Private McClintock

Private McClintock

William McClintock was a young Derryman who enlisted in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers shortly after the start of the First World War. Private McClintock was sent with 11 battalion to northern France where he was to die in the trenches in the carnage of the first day of the battle of the Somme

Months later, the army returned to his family a box containing his personal effects- his identity tags, letters from home- and a man’s ring, which none of his family recognised.

William McClintock’s name was inscribed on the cenotaph in the Diamond. His story remained largely untold outside his family circle until the creation of the peace park at Thiepval to commemorate the young Irish men from both traditions who died in the Great War.

A nephew and his wife decided to join a group facilitated by the International School for Peace Studies whose itinerary included a visit to the Belgian town where William McClintock lies buried in Mill Road cemetery, in grave, one b, 22. They found it immediately, distinguishable from thousands of others not only by the name- but by two fresh red roses placed there, a vivid flash of colour among the rows of uniform white.

Why, they asked, had his grave been singled out for this tribute? On certain dates every year, they were told, two elderly gentlemen came to place the identical red blooms on the grave, and say a prayer. They looked very alike, these gentlemen; they were certainly brothers, possibly even twins. But they were old now. It was becoming more difficult. Yet they had left instructions that after their death the roses were to be placed there, on the same dates, in perpetuity. And, no, these gentlemen were not Irish, they were French. From Paris.
 
Back home, a member of the next generation acted on his hunch. He rang the only McClintocks listed in the Paris phone directory. And found the story of his great great uncles last days.

Billetted in a French village, William McClintock had fallen in love with a local girl. The romance thrived and he sought, but was refused, the army’s permission to be married. With the advance to the front came the belief that there was a baby on the way. A sympathetic local priest married the couple, secretly, at night. Hours later William marched to his death at the Somme. On the first of July 1916. His twin sons were born the following spring.

As adults, they kept faith with their mother’s pledge and made the regular pilgrimage to Thiepval to place two red roses on the grave of the father they had never known.

As a symbol that love can and does triumph over the futility of war-and that families will one day be reunited.