Publications | Down Survey | 2002 Issue Contents

Volunteers at The World's End: The Ulster Division at Ballykinler Army Camp, 1914.-1915
Philip Orr

On the 7th of September 1914, recruiting got under way for the 36th (Ulster) Division of Lord Kitchener's new army of volunteers who were to be trained at various army camps around the British Isles before being sent to fight for the British Empire against the mighty armies of the German Kaiser. 'The 36th' was a unique division in that the men were primarily drawn from the Ulster Volunteer Force, Lord Carson's army of Ulster Unionists who were determined to resist the imposition of Irish Home Rule on the Protestant population. The division's internal brigade structure was devised so as to incorporate the various regional units of the UVF and so one of the three divisional brigades was focused on the many UVF men from Belfast. Known as the 107th Infantry Brigade, it contained four battalions, each with a strength of between 800 and 1000 men. Because Belfast fell within the official recruitment area of an army regiment known as the Royal Irish Rifles, the four battalions were named the 8th, 9th, l Oth and 11 th Royal Irish Rifles. These men were to be sent to the army camp at
Ballykinler to begin their training.

On the morning of the 7th September, the first few volunteers made their way from their various city recruiting stations to the Belfast and County Down railway terminus to take the train southwards to their first army billet. They were cheered all the way through the city streets and Ligoniel Brass and Reed band played 'Lead Kindly Light' and 'God be with you till we meet again' amid emotional scenes on the platforms of the railway station.

Postcard showing Ballykinlar Camp (DCM 05/62/20

The Belfast News Letter waxed lyrical about the beauties of Ballykinler, whose "camp is situated in the centre of picturesque country, with the mountains of Mourne forming an imposing background. On the edge of the camping ground, and within easy walking distance of the tents, is an arm of Dundrum Bay, and here the men will have swimming and bathing drills. Within sight of the camp is the beautifully situated demesne of Tyrella."

However for many of the working-class men who assembled at Ballykinler, this was not only their first experience of the rigours of army life but also their first experience of life outside a big city. One of the first problems faced by the officers, in those early weeks at Ballykinler, was the readiness of several men to absent themselves on 'weekend leave'. Severe punishments soon had to be imposed, in order to make it clear that Ballykinler was not in fact a holiday camp, despite the newspapers' glowing descriptions of its salubrious qualities.

Several thousand new soldiers from Belfast needed accommodation. Initially, the men of the 10th Rifles battalion - most of them from the Shankill and Woodvale areas of the city - stayed under hastily erected canvas at Donard Lodge. However by December 1914, the entire Belfast brigade of the Ulster Division was assembled in the newly built Ballykinler 'tin camp', made up of sturdy huts, faced with corrugated iron and heated by smoky coal and log burners.

The men came to regard Ballykinler as two camps - 'World's End Camp', nearer to Tyrella beach, and 'Central Camp', with its views over the bay to Dundrum's ancient castle. It was the name 'World's End' which stuck to Ballykinler in the winter of 1914/1915. Many men did feel they had come from the bright lights and bustle of the city to the very end of the world. Although there had been an army camp here since the earliest days of The Boer War, the facilities were minimal and the atmosphere, in winter-time, rather bleak.

The men of the 10th battalion had the dubious pleasure, whilst at Ballykinler, of being under the command of Frank Percy Crozier, a soldier of large ego and ruthless efficiency. He believed in instilling what he called "intellectual discipline" into his younger officers - many of whom were literally 'teenagers', fresh from the Officer Training Corps at Queens University or Trinity College. Crozier lectured his junior officers, for six months, five nights a week, whilst at Ballykinler, on the process of 'hardening' that they must all undergo and that they must also instill in the men in their own command. "You must lose your gentle selves" he told them. "You must steel your hearts and minds and be callous of life and death. That is war."

The New Year period saw a rigorous stepping up of training. Crozier would later recall how in his battalion, bayonet fighting was coupled with propaganda about German atrocities and there was also plenty of martial music - as the band of each of the four battalions could be heard practising their military marches on the fife, the pipe and the drum. However, a quieter, more sober moment could be obtained in those busy and stirring days. A Soldiers' Home, formed by a Miss Sandes, had been in existence at the camp since 1901. It was run on Christian and evangelical principles and it sought to offer a 'home from home' for young soldiers. There were forms of entertainment and relaxation that did not rely on alcohol or gambling or other potentially addictive pursuits. To one man in the Belfast brigade of the Ulster Division, the Sandes Home was a source of great comfort - "There was one haven for us in the dark and cold nights, the Miss Sandes' Soldiers' Home. This stood outside the camp as you walked down the road that led to Dundrum Bay. It was a bungalow-like building... the women who worked there would play endless games of chess and checkers with you... Miss Sandes had grown old and looked like Queen Victoria..."

