A new exhibition – Dublin Remembers: Stories from the Somme – will open to the public in Dublin City Library and Archive tomorrow, Saturday 22 October.
The Battle of the Somme was a key Allied offensive during World War I. It began on 1 July 1916; when it ended 141 days later more than one million men, including some 3,500 Irish-born soldiers, had been killed or injured. The exhibition focuses on those serving with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Some were killed, others injured, and even those who survived unscathed returned to an Ireland which was radically different following the Easter Rising in April 1916.
Officially launched today by Brendan Carr, Lord Mayor of Dublin, the exhibition includes photographs, medals, uniforms, documents and other original artefacts from that period. Audio recordings from selected letters and diaries detail first-hand accounts of life in the trenches of the Somme, while interview footage, courtesy of RTE Archives, provides further eye-witness accounts of the horrors and tragedy of this bloody conflict.
This thought-provoking exhibition also considers public reaction to the Battle of the Somme, and how the battle has been commemorated in Ireland over the past 100 years.
The exhibition will run until Friday 23 December (Mon-Thurs 10am-8pm; Fri-Sat 10am-5pm) and is free. Group tours, led by expert members of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association, can be booked here.
