It was on this Ridge that President Mary McAleese, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth and King Albert, opened and dedicated a new Peace Park in 1998. At the centre of the park stands a 120-foot Round Tower, modelled on the ancient "Round Towers" of Ireland. Around the edge are the names of the fifteen Irish Regiments who captured and held the Ridge, among them the "Connaught Rangers", a noted regiment, recruited mainly among the small farming families in the West of Ireland.

From their very ancient Gaelic folklore did the Rangers remember Emer’s farewell to her hero Cuchullan; as he left to defend the Ford?:

The Tower now stands sentinel over the battlefields and is visible for miles. It dominates the German "pill-boxes", massive re-enforced concrete fortifications of 1914-18, low-lying and impregnable even to the heaviest shell-fire. These are found everywhere; now used as chicken-coops or shelters for sheep and goats, but they may well outlast all the other ‘monuments’; and they are the only German "memorials" on the entire Western Front.

One thinks of the inscription on the monument erected by the Greeks in memory of Leonidas (Cuchullan’s contemporary) and his lost soldiers:

The ancient Romans had a slogan: "Vae Victis" - Woe to the conquered. It seems that the German dead of 1914-18, un-named and un-numbered, were thrown into the trenches and shell-holes or piled into mass graves. At Langemarck, just north of Ypres, there is one such grave where, under giant concrete slabs bigger than a tennis-court, 36,000 German soldiers lie buried.

We paused awhile at the Frezenberg cross-roads, at the spot where Fr Wm Doyle SJ, Military Chaplain, was killed on 16th August 1917. His remains were buried nearby, but the grave has never been found.

The next town was Menin. Here we were surprised to discover that, despite their successful blitzkrieg tactics with tanks and dive-bombers, the Germans still relied on horse-power for the bulk of their supplies. Long lines of four-wheeled covered wagons, horse-drawn; two heavy horses to each wagon. Also field-artillery and even anti-aircraft guns drawn by horses. All advancing into France where of course the war still raged.

Our route took us to Tongré-Notre-Dame where there is a statue of Our Lady and a shrine dated to 1031; a place of pilgrimage and many cures.

On Thursday 6th June we arrived back at Brugelette, just as the magic of a Belgian summer twilight began to unfold; thankful for all we had been spared.

We had been twenty-two days on the road. We had walked over three hundred miles, carrying our packs all the time, from Brugelette in the south of Belgium to Calais in the north of France, and back; contented with all that had happened to us.

In all that time we had not slept in a bed nor eaten a meal at a table. We passed the nights in barns and sheds and picked up what food we could at farmhouses and from soldiers - allied and enemy - we were never refused.

Our feet, especially, were in a bad state; but the prayers of our families and the Hand of the Lord never failed us - and brought us safely through.

On 23rd June 1940, as we left the Chapel after Sunday Mass, we heard that an Armistice had been signed at Compiegal. This was indeed grievous news. One thought of how the peoples of Europe must have felt, in that dreadful August AD 410 when the Barbarian Holocaust burst upon the Roman World; and the August Capital of the Empire was herself besieged. St Jerome, living in Bethlehem and translating the Scriptures, cried out in horror: "The Barbarians have breached the Aurelian Walls!"

Paris may not have been an August Capital but, for many people it was an august cradle, the cradle of modern Democracy, of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!" Now sliding into the abyss!

Starting from a wholly Christian viewpoint, he arrived at the only legitimate historical conception. In life’s continuous stream it was quite certain that the Fall of France was not a halt in time nor even a symbolic milestone.

He strove to help others out of the spontaneous redundancy of his own spiritual life. Whatever he said in his Conferences passed first through his own mind and heart and therein gained something deeper and more soul-stirring than any natural fluency or learning could impart.

His Conference did indeed give us all renewed courage and confidence, and was given with his usual kindly humour and quick intuitive sympathy. In that disquieting atmosphere he seemed relaxed: "We must not attribute to self the merit of what has been well and successfully done, and we must not be upset or cast down by what has failed. That outlook should not be difficult to maintain, since God accomplishes all things and we are but His instruments, tools in His hand. To live up to this ideal a vigorous interior life in union with Christ is necessary".

