Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
We’ve marching orders for the Western Front
Orangemen tribute to war dead will help cancer charity
ORANGEMEN plan to walk the Western Front to remember the fallen of the Great War and raise money for charity.
Members of the No Surrender LOL 20 in Banbridge, Co Down, will trek 130km from the Thiepval Memorial in France to the Menin Gate in Belgium.
Next May’s walk will also raise cash for the children’s cancer unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital and Cure4cam which is helping the family of 12-year-old Cameron Truesdale travel to Mexico to receive treatment for a brain tumour
Lodge secretary Stuart Magill said: “Members will be passing dozens if not hundreds of memorials and cemeteries.
“Some of these will have the names of men associated with our lodge and Banbridge District. At all of these stops we plan to lay wreaths.”
A total of 41 members of LOL 20 fought in WWI and four were killed. At least 39 men from Banbridge District died.
Mr Magill said the route would take the group past sites including Vimy Ridge and the largest German graveyard in France.
He said brethren will pay their respects at the graves of two Catholic soldiers, Major Willie Redmond and Rifleman Anthony O’neill, who at 15 was the youngest member of the 36th Ulster Division to die.
Mr Magill will lay a wreath in memory of his great-great uncle William Close, 103 years after his death at the front
Deputy Grand Master Harold Henning: “We wish them well in their symbolic walk.”