Madam, - It is most disappointing to see the negative response from some readers to my article about a young man of the Connaught Rangers killed in France in 1916 (An Irishman's Diary, September 6th).
The article was written to remind people of this young man and thousands of others like him who perished in one of the greatest man-made catastrophes of the last century. The Connaught Rangers Association was set up three years ago to remember these Irishmen and assist families in researching and in visiting the resting places of this lost generation. The association has no political agenda and has members from all over the world.
It is not for us to say whether one man was "a true Irishman" because he died in India or another was an "untrue Irishman" because he fell in France. It is not our intention to glorify war, in fact it is the opposite. Nor is it our intention to question the personal or political motivations of the men and boys who lie there. They alone hold the answers to that.
Thousands of men from many non-European nations, including India, what is now Pakistan and South Africa, also died in the killing fields of Flanders. There are now memorials to these men both where they fell and in their own countries. These memorials in Bombay and Karachi stand side by side with memorials to men of regiments such as the Connaught Rangers who died while serving in the Indian subcontinent. They are treated with respect, and as what they are: memorials to the dead.
Maybe this shows a maturity and a real sense of confidence in their history that these countries, colonised and exploited, can live with and remember their countrymen who served as soldiers of the Empire in both wars.
It is rather sad that in the Ireland of 2004 there are citizens who feel so threatened by what is, a simple historical association set up to remember the many Irishmen who died in the Great War. - Yours, etc.,
OLIVER FALLON, Secretary, CRA, Boyle, Co Roscommon.