Harryville Heroes
Monday is the 1st July and marks the 97th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. A huge number of Ballymena men answered the call to war and joined many different regiments. The main army unit was the 12th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles , the Mid Antrim Volunteers. Men from Harryville joined the 12th Battalion, trained, drilled and then left these shores to go to a country they knew nothing about. This piece is about two young Harryville brothers who went to war and never returned.
In 1911 the Mc Gowans lived at King Street in Harryville. The street is long gone and now is Kens car park. They, like the rest of Harryville, were poor, plain, ordinary people. The two brothers would have had little education and by 1911 John was aged 15 and James 13. At this age John was a ‘doffer’ in the mill and James was a general labourer. Despite working at this young age the two brothers would have played in the Braid river, fished and swam and maybe went for walks out the Larne Road as far as the fields of Pennybridge. The countryside would have started at the end of Larne Street. On a Sunday they would have been packed off to the Presbyterian Church and no doubt Sunday School. Life would have been hard and poor. There now was an opportunity for excitement, pay, travel and the chance to do their duty for King and Country. How did their parents William and Jane feel? Pride or a deep fear? There were no pensions or state benefits. The whole family contributed to live. Children worked and earned money for buying food.
By 1914 the political scene conspired to create the armies of Carson and in the south Redmond. The outbreak of World War 1 prevented a bloody civil war and soon the Ulster men, instead of facing the British army, would become a division of the British army, the 36th Ulster Division. The two brothers would have gone through training together and soon the time came for them to leave. The picture below is from 1914 and shows the Antrim volunteers marching in Queen Street, Harryville. They are probably walking to the train to depart for Belfast and further afield. The flat curved roof can still be seen today at Arbuckle and Calderwoods.
Did the Mc Gowan family go out to cheer their loved ones? It would be a moments’ walk from their King Street home to Queen Street to see the lads march by in uniform. John would be 18 and James 16. What did the eldest son, Hugh (19) think as they walked away? There were younger brothers and sisters. Hannah was 14 when they left and Sarah was 11. Young William was 8 and maybe Samuel, aged 6, was too young to really know what was happening. They would never see their brothers again. Undoubtedly the two lads had never travelled far. Belfast would have been a strange and alien place never mind the towns of rural France. They would have got off the ship from England at Boulogne in October 1915. By train or foot they would have made their way to Pierrgot, Fonqvillers, Mensil, Hamel and Martinsart. The two lads could read and write. Did they spend some time writing home to Harryville to say they were well, little knowing what was ahead of them?
There were many Ballymena men together and so they would not have been lonely. There would have been much talk about Railway Street and Larne Street and Galgorm and the gossip from the Braidwater Spinning mill who gave up so many of its workers. But the war rumbled on and got bloodier by the month. Soon in June 1916 the brothers would be preparing to go over the top. They prepared, as thousands did, for the big push that would start on July 1st 1916. They were based down in the Ancre valley that had, ironically, a mill. They had suffered months of shelling, filth, hunger, cold and fear. Soon they, with all the young Ballymena men, would charge their respective German lines to gain some ground.
At 7am the whistles blew and the mid Antrim volunteers rose from their trenches and walked into a wall of machine gun fire. They suffered huge losses. One of the brothers was shot and wounded. The other brother went to his rescue. He was shot. Both died on the marshy battlefield of the Somme. It was hell on earth. Men crying, bleeding, shrapnel in the air decapitating people. Limbs blew off. Did they die clean and quickly, or did they, like so many, spend the day mortally wounded and succumb sometime in the night? Worse was to come. The Ulster men had done well but suffered grievous losses. Men where left on the muddy ‘no man’s land’. The two brothers were never found. There is no known grave. They are remembered on the Thiepval Memorial. A massive monument to those thousands of young men whose lives, then bodies, were lost for ever.
And what of William and Jane Mc Gowan when they received a letter or telegram informing them of their loss? They, like the Cooke’s of Larne Street, the Wallace’s of Gilmore Street, the Mc Nieces of Queen Street and many more, would soon learn about the true horror of World War 1. And when did the realisation set in that they would never see their sons again? They had no grave to grieve over. They would not have earned enough to travel to France. Plus the war would last another 3 years. How did the family adjust to the two empty chairs at a Sunday dinner table?
The 1st of July 1916 was when Ulster was proud of the bravery of its sons, but at what a price. So this 1st July remember the Harryville men who went away and never returned. Remember all the Ballymena men who fought and died. Remember the families who lost so much.
Gaudeamus Igitur
