The Ulster volunteers began by organizing against the British during the Home Rule Crisis and finished by fighting and dying as British soldiers at the Somme. Their tragic story has since become a core theme in Ulster Protestant tradition and mythology. For this radically new and unsentimental account, Orr interviewed veterans of the Somme. Their eloquent voices, and those of friends and families, expose the reality of that bloody summer of 1916 and its devastating impact on a tight-knit community.