Sir, - Kevin Myers's splendid article (December 30th) brought back to me a sad pilgrimage which I made recently with two Irish comrades to the Ypres Salient in memory of one of my uncles who was killed somewhere in that hell and whose memory, like that of thousands of other Irish soldiers, is registered on a war memorial in France but nowhere on any memorial in his native country.
We visited Messines Ridge, where we saw in a church a display of flags of the belligerents involved, but no Irish flag was to be seen. I know that then we had no officially recognised Irish flag, but we have had one for over 80 years, and we felt that our country has had plenty of time to remedy the omission. On my return I tried to whip up some interest in the matter, without success.
So, to make my own contribution to the memory of the Irish dead in that stupid "war of the cousins", I decided to re-issue the histories of the disbanded Irish regiments. To our surprise, the first title, on the "Munsters" sold out quickly, and since then we have gone on to issue the histories of the "Dubs" followed by the Royal Irish, and soon the Leinsters. Then the rest of them, the Connaughts and the 2nd Dubs. I regard this as my own and my wife's contribution to perpetuating the memory of those poor men about whom Kevin Myers has often written so movingly.
Interestingly, my late mother, a republican "diehard" until the day Gabriel blew for her, wore the Easter lily every spring and the poppy every November for that uncle, her brother, whose bones, in Myers's words, fertilise those Flanders fields. And I never remember a cross word in our house about her divided loyalties. Unlike lately ... - Yours, etc.,
Schull Books, Schull, Co Cork.