Dungarvan Observer | Friday, 30 January, 2015
NEWS
27
The Newsreader THE WEEK THAT WAS IN IT . . .
Major military find in Kilworth WE are now well into our stride in regard to commemorations of the major events of World War I.The concentration at the moment is on the first winter of the war and the realisation that the troops who went off to battle in August and who understood that they would be ‘home by Christmas’, were greatly deluded. Trench warfare was settling in and a ‘war of attrition’ was being spoken about. This policy amounted to flinging men at the battlefront with victory expected to go to the side which could absorb most losses. Those losses were dreadful as tens of thousands of men were killed and wounded, sometimes that number in a day and with little more than a few yards gained to show for the carnage. Tens of thousands of Irishmen had joined the British Army for a variety of reasons and they too underwent training in advance of going to the front to engage with ‘the Hun’. Last week, it was revealed exclusively in the Irish Examiner that there was a training camp in Kilworth where thousands of Irish soldiers underwent training and battle conditions prior to going to the European battlefront. A team of Archaeologists moved into the military camp in North Cork and, with information gleaned from historical maps which showed huge fortifications were built at Lynch Camp, Kilworth, shortly after the outbreak of the war, they found ‘one of the largest and best preserved World War I underground bunker and trench systems ever built in Britain and Ireland’. Details of the find by a team from
Queen’s University Belfast, show the underground bunkers, built around 1915, could have accommodated sleeping quarters for up to 300 troops. “After acquiring permission from the Department of Defence and the Defence Forces to visit the camp located halfway between Fermoy and Mitchelstown,” reads the report in the Examiner last week, “they carried out their first reconnaissance of the land in October 2013 and followed it up with a week-long detailed examination last July. “We were just blown away with what we found. It is certainly the best preserved in Ireland and is so significant that it could be bigger than anything found in Salisbury Plain (a huge British Army training centre in Wiltshire, close to Stonehenge). It’s a really significant find,” said Dr Alistair Ruffell, a geology expert who was co-supervisor on the project. He and his colleagues used ‘Time Team-type’ technology to work out what the underground fortifications consisted of. Among the technology employed were aerial mapping, GPS, and geophysics, which is ground-penetrating radar. It enabled the team to see the extent of the massive underground bunker and the trenches, which today are almost totally obscured by heather and gorse. He estimates the fortifications ran for a couple of kilometres and that British Army engineers also constructed ‘enemy trenches’ on an elevated slope opposing them, which troops were then ordered to capture. The discovery is credited to PhD student Heather Montgomery, who is
enthralled by battlefield archaeology and she persuaded her colleagues that an investigation of the Kilworth site might be worthwhile. “It was quite emotional to be in the trenches, for obvious reasons. These were sometimes the last places the young men from Ireland practised in before they went, often to not return,” Dr. Ruffell said. Dr. Ruffell said the Kilworth fortifications were built to show troops the reality of life in the trenches, as well as enabling them to carry out pre-battle training in conditions as realistic as they would meet at the front. In recent years, the camp again has become a significant training centre for the Defence Forces and a €1m state-ofthe-art automated firing range, installed by Swedish company Saab, opened last year. The camp has also been refurbished to accommodate 320 troops for exercises, at any one time, and possesses state-of-theart catering and fitness facilities. Around 4,500 members of the Defence Forces are assigned to Kilworth for training every year, including the Naval Service and the Ranger Wing. This is a magnificent find and, hopefully in time, will be a major attraction in an otherwise barren tourist area. However, as a major redevelopment and extension of the services of the camp took place and a great deal of money spent, inside the last couple of years, it is not known what the attitude of the Department and the Army would be to tourists flocking nearby. We can only await their decision with patience.
Blasphemy or just good manners? SURPRISINGLY, there is still some decency left on RTE. Not all programmes are tolerant of the use of bad language, innuendo and other distasteful content being put out over the air with the aid of the money of the tax and licence paying public. It was good to hear Cathail McCoille on Morning Ireland on RTE Radio 1 diplomatically reprimand former Editor of the Irish Times, Geraldine Kennedy when she used the F word in the context of discussing the Charles Haughey three part serial. For those who can remember the Haughey era, it was an excellent portrayal of that time in Ireland, but one has to wonder whether the level of bad language was justified in the production. We seem to have come to accept such language even on the more formal traditional channels like Radio 1 and it is a diminution of the status of the station and an abandonment of its mandate to maintain standards in broadcasting. Time was, such language was inconceivable on any radio station, but standards have slipped and it is no excuse to say that it is the language of Irish conversation just now. It should NOT be condoned or allowed on any of our stations as the general usage in a formal situation demeans us all. It is unlikely that those people who use such language liberally in public would use that same language in Church and certainly not in the Courts where at least a fine, if not seven days in jail would be the reward for a serious breach. The other area in which our
standards have totally deteriorated is in the use of what Christians describe as the Holy Name of Jesus. There are many swear words, expletives or bad language, call it what you will, available without resorting to this lapse in standards. Bishop Philip Boyce, O.C.D., of Raphoe Diocese issued a Pastoral Letter on the subject recently. “Among the Ten Commandments,” he wrote, “we have one by which God prescribes respect for his name: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Ex. 20:7). This commandment governs our use of speech in sacred matters and forbids every improper use of the names of God, of Jesus, of Our Lady and the Saints. The Catechism tells us that deliberately to use the name of God or of Jesus with hatred and reproach is to sin gravely. Irreverence for God and his Holy Name and for sacred matters is at times present in certain sectors of society.This is embarrassing and painful for believers but not merely for them. “People of goodwill can be as dismayed as men and women of faith at the departures from decency in speech and the disregard for the holiness of God’s Name” This debate can be widened to include the law of blasphemy and whether it should be still on our statute books. It can encompass the reason for the Paris killings and it can also refer to the principles of good manners, good taste and not wishing to give offence. Is that so simple that we cannot understand it?
Members of Waterford & Tramore ARCH club with Fergal Freyne, Branch Manager, and Jane Hayden, AIB Tramore. AIB Tramore recently showcased the members Artwork in the Branch over the Christmas period and are sponsoring an upcoming event for the members.