But this seeming indifference is in reality a readiness to accept from the hand of God everything divinely destined for our sanctification and salvation. He was very traditional. Indeed his novices sometimes said of him, rather disparagingly that "he never read a new book and never thought a new thought"!

But, like Macaulay’s Puritan, if he was unacquainted with the works of Philosophers and Poets, he was deeply read in the oracles of God. Perhaps he esteemed himself rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language; set apart by the right of an earlier inspiration; and commissioned by the imposition of a mightier hand.

He nourished an exemplary devotion to Leo Dehon (Le Tres Bon Pere) and to his spiritual exhortations:

"Try to keep the Sacred Heart company in your own heart, a union which will bring you many graces, and make His presence much more real".

"How we pray is a far more vital problem than how much we pray; intensity is preferable to extension".

Such was his philosophy and his faith. The central theme running through all his Conferences was: "Living in Christ" and this sometimes took the form of a soliloquy as in St Paul:

"I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in this body I live in faith, faith in the Son of God, who loved me and who sacrificed himself for my sake. I cannot bring myself to give up God’s gift" (Galatians II 20-22).

The Continentals did not take this statement seriously. It would make a fine page in history. But there were other tales of this kind. Athens had been conquered by Sparta. The Carthaginians made a forlorn resistance to Rome. Not seldom in the annals of the past had brave, proud states been wiped out.

We were asked repeatedly: "How is England going to win?" and no-one was ever able to answer with much precision - only with blind faith; but this faith never failed!

It seemed justified in early July when an incident occurred which rocked all Europe.

A powerful squadron of the Royal Navy opened fire on warships of the French Fleet anchored at several ports on the North African coast; especially at Oran and Dakar. The Fleet was destroyed and 1,300 French sailors lost their lives. The British had no losses. The effect of this episode on Anglo-French relations was deplorable.

Even so, as intended, it was evidence to America, to the Continent, and indeed to Britain, that the Churchill government was imbued with a resolution quite foreign to its fumbling predecessor. But it did not increase our popularity; because its effect in the Novitiate was also deplorable. The great majority of the forty Novices were indeed pro-British; but they were also pro-French; we too never ceased to feel a unity with France, but we were harangued angrily. Our explanation that the attack was designed to prevent the French warships falling into German hands was not well received.

It generated a lot of partisanship and ill-feeling. So much so that at his next Conference, the Novice Master opened with the words: "Mes chers freres, il faut prier avec des larmes pour vous tous!"

Throughout the month of August rumours were rife of a German invasion of England. Large numbers of powerful long-range batteries all along the French Channel coast came into existence. But the autumn shadows lengthened and no such invasion was attempted. Hitler secretly nursed the hope that England would sue for peace. Indeed the invasion rumours were mocked at: "If the Royal Navy could immobilise a French Squadron in twenty minutes, it would soon make short shrift of the decidedly inferior German Fleet!" The measures it had taken had certainly removed the French Navy from major German calculations.

The news that Hitler, like Napoleon before him, had invaded Russia certainly made the world hold its breath; but it came as a tonic to his other enemies. Churchill lost no time in declaring Britain’s full support for Russia.

Not so the Novices at Brugelette! Once again there was deep division. All were agreed that the Nazi Regime was indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. That it was devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. Both systems excelled in all forms of human wickedness in the efficiency of their cruelty and ferocious aggression. The ideal solution therefore would be for the two systems to destroy each other. The answer however was not so simple.

Feeling naturally ran high among the five different nationalities which formed the Community. There was support for Germany but also for Russia. On that first day a goodly number hummed "Deutschland uber Alles"; but the majority sang the "Marseillaise" (formez vos bataillons!).

Animated discussions concerning the merits of the various Religious Orders in general, and the Society of the Sacred Heart Fathers in particular, were frequent in the Novitiate. These discussions were encouraged.

In September, preceded by a retreat of eight days, the Novices took the three vows of Religion. They thus became full members of the Society. Always a day of great rejoicing in the Novitiate. A new order of life.

Six years of hard study were now about to begin, in another location, the historic city of Louvain, seat of the great Catholic University, founded AD 1425; and renowned all over the world.