To one of the women who worked there, the men of the division whom they served seemed like a truly Christian army - "I verily believe they would all die in defence of the Bible" she said. For these earnest women, it was a reward to see and hear many young men declare their faith in God as they faced departure to a perilous battlefield. At the watch night service in 1914, a young Ulster officer faced a crowded room at midnight; he spoke in ringing words - "men, before this time next year we may all be killed; but to a Christian, death is only beginning to live..."

However one other soldier wrote home to his family a few days later with his mind on less spiritual comforts - "Third time in Newcastle since coming to camp. Got a great tea in Aunt Maggies' cafe. Wouldn't take any money. First good food since Christmas. Weather cold. Frost at night. Snow on the mountains. yours, Harry".

But if mid-winter was a grim time at Ballykinler camp then spring was all the more welcome. The countryside seemed to be coming to life all around, as one soldier explained "Sometimes the heat mist would cover the Mountains of Mourne and then clear at midday. With the clear evenings we would ramble along the dunes and over the shore... my haunt was Dundrum Bay. I often went there alone..."

Postcard showing an extension to Ballykinlar Camp (DCM 05/62/18

One other young man who was beginning to enjoy his stay at Ballykinler was Tommy Ervine, soldiering with the 8th Rifles' battalion, who were drawn from the streets of East Belfast and therefore known as 'Ballymacarrett's Own'... "I mind Ballykinler" said Tommy, in later life - "It was all sandhills full of rabbits. We built trenches and we actually thought the Germans would come up from Dundrum! There was a big dog belonged to one of the officers and one night he came into our tent and we thought it was the enemy! I remember that tent with candles. Eight to a tent and our heads leant out the canvas. Boys-oh, you might get a kick! The uniforms too didn't arrive too soon - I lent my uniform to a friend who had got none as he wanted it to go home in for the weekend. ...then we made drains to get the rainwater away, then we built huts. My friend Billy Mills and I had a great way of harmonisin' together as we worked up on the roof of the huts... we put together a song called 'The gentleman's son and the outcast.' We made a stage at Ballykinler and there were some concerts there. We saw the cinema too at Ballykinler and they also came and took a film of us working there and then I saw myself in the film when they showed it in our makeshift cinema, a bit later..."

Tommy also remembered the mens' excursions into Newcastle when misbehaviour and fighting were the norm, rather than the Christian and decent behaviour noted with approval by the ladies at the Sandes Home. Tommy, although one of the smallest men in the battalion, had been a boxer in the pre-war days and so he was chosen to be a military policeman at the camp. He had some rough customers to deal with - "there was this tough guy called Chuck Patton, and there was no prison at Ballykinler so we fastened him to a pole in the marquee. Some NCOs showed him to some visiting friends one Sunday but he reared up and nearly pulled the tent down. He escaped once and - in handcuffs and all - he managed to get a horse and cart and steer as far as Clough before they caught him!"

Tommy also made several visits back to Belfast from Ballykinler camp. He was now part of the battalion band and so he was asked to march through east Belfast on recruiting marches, in the spring of 1915. There was also a more sober task to be performed as a bandsman on one particular occasion - "We gave a fellow drowned in Ballykinler Bay a military funeral. Fell down steps into the water ...his mate was too drunk to save him ...I played the 'Dead March' from 'Saul' and I saw all the women crying..."

Also at Ballykinler in the spring of 1915 was a man with a different social background from that of Tommy Ervine. John Stewart-Moore was an officer with the l5th Rifles' battalion, whose rank-and-file soldiers were from North Belfast but whose officers came from much further afield. Stewart-Moore himself, who was from near Dervock in northern County Antrim, had been about to train as a clergyman when the war broke out but now he found himself as a young and inexperienced officer, in charge of a squad of men from the back-streets of Belfast city. He had a room to himself in one of the 'tin huts' and he bought himself a deck-chair for greater comfort and also installed his gramophone, a modern machine which rejoiced in the brand-name of 'His Master's Voice' and which possessed a large horn.

For their evening meal together, the officers in the l5th battalion sometimes wore stiff white collars instead of khaki and endeavoured to create a "pleasant and cultivated" atmosphere, despite the spartan surroundings. Officers also were able to enjoy legitimate and regular 'outings'. StewartMoore, during his stay at Ballykinler, managed to attend the theatre in Belfast and on one occasion actually spent a weekend in Dublin, when he attended a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta at the Gaiety Theatre.

