In the early hours of Sunday, September 3rd, 1916, men of the 6th Battalion Connaught Rangers took their places in the battered trenches opposite the rubble that remained of the villages of Guillemont and Ginchy.
The darkness was lit up by signal flares and echoed with constant shellfire. As the Battle of the Somme ploughed on into its third month, both these villages, only two miles from the original starting point of the battle, had been turned into formidable German fortifications and previous attempts to take them had ended in failure.
The 6th Connaught Rangers, who had been in France for only nine months, were made up mainly of men from the west of Ireland. However, as they had undergone basic training at Moore Park, Fermoy, they had drawn into their ranks a number of recruits from that part of Co Cork.
Among the massed ranks of waiting Rangers were two teenage cousins from Mill Street in Midleton - James Kelly and his best friend and cousin, Bill Cahill. James had joined up at the outbreak of the war, aged 15. Bill, just turned 16, left his job in Hallinan's flour mill and followed him into the Connaught Rangers, despite his parents' objections.
Now these two youths found themselves side by side waiting for the dreaded moment when they were to leave their trenches and move forward into a whirlwind of flying metal.
At three minutes past noon, the Rangers left their trenches with a yell and rushed across No Man's Land. Despite appalling losses, including the death in action of their commanding officer, they took the village of Guillemont within a few minutes. The bravery of their ferocious assault was widely acknowledged. One ranger, Private Hughes from Co Monaghan, was awarded a Victoria Cross for taking out a German machine-gun post single-handed.
Bill Cahill was seriously wounded and taken to a field hospital at nearby Corbie. James Kelly, shocked but uninjured, remained with what was left of the battalion as they began to fortify the captured German positions against a counter-attack.
On Saturday, September 9th, the village of Ginchy was also taken, again with appalling losses among the attacking Irish. Early on the previous day, as the Connaught Rangers moved up toward the front line to begin the attack, German flares had silhouetted a column of men treading forward in single file. A well-aimed shell killed seven Connaughts, including Private James Kelly. His remains were never recovered. Later that day Bill Cahill died of his wounds; he was buried in the cemetery at Corbie.
Memories of the liberation of these two French villages by the Irish divisions live on today. To the west of the villages, where the Irishmen charged across a shell-pitted quagmire, large, well-cultivated fields glow in the summer sunshine. In the Guillemont a large Celtic cross stands proudly in front of the church in testimony to the Irish role in the liberation of the village.
Last month 47 members of the Connaught Rangers Association made a historic pilgrimage to the killing fields of Flanders and the Somme. The party comprised members from all four provinces, including two members of the Seanad from opposing sides, Frank Feighan of Fine Gael and Paschal Mooney of Fianna Fáil.
It was clear to the Irish visitors that the Belgian and French people have not forgotten the fallen of the Great War as they carry on their daily lives surrounded by the monuments and countless cemeteries that offer a constant reminder of the terrible losses suffered by many nations in that terrible conflict.
It is estimated that well over 35,000 Irishmen fell in the Great War, among them 2,500 Connaught Rangers. These men left grieving wives, children, parents, sweethearts and friends, yet soon their sacrifice was forgotten in the towns and villages in Ireland where they came from by all except those who loved them.
The association members took part in two memorial ceremonies - the Last Post ceremony in Ieper under the Menin Gate and another at the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme.
On the towering Thiepval Memorial are carved the names of 72,000 men who disappeared during the battles along the Somme, among them 70 officers and men of the Connaught Rangers lost between September 3rd and 9th, 1916 who have no known graves. These include James Kelly, killed one month short of his 18th birthday. His cousin Bill Cahill and many more of his comrades lie in the various cemeteries scattered across the nearby meadows.
As the men and women of the Connaught Rangers Association laid a wreath and an Irish lament was played on the flute it seemed that men and boys like James Kelly were being remembered with dignity after being for so long consigned to the unwritten pages of Irish history.
And as the notes echoed around the arches one could not possibly failed to be moved, reflecting that Irish men and woman had finally returned to remind the fallen of their homeland.
Details of the Connaught Rangers Association and membership may be obtained from the Secretary, CRA, King House, Boyle, Co Roscommon.