Visitors to Belfast may be struck by the recurrence of the year 1916 in partisan graffiti. On Inishcarn Drive in Rathcoole, a mural depicts a graphic scene of trench warfare, under text that partly reads “The charge of the 36th Ulster Division at Thiepval 1st July 1916.” The engagement at Thiepval was part of the Battle of the Somme, where Ulster divisions suffered some of the heaviest losses in the history of human warfare. Elsewhere, a mural on Beechmount Avenue off Falls Road shows a gunman of the Easter Rising, under the banner “Eiri amach na casca 1916” (Easter Rising 1916). For Catholics, April 1916 marks the symbolic origin of the Irish Republic, when the Easter rebels attempted a military coup in Dublin. These two events, mere months apart, form the basis of modern partisan myths. For loyalists, 1916 signified fighting for the British Empire; for republicans that date meant asserting Ireland’s independence. As one might expect, however, graffiti is rarely a vehicle for depicting a crucial, and enormously complicating aspect of Ireland’s involvement in World War I: the historical fact that a large number of Irish nationalists and Catholics from all parts of the island served and fought in the British army. In fact, both the loyalist and republican communities have chosen to forget this chapter of history, loyalists as a means of protecting their identity as the lone Irish defenders of the British Empire, and republicans to maintain their image as the anti-imperial force of resistance. Until very recently, literature and cultural criticism contributed to this historical amnesia. Fortunately, recent efforts to uncover the previously ignored role played by Irish Catholics in the war, by such historians as Myles Dungan, Keith Jeffery, George Boyce, and Terence Denman now provide essential historical backgrounds to understanding modern drama that portrays the Irish experience of the war. Sebastian Barry’s 2005 novel A Long Long Way is the most robust reinstatement of Irish involvement in World War I to date; but another