First
though, his grandson also pictured here. That is Noel McLoughlin, brother of Tony and of the late Teddy. The aforementioned Tony is married to
Kathleen McParland, formerly of Monaghan
Street. Teddy
was from Derrybeg Drive,
the father of the singing McLoughlin sisters. Indeed Teddy and Noel were talented in the musical arena too, for they
used to appear regularly just a few years ago at the Cavern ‘jazz’ session and
render a few duets to the accompaniment of the accordion. Teddy had a slight grasp of French and also
the ‘aul language, and Tommy Balance (RIP) once dubbed him our resident EU translator
for he liked to use his cupla focaill
on any visiting foreign nationals there!
That’s
our distinguished gentleman’s direct spear line of descent. On the distaff line, among the hundreds of
descendents in Newry today are the Quinns and the Dromalane Greenes.
Time
to introduce the photographed man by name. He was Arthur McLoughlin, popularly known as Addy. Now Arthur Quinn of Loughview Park
(recently bereaved of his dear wife Kathleen – formerly O’Hare of Thomas’s
Street) and the late Arthur (Artie) Greene of O’Neill Avenue were both named
after their maternal grandfather.
The
photo was probably taken in the second decade of the last century and Addy
served in the British Army, first in the Boer War at the end of the nineteenth
century and later in The Great War, in the Royal Irish Fusiliers whose famous
war cry was Fog a Bella.
And just on the subject of those wars, I was reading Wilfred Owen's famous 'Dulce et decorum est' and thought this might be an appropriate place to remind readers of the horror of The Great War ...
Bent-double,
like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed,
coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till
on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And
towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men
marched asleep. Many had lost their
boots
But
limped on, blood-shod. All went lame;
all blind;
Drunk
with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of
tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting
the clumsy helmets just in time;
But
someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And
floundering like a man in fire or lime …
Dim,
through the misty panes and thick, green light,
As
under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In
all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He
plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If
in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind
the wagon that we flung him in,
And
watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His
hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If
you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come
gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene
as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of
vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues –
My
friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To
children ardent for some desperate glory,
The
old Lie: - dulce
et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
But back to Addy ...
He
lived at 34 Boat Street
Newry and the house next door was the home of his son.
Indeed that is the house where my good friend
Tony McLoughlin was born.
That’s
enough scene-setting. Now for the anecdotes …..
….
In our NEXT article, that is …
Reminiscence 
