... a
battle in which the 16th Irish and 36th Ulster Divisions
fought and died side by side during World War 1.
We
stayed in the Peace
Village in Messines and
Gerry Lennon, also from Newry who was with me showed me a graveyard nearby and
took me to the grave-side of a young Newry lad named Bernard McAlister.
We
stayed in Messines for one week and each day after breakfast I would wander
down to the graveyard and go to his grave and talk to him. I told him what Newry was like now and told
him about the changes that had taken place in the town since he went away to
that ‘war to end all wars.’ I vowed
that when I came home I would find out as much about this young Newry soldier
as I could. This is what I now know.
On
September 2nd 1899 Ann McAlister, wife of John McAlister, gave birth
to a son. They named him Bernard. On his
birth certificate in the section, ‘Name and Surname and Dwelling-place of
Father’ are the words ‘John McAlister. Dwelling place not known.’ The reason for this was simple - the family
were residents of Newry Workhouse.
The
1901 Census only gives the initials of those in the workhouse but there was A
McA and a J McA. The 1911 Census gave an
A McA and a J McA but no B McA so one cannot be sure if they were still there
in that year but in 1917, their address was given as 5 Downshire Court, Lower Water Street, Newry.
The
1911 Census also showed that another family lived there when the census was
taken so sometime after that the McAlisters moved into that address. Indeed, as the householders list in our next story shows [from the Reporter Year Book of 1917] this house was registered to one James Curran then so the McAlisters were home-sharing. Still it might be assumed that this was their first home after the Workhouse, but Bernard did not live there long because just after his
seventeenth birthday, either to get away from his poverty or believing the
stories he was told about the war, he joined the Royal Irish Rifles.
After
his recruitment training, he was sent to Belgium with the 2nd Battalion
RIR where on the 22nd June 1917, he was killed. He was aged seventeen years and six months. He is buried in Messines
Ridge British
Cemetery, Mesen, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium
along with hundreds of his comrades. I
do not know how he died but on his gravestone - along with his number, rank,
name and date of his death - is the following inscription from John 15:13:
‘Greater
love than this no man hath, than a man lays down his life for his friend.’
In
Colin Moffett’s well researched book ‘Newry’s War Dead’ his next of kin is
given as his mother, Annie McAlister. The British Army will only put number,
rank, name and date of death on the gravestones. Anything else must be paid for by the family
so one can assume that this inscription was put on and paid for by his mother
who must have been very proud of her young son. Bernard was posthumously awarded the Victory
Medal and the British War Medal.
There
is a poem etched in stone at the 36th Ulster Division, Ulster Tower
in the Somme which to me sums up the death of
9704 Rifleman B McAlister, 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Rifles and all
those other millions who perished in the First World War.
It
was penned by David Starret of the 9th Royal Irish Rifles:
‘So
the curtain fell
Over
that tortured country
Of
unmarked graves and
Unburied
fragments of men …
Murder
and massacre:
The
innocent slaughtered
For
the guilty.
The
poor man
For
the sake of the greed
Of
the already rich …
The
man of no authority
Made
the victim of the man
Who
had gathered importance
And
wished to keep it.
History 
