The Black Hills

by Ian Sherry of Rostrevor, Northern Ireland

Remote is relative; but Jemmie McAlinden’s abode was remote. Four miles up the valley and a further mile along a loanin at the foot of Slieve Roosley, a mountain of black heather and cropping rock. Jemmie was known as ‘Haybag,’ I gather to distinguish him from his namesake widely known as ‘Jemmie Stout.’ Haybag was a cobbler and it fascinated me then and it fascinates me still how he ever came by the trade. Not to mention the name. ‘Haybag’. A lifetime ago I took boots to be mended by him. He was an eccentric on the fringe of our community, marked out by his failing to go to Mass. Not even a ‘gee up’ by a visiting missionary brought him back. It all seems incredulous today when church attendances in Ireland have virtually collapsed, but it was truly revolutionary then.

He had, when I knew him, downsized to one room. A bed, a table, a big dresser with all his accoutrements piled on it and a fireplace constructed of two granite pillars with a six foot granite lintel on top. As a child, two things caught my eye; he had a shotgun — something we didn’t have; and more remarkably a huge pile of old boots in the corner. Perhaps for my amusement he’d toss one or two on the fire. On reflection it was such a pile of old boots that it had to be more than locally sourced. Could it have been a cart load of army surplus from when the soldiers left?

Thousands of young Americans billeted in the area during the Second World War. Two camps; one in the village in what had been the home of Major General Robert Ross, the other in nissen huts in Ballyedmond estate two mile out the road. And on the hill above Jemmie’s there was a communications station consisting of tin huts and a mast.

Up here in ‘The Black Hills’ of Loughinmore, Roosley and Gruggandubh — where two hundred years ago — five or six generations back, my ancestors left to go to America. To yearn for home in The Black Hills of Dakota. Here too, young Americans must have felt those self same emotions as they were directed in manoeuvres in these Black Hills; and marched in training along The Roosley Road. But my ancestor’s thoughts of home were tempered with the euphoria and adventure of a new land; whereas American soldiers didn’t have the same latitude. They were restricted and disciplined with military training and were surely apprehensive about going to war. Not that it showed. Their persona; cavalier and care free. They left an ingrained legacy.

A score or more third generation American passport holders in the village and their initials and dates carved in the bark of native trees — works of art marking location and time. Local lore has it that they thrashed General Ross’s Castle, then still in the ownership of the Ross family. Ross being considered one of the great British heroes of the war between the new United States and Britain. (I gather he was not held in the same stead in America.) His victory at Bladensberg in 1814 allowing the Red Coats to march into Washington, where subsequently the American forces whitewashed the charred remains of their headquarters, giving the residence of the United States President (The White House) its name.

A spectacular monument erected to his memory stands on the outskirts of Rostrevor. An edifice I was so used to that only recently did I climb the flights of steps and read the citations at its base. “The Officers of a grateful army, which under the command of the lamented Major General Ross, attacked and dispersed the American forces… His well-earned fame is also recorded by the monument erected at his grave in Halifax Nova Scotia.”

The American soldiers left a lot of good will. Their chewing gum and sweets gifted to children fondly recalled by those half a generation above me. Spirited to war with no opportunity to settle accounts, poignant stories of their decency still peppered conversation in my young day. Money arriving from America to make good small individual debts accrued. Were young men in that awful war daydreaming of a better time — may be even reflecting on halcyon days in Rostrevor — the music, the dance, the song. And its ‘Black Hills.’ And writing home to their parents and asking them to repay a couple of pounds.

And on a lighter note, a very old joke told to me by one of their friends. “If there were seven people standing under an umbrella, how many got wet? None; it wasn’t raining!”