In 1913 they organised themselves into the Ulster Volunteer Force to give armed resistance to the prospective Third Home Rule Act (enacted in 1914).

Many Ulster Protestants feared being governed by a Catholic-dominated parliament in Dublin and losing their local supremacy and strong links with Britain.

[1] At the outbreak of the Great War, Sir Edward Carson, one of the unionist leaders, made an appeal to Ulster Volunteers to come forward for military service.

According to military historian Martin Middlebrook: The leading battalions [of the Ulster Division] had been ordered out from the wood just before 7.30am and laid down near the German trenches [...] At zero hour the British barrage lifted.

This came at a heavy price, with the division suffering in two days of fighting 5,500 officers and enlisted men killed, wounded or missing.

[8] According to David Hume: "There was many who went over the top at the Somme who were Ulstermen, at least one, Sergeant Samuel Kelly of 9th Inniskillings wearing his Ulster Sash, while others wore orange ribbons".

It is the biggest British war memorial to the missing of the Western Front, both in physical size and in terms of the numbers it commemorates (more than 73,000).

The money was raised by public subscription in Northern Ireland in memory of the officers and men of the Ulster Division, and all Ulstermen who died in the great war.

It was at Helen's Tower that the men of the then newly formed Ulster Division drilled and trained on the outbreak of World War I.

[5] For many of the men of the division, the distinctive sight of Helen's Tower rising above the surrounding countryside was one of their last abiding memories of home before their departure for England and, subsequently, the Western Front.

At Thiepval in the battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916; at Wytschaete on 17 June 1917, in the storming of the Messines Ridge; on the Canal du Nord, in the attack on the Hindenburg Line of 20 November the same year; on 21 March 1918, near Fontaine-les-Clercs, defending their positions long after they were isolated and surrounded by the enemy; and later in the month at Andechy in the days of "backs to the wall", they acquired a reputation for conduct and devotion deathless in military history of the United Kingdom, and repeatedly signalised in the despatches of the Commander-in-Chief.

[17]John Buchan North of Thiepval the Ulster Division broke through the enemy trenches, passed the crest of the ridge, and reached the point called The Crucifix, in rear of the first German position.