Book to remember the fallen of World War One

Titled ‘Not Forgotten: Lurgan and The Great War’ the book remembers all of the town’s war dead, including 181 names not included on the town’s main war memorial or those in the surrounding villages.

There are 420 names commemorated on the memorials from total losses of 601 for Lurgan and the surrounding area.

The book by Lurgan man Clive Higginson and Portadown’s Richard Edgar came about as the result of a challenge to Clive, who has had an interest in war history for the last 15 years, to have the book ready for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme (it started on July 1, 1916).

The book’s aim ‘to ensure those not named on the war memorials are permanently written into Lurgan’s story’.

That story includes Lurgan woman Rosa McGibbon, who served as a nurse with the 10th Irish in the Middle East. She died in 1919 as the result of illness.

Indeed, of the 601 losses, 36 died of illness.

Other statistics show that the town had the highest percentage recruitment per head of population for any town in the British empire at the time - with 60 per cent signing up.

On the first day of the Somme campaign 79 Lurgan men lost their lives

The book will be launched next Saturday (June 25) at 3pm in Brownlow House, all welcome.