The Irish at Gallipoli
A few months ago the leading Irish TV journalist, David Davin-Power, sent me a photograph he had taken at a military cemetery in the Dardanelles. He had been there filming for a documentary on the Irish involvement at Gallipoli, which is now available on the RTE Player and is well worth watching.
The photo sent to me was of the headstone of an Irish soldier who lost his life during the Gallipoli campaign whose 100th anniversary will be marked this weekend. The inscription stopped me in my tracks because it bore the details of a namesake of mine, Private Daniel Mulhall, who was killed at Cape Helles on the second day of the Gallipoli campaign. I am not aware of any family link with that tragic young man, but his name serves to bring his wartime fate home to me. Kilkenny-born, he was 24 years old when he died. He was a member of the 1st Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers and had probably been in India when the war broke out as his regiment had been stationed in Madras during 1914.
Gallipoli was a very significant chapter in Irish military history, which it is estimated cost the lives of more than 3,000 Irishmen. Only at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 were there graver Irish losses. Gallipoli does not have the iconic status in Ireland that it has in Australia and New Zealand (and in Turkey) where it is seen as having helped forge their national identities.
The Gallipoli campaign, which lasted from April to December 1915, was part of what turned out to be a failed strategy aimed at breaking the stalemate on the Western Front. The idea was to mount an assault on the Ottoman Capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul), with a view to forcing the Turks to abandon their alliance with Germany thus paving the way for a second front on the Central Powers’ southern flank. This required that the Turkish defences on the Dardanelles' Peninsula be breached.
On the 25th of April, troops from the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the Munster Fusiliers were transported on a vessel named the River Clyde and landed at 'V Beach', Cape Hellas. They came under heavy fire from the defending Turkish forces and suffered appalling losses. It is reported that, of the 1,000 officers and men who disembarked, only 375 made it to the shore. The rest were killed or wounded. The Munster Fusiliers suffered a similar fate.
The 10th Irish Division also participated in the landings at Suvla Bay in another part of the Gallipoli peninsula where in two months the Division lost almost half of its 17,000 men through death, injury or sickness. Gallipoli was a military disaster, with 140,000 Allied and 250,000 Turkish casualties sustained for no strategic gain. Constantinople was not captured and Turkey remained allied to Germany & Austria-Hungary until just before the end of the war.
One well-known Irishman who fought at Gallipoli was the poet Francis Ledwidge. He was born in County Meath and developed strongly nationalist views. In October 1914, he joined the Inniskilling Fusiliers and found himself in Gallipoli as part of the 10th Irish Division. He subsequently fought in Serbia and was killed at the 3rd Battle of Ypres in July 1917. Ledwidge is best known in Ireland for his poems in memory of the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916. In one of his poems, he reflected on his experiences in Gallipoli.
‘The Irish in Gallipoli’
Where Aegean cliffs with bristling menace front
The threatening splendour of that isley sea
Lighted by Troy’s last shadow, where the first
Hero kept watch and the last Mystery
Shook with dark thunder. Hark! The battle brunt!
A nation speaks, old Silences are burst.
Neither for lust of glory nor new throne
This thunder and this lightning of our wrath
Waken these frantic echoes, not for these
Our cross with England’s mingle, to be blown
On Mammon’s threshold; we but war when war
Serves Liberty and Justice, Love and Peace.
Who said that such an emprise could be vain?
Were they not one with Christ Who strove and died?
Let Ireland weep but not for sorrow. Weep
That by her sons a land is sanctified
For Christ Arisen, and angels once again
Come back like exile birds to guard their sleep.
Seamus Heaney referred to Ledwidge as ‘our dead enigma’, but he must have been like many other young Irishmen of nationalist views who volunteered to fight in the First World War. This weekend, President Higgins will be in Turkey to mark the centenary of Galllipoli and the Irish involvement there. In London, I will be laying wreaths on behalf of the Irish Government on Saturday at St. Paul's and the Cenotaph in memory of the many thousands of Irishmen who fought, endured incredibly harsh living conditions and died on the shores of the Dardanelles. Inevitably, I will call to mind the life and death of Private Daniel Mulhall of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who died on 26 April 1915.
Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London