“He then became a Jesuit. His first desire was to be a missionary, but he had learned to obey and became a Chaplain at the Front during the war. Here he proved fearless, and lived entirely for the Irishmen who were in his charge,” wrote Rev. Alfred O’Rahilly, President of University College Cork, about Fr. William Doyle, who died at Passchendaele.

Doyle has long been a figure in my life, by way of being a personal hero of my Dad’s, who throughout his life maintained a strong interest in the First World War, and particularly the men of the 16th and the 36th Divisions. In 2001 he, from Newry, and a friend of his, a former officer in the Royal Navy from London, spent some time travelling around the battlegrounds of the Somme. 

They had spent the day walking under an unforgiving French sun, without water, as they had planned on dinner (and most likely wine alongside) at a particularly restaurant, which they had found to be closed. Dehydration was setting in dangerously when, from down a hillside they heard another Northern accent and saw, as if a mirage, a family, with picnic blanket with cooler full of sandwiches and small-bottled French beers. 

The strangers were from Belfast and at first the conversation was perfectly amicable, as they were impressed by my Dad’s historical knowledge of the area, where each battalion would have been stationed. The turning point came when one Belfastian asked, “so whereabouts are you from?” to which the response of course came, “Newry.” Instantly the face of the questioner dropped and he henceforth ceased direct communication with the answerer.

My Dad’s friend then asked if they might have a couple of beers, explaining their dire thirst. This was answered with a hearty “certainly,” a single beer cracked open and one passed to the non-Newry nyuck. Having been handed the beer, military ration training set in, both Dad and friend downed half each before getting out quick.

Upon inspection of a visitors book in the area, they later found that it had been signed earlier that day by the ‘Shankill Road UVF’. As my Dad described it, it was as if they resented his presence in what they saw as their space. Regardless of the fact that of the 220,000 Irishmen who fought in the British Army during the First World War, 57% were from a Catholic or nationalist background.

Conversely, there is a conversation which Liam Kennedy, Professor Emeritus of History at Queen’s, describes in his book Unhappy the Land. Whilst giving a lecture on the famine, a woman in the audience keeps interjecting with request to raise a point. In his annoyance he asks what she wants, and she asks him whether any Protestants died in the famine. Perplexed, he says, “Of course.” The woman then tells him that she had been assured by a group of Catholics at an interface area of Belfast that only Catholics died in the famine. That’s our famine, like.

The melding of traditions is found elsewhere in family tree, through my grandfather who fought in the War of Independence, whether the IRA or IRB, and his younger brother who fought in the RAF.

In three years’ time the peace walls are due to be torn down, after fifty years of cutting their way through parts of Northern Ireland. Along with cutting down the physical barriers, it is desperately required that we do more to open up the mental blockades put in place by the memories of heroes dead and battles lost. “Minds as open as a trap,” as Heaney wrote, are not conducive to democracy, nor to any standard of living.

At this time of year you can expect those you would expect to retreat to the battle lines of culture and fling what they can at the designated opposition. This is starts around the time that Orangemen start putting their boots on, and continues through to the Féile an Phobail when The Wolfe Tones play their annual concert in Falls Park.  

Two songs in particular are cause for ire, Celtic Symphony, the chorus of which goes “ooh ah up the ‘ra’”; and Go On Home British Soldiers. The result is that two years in a row, near identical articles in The Irish News have reported questions of funding for the Féile, a registered charity with Belfast City Council as a benefactor, if it is to continue with the “glorification of terrorism,” as DUP councillor Brian Kingston described it.

Likewise, regular listeners of Nolan and/or Talkback are guaranteed a discussion of bonfires and marches, one Twelfth-coloured and the other Internment-shaped. It should go without saying that topical news programmes should not be able to schedule items a year in advance. Yet we continue to merrily skip down the rabbit hole to purgatory.

Through the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 came the acceptance of the principle by all conscientious individuals that killing each other was not a viable mode of conduct and that it was in the best interest of each and all to learn to live together. Anyone who has spent anytime in a house share will understand that living together requires all parties to budge an inch in mutually cooperative directions. Sooner or later the prattling has to end.

It must be understood that someone from a unionist background who has been raised to know that ‘the IRA’ wanted to kill them, their family, and everyone with a similar postcode, might feel a tiny bit uncomfortable at hearing enthusiastic chants of support.

The same must also be said for anyone from a nationalist background who hears the sounds of battle drums. This is particularly so with the recent case of the Apprentice Boys parade in Derry where some members were seen to wear the insignia of the Paratroop Regiment on their uniforms. When a former member of said Regiment is due to stand trial for the killing of innocent civilians in the same city they were marching in, such an action falls somewhere between cruel insensitivity and triumphalist bravado.

However, both The Wolfe Tones and the Apprentice Boys hold the position of something akin to a rite of passage in the nationalist and unionist narratives, respectively. It seems reasonable that learning to live together must involve some degree of what is intended as harmless fun, so long as it does exceed judicial and humanitarian benchmarks.

Furthermore, there is not nearly enough recognition on either side of the proverbial peace wall of the extent to which the two are intertwined. Each should recognise the complexity of their own narratives, as well as that of their neighbours.

I have heard it said before that the peace walls are closer to those who live furthest away from them. The people living in those areas have a physical obstacle which puts minutes on their commute. The people far away think about them in abstract terms and reinforce them with beams of anxiety. As these physical barriers are pulled down, so too must there be an accompanying mental reckoning which demolishes the patterns that put them up in the first place.