By Andy Spearman
I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings but I think that the Drogheda Remembrance Service which took place on Saturday last was an embarrassment and needs a rethink.
It wasn’t just the tiny turnout that I found embarrassing – the band almost outnumbered the “crowd” – but I think the monument itself has been allowed to deteriorate to such a condition and it is in such an unsuitable position that it is more of an insult than a proud commemoration of young lives lost.
Whatever their background the brave young Drogheda men, and they were mostly men, commemorated at this annual event were young idealists who saw a great wrong being inflicted on the world and responded to the call to help put an end to it.
Their idealism cost many of them their lives and often they died the most brutal of deaths imaginable. They were gassed and gunned down in their hundreds during the First World War – the so-called “war to end all wars” – and their battered bodies were often never found.
By the time the Second World War came around the killing machines had become even more efficient and many more forms of death were introduced but still honourable people from this borough responded to the threat from the Nazis and their insane leaders.
Their families back in Drogheda waited in vain for their return but the only knock on their door was from the telegram man bearing the worst possible news.
The monument itself is badly in need of cleaning and I think it should also be moved to a more prominent position than its current location in the corner of the car park at the busy and dangerous junction at the bottom of Mary Street.
West Street, if it had been pedestrianised, would have been the ideal location for the memorial but perhaps it could be incorporated into the proposed Saint Peter’s Hill development at the top of Peter Street.
At least there it would be seen by more people and, if the exciting plans published by the Council earlier this year come to fruition (see below), it will be more central and a place of peace as befits such a memorial structure.
Failing that, at the very least the memorial should be restored.
