Addy McLoughlin

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.

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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.

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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 …