En ce même jour, le premier juillet mille neuf cent seize, au début de la bataille de la Somme, les hommes de la fameuse trente-sixièmer sortirent du bois de Thiepval pour rejoindre ce point sur la Redoute de Schwaben, s’inscrivant ainsi dans les pages de l’histoire, de la légende et de la renommée. Cette avancée, sous un feu continu, qui leur coûta cinq mille cinq cent morts et blessés, est pour nous l’épisode le plus mémorable de la première Guerre Mondiale et représente une des démonstrations de courage les plus remarquables dans l’histoire de l’humanité. D’un courage tout aussi grand étaient les hommes de la seizième division irlandaise qui se battirent à Guillemont et Ginchy en septembre de la même année.
Ce mémorial, élevé sur ce site sacré grâce à une souscription dans le Nord de l’Ireland, a pris pour modèle la tour d’Hélène à Clandeboye, pres de Bangor, où s’entraîna la trente-sixiéme Division de l’Ulster.
Sur la tour à Clandeboye est inscrite en lettres d’or un poème de Tennyson dont les quatre premiers vers ont été adaptés légèrement en hommage aux fils d’Ulster tombés ici. Ainsi peut-on lire à l’intérieur de cette Tour d’Ulster:
Me voici, la Tour d’Hélène
Qui domine terre et mer
Construite par l’amour d’un fils
J’abrite en lettres d’or l’amour d’Ulster.
En ce jour sacré nous commémorons le sacrifice de ces héros tombés pour la liberté. Nous ne cherchons pas seulement à les glorifier, mais à veiller à ce que un tel désastre ne se reproduise plus jamais.
Your Royal Highness, First Minister, Secretary of State, Irish Minister of State, Distinguished Guests, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen.
On this day, 1st July 1916, 95 years ago, at the commencement of the Battle of the Somme, the men of the famous 36th (Ulster) Division advanced out of Thiepval Wood towards this point on the Schwaben Redoubt and on reaching here, passed into the pages of history, legend and high renown. This advance, when they sustained 5,500 casualties, under continuous fire, is for us the most memorable single episode of the First World War and stands as one of the finest displays of human courage in the history of mankind. Equal in valour were the men of the 16th (Irish) Division who fought at Guillemont and Ginchy in September of that year.
This memorial, erected on this sacred site by public subscription, raised in the North of Ireland, was modelled on Helen’s Tower at Clandeboye, near Bangor,where the 36th (Ulster) Division trained.
In Helen’s Tower at Clandeboye there is inscribed in letters of gold a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, of which the first four lines have been slightly altered in the memorial room in this Ulster tower to serve as a fitting tribute to the sons of Ulster who fell here.
Helen’s Tower here I stand
Dominant over sea and land;
Son’s love built me, and I hold
Ulster’s love in lettered gold.
And so we have come with the Somme Association to visit Thiepval once more and to walk again in the gardens of Valhalla so lovingly cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. On this sacred day we commemorate the sacrifice of our loved ones who died for freedom. We do not seek to glorify war but rather to see that it does not happen again.
It may be that there are certain setbacks in history of such magnitude and heroism that they serve to sustain and temper a people instead of weakening them. Or else, perhaps the setbacks come to have an energising, emblematic power. So the importance to us of our Ceremonies at the Ulster Tower and Guillemont.
Following the re-dedication of the Ulster Tower in 1989 by Her Royal Highness Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, under the auspices of the Farset Somme Project, the Somme Association was formed the next year to emphasise the contribution of the Irish soldier, both North and South in the tragedy that was the First World War.
As we enter the run-up to the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme in 2016 and the formation of Northern Ireland and establishment of the Ulster Tower at Thiepval in 2021, we would thank you, Sire, for agreeing to follow Princess Alice as our President and for all you support for the Somme Association both here in France and in Gallipoli, especially as we enter a new and challenging chapter of our history.
Merci beaucoup, Go raibh maith agaibh, Dank u wel, Haben Sie vielen Dank, Thank you very much.