Ellen walks in footsteps of uncle killed in WW1

Ellen walks in footsteps of uncle killed in WW1

31 December 2014

A KILLINCHY teenager has retraced the final footsteps of her great great uncle who lost his life on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Ellen Tate travelled to the battlefields of the Great War in Belgium and France as part of a history and French trip organised by Down High School to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One.

During the trip, Ellen paid a poignant visit to the graveside of her lost uncle James Tate, from Killinchy.

James was a sergeant in the 13th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles after enlisting as a 17-year-old without the knowledge of his parents.

Before the war, he had joined the Ulster Volunteer Force, which pledged to resist the onset of Home Rule.

James was one of a family of five and his two brothers, John and Joseph, remained at home to look after affairs on the family farm.

After a period of training on the Clandeboye Estate near Bangor, he continued his military preparation at a large military camp established by Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, in Sussex.

James’s battalion was despatched to the Front in October 1915. Tragically, like so many of his colleagues, he was killed on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme and lies buried in Serre Road Cemetery Number 1.

During her trip, Ellen discovered that this graveyard is close to the spot from where Ulstermen launched their assault on German positions on the high ground of the Schwaben Redoubt.

In a scenario all too familiar, James left behind a wife, Grace Tate (née Brown), who was pregnant with the couple’s first child.

The trip to the Somme was something of a pilgrimage for Ellen who said that despite the passage of time she felt a genuine personal connection when she visited her great great uncle’s grave.

“The story of my relative made this tour a very personal experience, which has made me eager to learn even more about the Great War and the part played in it by so many people from home,” she said.

“The huge number of cemeteries, not to mention the long list of the names of the missing, really brought home the reality of war.

“It was particularly moving when a representative from the Somme Association pointed out the terrain where James Tate and many others fought.

“I feel very humbled to have been there.”

Following the trip, Mr. Keith Williamson, from Down High School’s history department, said he had been on a number of trips to the Great War battlefields.

“I never cease to be struck by the powerful impact that the endless rows of war graves, memorials to the Missing and battle-scarred terrain still has on our young people today, a century after this war was unleashed,” he said.

“We live in an age that does not always value quiet reflection, but there is a poignancy and dignity that our pupils experience on these visits that reaches deep into our collective and shared humanity.”