBRC, which she said was off loaded at a significantly reduced cost, a deal which she said “saw the State lose €105 million.  Again Kenny huffed and puffed and did not or could not answer.  Catherine Murphy said it was essential that concerns be addressed.

Now to make the reader more aware of what all that meant I will try and explain.  Millington Ltd was a new company set up in 2012 in the Isle Of Man.  It is a company owned entirely by our old friend Denis O’Brien, a very shady, slippery but rich character, who none of us like and who  always crawls out from every sod you turn over when looking for light and transparency.

In late 2012 without trading in any shape or form, Millington applied to buy Siteserv, a massive construction conglomerate which had come into the ownership of IBRC, the state run bank that had been appointed to sell off assets of indebted companies.  It seems to have been bought quickly and cheaply.  One of the companies in the Siteserv empire was Sierra and another was Eventserv and it would not surprise me if the miles of fencing and pedestrian barriers put up by the Garda for yesterday’s parade originated from them.

So Catherine Murphy seems to have stirred up a right can of worms and I do hope Kenny is able to come up with some credible answers.  But it does look as if old Irish political jiggery pokery is at work.  Nothing seems to change but that day of change is definitely coming and it certainly will not come with the advancement of Sinn Fein who tended to take over yesterday’s demonstration.  For the next march scheduled, I think for 31st January 2015, I hope Right2Water retake control and give the water issue back to the people of Ireland and not let that very shady bunch, Sinn Fein, be put in the spotlight.  Let the people of Ireland not forgive Sinn Fein because they should not be able to forget.

Do you know what an almighty shambles this country has become in the eyes of the world, caused by the total inadequacy of the FineGael/Labour Coalition.  Politician beware we want something far, far better from you in the future.

With regard to Irish Water and water charges, I want to make it clear that I fully appreciate that it costs money to collect, filter and distribute water to every person in the country and I would be quite happy to pay whatever somebody thinks is a fair charge for this purpose and I do know that the new figures set out by the government do not go any where near paying for this service.  The new figures are only a trap to catch the monkey, ie those that are now going to register.  What we are getting is crisis management trying to muddle through a situation to which no proper intelligent thought has been given and where everything was rushed through in late 2013 without thought of the consequence.  Better could have been achieved if the problem had been set for a kindergarten to sort out.

However there are a few provisos to that first sentence:-

1. The collection, filtering and distribution of water in Ireland has always been paid for out of the central tax fund.  It is only the mismanagement of previous governments who failed to put enough funds into this service that we are in the pickle we now find ourselves in.  So if that funding is being finished and a new system introduced, we need some serious and fair minded civil servant to work out the saving to the central tax fund and give that back to the people of Ireland in a reduction of income tax.  Enda Kenny in a snarling moment a few weeks ago suggested that if the people of Ireland did not toe the line with regard to water charges then he would have to slap 4% onto income tax.  So let that then go the other way under this new system.

2. The water that is to be distributed has to be fit for purpose ie., fit for drinking.  The cryptospiridium infested water we in Boyle and many other places in Ireland are receiving is not potable and therefore should not be charged for.  Denis Naughton, our local popular Independent TD said in the Dail that we people of north east Roscommon will not have drinking water available until March 2017.  Therefore we cannot be charged under a water tax for “piss” as our Euro MP, Ming Flanagan, suggested earlier this year in the Dail.

3. There is also another contaminant in the water at present which is the introduction of fluoride into the supply of water in Ireland.  Fluoride is a carcinogenic poison that all countries in Europe have backed away from, so until that practice is stopped by the HSE.  I cannot pay any water charges whilst we continue to die of cancer whilst we grin over the tops of our coffins showing our magnificent set of knashers.

4. On health grounds also I cannot accept the introduction of a smart metering system to measure the consumption.  Smart meters give off electro-magnetic radiation which is harmful to everybody but especially pregnant women and children.  But I will accept a standard charge per dwelling for un-metered water, it has worked well in Britain for years.

5. Since May 2013 we here in Boyle have been under a boil water notice. Every week from then until June 2014 we have had to spend €30 per week buying bottled water.  On June 1st 2014 I bought a special filter from England (They do not sell them in Ireland).  The filter cost €630 and takes cryptospiridium and fluoride out of the water supply.  It cost €100 to fit it to the incoming supply.  The filter element needs changing every year at a cost of €198.  So if we just take the cost up to March 2017 when the situation might start to look rosy, the cost to me for government inadequacy is;-

Bottled water from May 2013 until end of May 2014 – 56 weeks @€30 =  €1680

Installation of filter = €730

Filter elements from May 2014 until May 2017 is 3 years @ €198 = €594.

A total cost of €3004

This sum will lie as a credit in my account with Irish Water so that over the years they can deduct my annual charge from this figure.  With my advanced age there should be enough left in my account for Irish Water to buy my wife a coffin when I shuffle off this purgatory they call life.

What we do not want between now and that pie in the sky day of March 2017 is lies because for the last year the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition government and its tax construct, Irish Water, have been doing nothing but.  We need openness, transparency and honesty from these people or as the Minister for the Environment, Alan Kelly, said when talking in the Dail to Independent TD, Mattie McGrath on 10th December, they can “fuck off”

So my water has to be fit for purpose, uncontaminated by cryptospiridium, fluoride free, with no smart meters and then in mid 2017 when all that is done to my satisfaction Irish Water can then charge me a fair rate and deduct it off my balance of €3004 which built up because the Government of Ireland were not doing what by law they were supposed to do ie., supplying potable drinking water.  Some how or another I can see many a battle taking place before that happens