On another occasion, Stewart-Moore visited Jordan's Castle, in Ardglass, not many miles away from Ballykinler, during an overnight route march which his men were doing around the Lecale peninsula. The famous antiquarian, Francis Joseph Bigger often resided in the castle and he showed Stewart-Moore his collection of artefacts, then called at the harbour to pick up "some scrumptious fresh herrings" for breakfast the next morning.

Among the other exercises which the men from North Belfast had to carry out was a march across Dundrum Bay, on a ford visible at low tide, to the grounds of Murlough House where the men performed nocturnal manoeuvres to prepare them for the probable night-time warfare on the western
front in France. It was at the mouth of Dundrum bay that some of the men said that they had seen a periscope indicative of a German submarine. Some 'enthusiasts' now spent their free time on top of the Ballykinler sandhills, trying to get their first sight of the dreaded enemy.

One of Stewart-Moore's duties was to take turns as 'orderly officer' - this meant inspecting the quality of the mens' facilities, receiving complaints and also doing the rounds of the sentries in the evening to see if they were alert and knew their duties. The orderly officer wore a sword as a badge of office. Stewart-Moore also noted the regular bayonet-practice at Ballykinler "a row of dummy figures made of sacking stuffed with straw was hung up from a sort of gallows and instruction was given by NCOs... as an alternative I had some target practice with an automatic pistol in the sandhills which bordered the sea..." Occasionally the officers' mess would have visitors and one such distinguished guest was Captain Wilfred Spender, the former Assistant Quarter Master General of the UVF, who proceeded to talk loudly but lucidly about philosophy and in particular about the writings of Immanuel Kant.

However such high-flown musings would soon become less frequent. The War Office had plans to ship The Ulster Division across the Irish Sea to England for the final part of their training, before they were sent to the front-line in France. As a key part of the 'farewell' process, the division was to parade in full military ceremony through the streets of central Belfast on the 8th of May, 1915.

On the previous morning, Stewart-Moore and his men set out from Ballykinler by road and reached Ballynahinch by late afternoon, having halted on the way for sandwiches and water from their water-bottles. At Ballynahinch, StewartMoore slept on his camp-bed in a room above a shop. On the next morning, the men made an early start and reached Belfast before midday.

By mid-afternoon, the soldiers of the 107th Brigade, most of whom had just spent the last eight months at Ballykinler, had marched past the city hall as part of the great divisional display which would be a poignant prelude to the mens' final departure for the European battlefield. By early July, almost four thousand young volunteer soldiers had left the 'tin huts' and the sand-dunes of Ballykinler forever.

Postcard showing the Sandes Soldiers' Home, Ballykinlar Camp (DCM 05/62/4

A year later, on the banks of the River Ancre, on the opening day of the Somme campaign, several hundred of these Ballykinler-trained men of the Belfast brigade of the Ulster Division perished under a withering hail of German machine-gun fire or found themselves stranded under shell-fire in No Mans' Land within a bloody battle-zone that could not have been more different from the quiet, windswept coastal isolation of Ballykinler camp. Fortunately, both Tommy Ervine and John Leslie Stewart-Moore would survive the battle. However Tommy would receive an injury that meant he would never fight in the trenches again, whilst Stewart-Moore would eventually receive a wound in a later battle, which would necessitate the
amputation of an arm.

The Ballykinler army base would continue to function as an important training camp throughout The Great War. Now, almost a century later and
having played many subsequent roles (including that of internment camp for IRA prisoners, in the 1920s), the camp boasts few remaining relics of its heyday of Ulster Division 'glory'. The 'tin huts' have largely been demolished to make way for new 'build' and Miss Sandes' Soldiers' Home of 1901 vintage, was burnt to the ground in a fatal Provisional IRA bomb attack on the army barracks in the 1970s. The tracks of a few of the old 'dummy-trenches' can still be seen in the sand-dunes. But, for the most part, it is up to the imagination of the visitor to Ballykinler, Tyrella and Dundrum Bay to recreate the winter of 1914/1915, when several thousand young volunteer soldiers gathered here, within earshot of the sea and with a spectacular view of the mountains. It is perhaps as well that they were unaware of the terrible fate that awaited them at The Battle of the Somme.

Philip Orr teaches English and Drama at Down High School, Downpatrick.

(The material in this article is taken from the author's book The Road to the Somme, first published by Blackstaff Books in 1987).