Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host

James Rogers and you're catching me as I'm walking through downtown New Haven in the

US on my way to the archives to do some research for my new book. But in today's episode, one day before the

105th anniversary of the Somme, we're examining the battle from the perspective of Irish

soldiers on the front lines in France.

To take us through this little known hidden aspect of history,

we have the brilliant Heather Jones.

Enjoy. Heather, it's great to have you back on history here. It's a huge week in, well, it's a huge week in world history.

Got a lot to talk about today, but let's try and focus on the song, the big historical anniversary of the week.

The Irish, it's often described as an Anglo-French battle, the Irish played a huge role at the

Somme, didn't they?

They did indeed. They were involved in the opening day very significantly,

particularly the 36th Ulster division, but also Irish units in mainstream British

British regiments. There were also large numbers of Irish

involved in the 16th Irish divisions battles in September as part of the Somme battle.

Let's talk initially about the pure military side and move on to the political and the significance.

On the first, and the Ulster division on the Somme on the 1st of July really is one of the most

famous moments of that terrible battle.

Just briefly, what did they do, how do they perform during the battle,

during that first day?

Well, the 36th Ulster Division units were very unusual because they actually achieved

their objectives on the first day of the Battle of the Somme,

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