Ambassador's letter - "the only scheme of its kind"

I was please to see this letter from the Irish Ambassador in Brussels. It appeared in the Irish Times following my Irishman's Diary in the Irish Times about the three weeks I spent at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper (Ypres) Belgium in September 2023. Read it here. 

Thank you very much Mr Ambassador. I will write a blog post about my experience on the bursary scheme soon.

 

An Irishman's Diary on Ireland's Memorial Records and the Names List

I have just written an Irishman's Diary in today's Irish Times newspaper about the project I was working on for the last few weeks at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper (Ypres) Belgium. Read it here.

 

Bookcase at In Flanders Fields Museum which contains the eight volumes of Ireland's Memorial Records.

 

The In Flanders Fields Museum Bursary scheme is run by the In Flanders Fields Museum and is supported by the Irish Embassy in Brussels and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. The idea is to fill in the gaps in the information concerning Irishmen who fought in the British army during the First World War or for British-born men who fought in Irish regiments of the British army during the War. 

 

In the past, records of these men was not as good as they could have been - names could have been spelled incorrectly or important information such as date of birth, place of birth, next of kin, was missing. You can search the Names List (Namenlijst) which contains the name of over 550,000 people (military and civilian) here.

 

 

First page in Ireland's Memorial Records. There are illustrations like these by Harry Clarke around the border of every page.