St Patrick's Day shamrocks 1915

"The last page of a scrap book of my Great, Great Grandmother's. Her son, Bryan Cooper, my Great Grandfather, was an officer in the Connacht Rangers during WW1. He was also an MP, later a TD, lover of literature and sometime writer. Here he is heading off to war, on the platform at Collooney station in Co Sligo, alongside is pasted a poem he wrote and a scrap of shamrock from St Patrick's Day 1915. To me it symbolises a very specific brand of Anglo-Irish patriotism that soon after faded from consciousness. I also feel a sense of the women left at home, making newspaper cuttings and holding their breath, as their menfolk fought in Europe and beyond. "