Gallipoli, 1915
One of the most popular songs to emerge after the 1916 Easter Rising was ‘The Foggy Dew’, an old melody with new rebel lyrics penned in 1919. The song pits the gallant efforts of the martyred Irish rebels fighting for freedom in Dublin city in April 1916 against the disastrous events of the British military campaign against the Turks in the Dardanelles, concluding ‘’Twas better to die ’neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud el Bar.’ Still popular today, the song embodies the continuing tensions between the memory of the Easter Rising and the memory of the First World War. Geographically, Suvla Bay and Sud el Bar are in the Aegean, indeed a long way from Tipperary. Suvla Bay is on the western side of the Cape Helles peninsula; it was the site of V Beach, a landing zone for two Irish battalions. ‘Sud el Bar’ is a corruption of Sedd el Bahr, a village south of Suvla Bay, at the approach to the Narrows, along the Dardanelles Straits.
FIGURE 1.5
Construction work in progress on a beach in Suvla Bay (1915), photographed by Ernest Brooks. ©Imperial War Museum Q13552.
When naval bombardment of forts at the Dardanelles began on 19 February 1915, the 10th (Irish) Division was still spread across Ireland in training camps at Fermoy, the Curragh, and Dublin. They were sent to England in April. The official orders for the 10th to depart for the Dardanelles arrived on 1 July 1915, while they were stationed in Basingstoke, Hampshire. On 5 August, the division was divided in order to assist other divisions; the 29th sent to Anzac Cove and the 30th and 31st were sent to support the 11th Division at Suvla.50 Limited to one pint of water per day on a rocky peninsula surrounded by salt water in the middle of summer, the soldiers were desperately thirsty. Although the objectives of seizing Chocolate Hill and Green Hill were met on 7 August, the fighting continued for several weeks. While it may have established the Anzac legend, the Gallipoli campaign is remembered for its ‘disorganised chaos’.51 With no central or unified command, the plans of attack were delayed and often contradictory. ‘All semblance of command and control had disappeared. No one had any idea of what was happening, or indeed any apparent grasp of their objectives.’52 The men suffered from lack of water to drink or to tend to wounds with, an absence of shade, high temperatures, rocky terrain, spoiled food, and dysentery.53
Eventually, two devastating attacks were launched at the end of August, the advance on Scimitar Hill by the 29th Division and the Anzac attack on Hill 60. Peter Hart contends that neither attack was ‘likely to result in significant gains’54: ‘If there was ever a futile battle it was the assault at Suvla by IX Corps on 21 August.’55 Compounding the heat, lack of water, exhaustion, and disease, bombing and machine gun fire set the brush alight, burning the dead and wounded.56 Corporal Colin Millis recalls,
An awful death trap this was and it claimed many victims, the poor devils simply dropped in dozens and were speedily burnt with the flames – a sight that I shan’t forget.57
Unfortunately for the Irish, in the legends that would ensue of the peninsular campaign, they were portrayed as cowardly and disorganized.58 While it is not the place of this book to point out the inaccuracies of nationalistic war rhetoric, it is significant that the contributions of the 10th (Irish) Division were lost to the greater lines of this story after 1916. After continuing their service in Palestine and Salonika (where they may have come into contact with some of the Berkshires), what was left of this New Army division returned to a much-changed Ireland, one that would come to be ambivalent about their contributions and sacrifices. As one commentator put it, when the 7th marched out of Dublin, they marched out of history. By contrast, Australia and New Zealand commemorate the first day of fighting at Gallipoli annually on April 25. The Anzacs – Australian and New Zealand Army Corps – lost over 8,000 men during the eight-month period on the peninsula.59
From April to August, the war correspondent E. Ashmead-Bartlett worried that the public was completely unaware of the horrible conditions and high losses in the Dardanelles. With the help of Keith Murdoch (father of newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch), Ashmead-Bartlett was able to smuggle news of the fighting past the censors to the British Press.60 Historian Philip Orr recounts that, by September 1915, The Irish Times carried an eyewitness account of the battle and the Irish Independent was ‘filled every day with photographs of dead, wounded and missing officers, usually with a pen portrait that included information about their family, their peacetime career and – in guarded detail – the manner of their demise’.61 Some of these illustrated accounts may have influenced Harry Clarke’s choice of content for his borders. We can be certain that the reports influenced public opinion about the war. The last British troops left the Dardanelles in January 1916, marking the end of the failed campaign to open the Black Sea. In Ireland, January 1916 marked the beginning of a significant decline in enlistment.
Easter Rising 1916
In 1926, during the protracted and contested conflict over the location of the Irish National War Memorial Gardens, it was the Easter Rising of April 1916 that was invoked as the founding conflict for the Irish Free State, not the First World War. The Rising marks the point when those whom Padraig Pearse called the ‘risen people’ claimed the moment for independence.62
An estimated 11,000 members of the Irish Volunteers resisted enlisting in the British Army at the outbreak of war with Germany. Seeing a tactical opportunity while Britain’s armies were fighting in Europe and Asia, members of the Volunteers joined with the Irish Citizen’s Army to occupy locations around Dublin and proclaim the city as the centre of a Provisional Irish Government. On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, a force of revolutionary nationalists occupied prominent buildings in central Dublin, making its headquarters at the General Post Office (GPO) on Sackville (now O’Connell) Street. Padraig Pearse, schoolteacher and visionary, read aloud a proclamation announcing a Provisional Government, and called for ‘the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves’. Pearse’s younger brother William (Willie), an artist who trained at the Metropolitan School of Art, was also involved in the Rising, headquartered with his brother at the GPO. Working to supply the revolutionaries with guns and material support was Roger Casement, a champion of human rights, who sought aid from Germany to purchase guns and reinforcements.63
FIGURE 1.6
Abbey Street Corner (1916). Image Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland Ke 105.
During the week of occupation, central Dublin was heavily shelled by British forces recruited from training camps in Ireland and England. Houses and businesses closest to the quays were completely destroyed; Eden Quay, Henry Street, Lower Abbey Street, Middle Abbey Street, North Earl Street and Sackville Street were reduced to rubble. Fires from the city centre could be seen for miles. Communications from the city centre were poor and relatives waited and watched for news. Rumours abounded. Describing the evening of Friday, April 28, Kathleen Clarke, captures the way that lack of knowledge and fear mixed in the minds of combatants and non-combatants alike. Her husband Tom Clarke was in the GPO.
That night I watched, from the upper windows of the house, the smoke and flames of what seemed to be the whole city in flames. I watched all night; it seemed to me no-one could escape from that inferno. The picture of my husband and brother caught in it was vividly before me, and their helplessness against that raging fire appalled me. 64
Although he was not a participant in the revolutionary measures, Clarke and some among his circle were directly affected by the fighting. As Nicola Gordon Bowe relates, because the studios at 33 North Frederick Street were within the combat zone, ‘The military refused permission for the men to leave the building, so they were held there for four days, and work was at a standstill until 8 May.’65 Joshua Clarke related that he was anxious, not knowing ‘whether my house was blown down or my sons killed in Dublin’.66 Sheltering against bullets, shells, and fires, Clarke experienced