Remembering Our Cause
On Monday the 1st July, the vast majority of Working Class Loyalists, will assemble at various locations throughout Northern Ireland to remember and give thanks for the sacrifice made by thousands of Ulstermen at the Battle of the Somme 97 years ago.
The stories of the 36th Ulster Divisions collective and individual acts of bravery will be told and retold again many times during the next few months.
Children just too young to understand last year, will this year begin a lifelong journey of learning and remembrance, as a fitting tribute and memorial to their Forefathers, who’s story will never be forgotten.
All over Northern Ireland, there are thousands of memorials to their sacrifice and bravery, on Banners, on Murals, in Church’s, on Cenotaphs, on the Standards of hundreds of the bands taking part in the Remembrance Parades, and especially in the hearts of us, their descendants.
Their memory has never and will never be sullied, belittled, or tarnished by being remembered in association or collusion with, the enemies of their day, the cowardly IRA who collaborated with the Germans, in the foolish belief that they could take advantage of the United Kingdom’s difficulties to achieve a republican United Ireland by treachery.
Today there is an equally treacherous plot being planned, this time by the IRA in collusion with the DUP and a few other notoriety seeking so-called Loyalists, as they attempt to create a sham peace and false reconciliation centre, alongside the already existing republican shrine to sectarian terrorism at Long Kesh.
There have been attempts to coerce the old Volunteers of the seventies into participating in this farcical act of treachery, against the Genuinely Innocent Victims of the conflict and our own Fallen Comrades.
The ridiculous argument being used is that, if we fail to participate then our story will be told by civil servants, BULLSHIT. By refusing to participate in this treacherously heartless collusion, we will be exposing it, as the blatantly fraudulent attempt to sanitise republican terrorism, that it is.
We the Old Volunteers of the conflict, are the keepers of our story and our memorabilia, we can insure that our story is truthfully told in our own areas, by our own Volunteers, without the lure of treacherous fool’s gold from Stormont, Westminster, Dublin, or Europe.
If our story and the sacrifice of our Fallen Comrades is truly worthy of retelling and Remembrance, then just like the Original Volunteers of 1912-1918, we will be remembered with reverence by our own Loyalist Working Class descendants in years to come, totally untainted by association with the belligerently bigoted republicans, who unsuccessfully tried to subvert democracy here in Northern Ireland, with 35 years of sectarian bloody slaughter.
Today would probably be a good time to reflect on the words from two verses of, “The Red Hand Soldier”.
This land our Fathers cherished, for its cause they perished.
At the Boyne, the Somme, Gallippoli, Dunkirk and Normandy.
While others failed and faltered, their faith they never altered.
Their cause, “For God and Ulster,” we must never deny.
Some say the war is over, no more need for the Red Hand Soldier.
But we have seen their peace before, we will see it through again.
Let others fail or falter, our faith we will not alter.
Our cause, “For God and Ulster,” we will never deny.
Charlie Freel.
