Sir, - On July 31st I was privileged to be at the unveiling of a memorial to Francis Ledwidge at the exact spot in Boezinge, near Ypres, where the poet met his death. The memorial erected by the In Flanders Fields Museum was draped with the Irish flag. After the unveiling the flag was given to Joe Ledwidge, the last surviving member of the poet's family. Joe took the flag back to Ireland together with a sample of soil from the grave and this is perhaps as close as we will ever get to bringing back Francis Ledwidge to his place among the kings.
The irony is that the Irish heritage service Duchas rejected a similar proposal for a permanent memorial to the poet at the War Memorial Gardens, Islandbridge. The proposal, put forward by the Inchicore Ledwidge Society, would not have interfered with the original structure of the gardens. Duchas, however, maintained that the gardens were to honour the war dead as a body of men and that individual memorials would be inappropriate. As anyone who has ever been to the memorial gardens knows there is a memorial to British poet Rupert Brooke, so we now have the situation where a British poet is honoured while an Irish poet of the same era, and of the same army, is ignored! And all this is at a time when we are seeking to create a closer relationship between the two communities on this island.
I hope that now we have been upstaged by the Belgians, the Irish War Graves Committee will get its act together and redress this insulting anomaly. - Yours, etc., Liam O'Meara,
Chairman,
Inchicore Ledwidge Society,
Emmet Road,
Dublin 8.