Red letter day

Fortune favours the brave 

we are told but often 

the brave don't

live to grow old. 

So it was at Thiepval

in the green fields of France

when the Ulster Division

was invited to dance. 

In this one day of war

100 years ago 

five thousand five hundred 

Ulster men were led 

at walking pace to join 

the legions of the dead. 

I remember well singing

the sad song's refrain

about how the flower

of Ulster youth

all died in vain. 

In four months of summer

in 1916 a million men bled

turning Flanders' fields

a muddy colour of red. 

Of course there were English,

Welsh, Scots and Germans

adding their stain and

all of their families felt

the same pain.

To this day in Ulster's

hamlets and neighbourhoods

you will still hear them shout

the names of Thiepval Wood

and Schwaben Redoubt. 

Lions led by donkeys

is the legend we hear

and it's true the generals

were all at the rear.  

It was a long way from home

where the Ulster Division

died at the Somme,

but the memory lives on

as that God-forsaken place

where the letters came from.