Until recently the military record of Belfast nationalists in World War One was a part of this City’s hidden history.

The revised edition of this book seeks to assist the renewed and growing interest in this important part of nationalist history that lay for decades in the shaded margins of contemporary historical events.

New political circumstances in our society have made it easier to address the questions of why so many young nationalist men of that time enlisted in regiments of the British Army in 1914–1915, hundreds of them in the 6th Battalion of the Connaught Rangers alone.

Through researching factual historical accounts of the period, and recalling the human stories of some those who enlisted, a clearer picture of the influences, political and social, that impacted and motivated people of that time is documented.