The Tenth (Irish) Division in Gallipoli

by Bryan Cooper

Having regard to this sentiment it was with great regret that officers and men found that the Division was not destined to take the field as a whole. The first shock was the loss of the artillery, and the realisation that we should be compelled to rely on the support of strange gunners when we took the field. Next came the fact that the 29th Brigade was detached and sent to Anzac, where in turn it met with yet further sub-division, its battalions going into action as isolated units.

Finally, the mischance that sent the 5th Inniskillings, the two battalions of Munster Fusiliers, and the Pioneer battalion into action on the Kiretch Tepe, while the remainder of the 30th and 31st Brigades were fighting under General Hill at the other end of the Suvla area, destroyed the last chance that the Division as a whole might place some distinct achievement to its credit.

Of the dash and eagerness of the men there was no doubt. All they needed was to be told what they were to do, and they would carry it out whatever the cost. They showed, too, on the 16th August, that in addition to eagerness in the charge, a quality never lacking in Irish soldiers, they possessed the rarer and finer military quality of dogged tenacity. Whoever may be blamed for the small success achieved in Gallipoli, no discredit rests on the rank and file of the 10th Division.

The circumstances attending the formation of absolutely new units had brought officers and men into a somewhat unusual relationship. In the old Regular Army, except for a few N.C.O.’s and old soldiers who have wives and families in married quarters, and an occasional indiscreet youth who marries off the strength, the family life of the soldier never comes under the officers’ notice at all. In the New Army things were very different. The rapid expansion of our military forces that took place in August and September, 1914, had placed a tremendous strain on the resources of Paymasters and Record Officers. The confusion and delay inevitably caused by this often meant considerable hardship to the soldier’s family, and he had no one to turn to for help but his officer.

First came the question of men whose employers were prepared to increase their pay to the level of their previous wages provided they could prove that they had enlisted. As a rule, the official papers were long in coming, and in consequence company commanders made out certificates that the men were serving, which, though unofficial, proved effective. Next came the question of allowance; separation allowance and allowance to dependants, which involved an enormous amount of work and entailed a close acquaintanceship with the details of each man’s family history. Finally came the work of stamping and keeping up-to-date the National Insurance cards, which formed the last remaining bond that linked the soldier to his civilian life.

Meanwhile, officer and man had been gaining insight into each other’s character. The Company Commander had watched his men change from a mob in civilian clothes to a disciplined body in khaki. He had been busy picking out the intelligent, encouraging the backward, stimulating the lazy, and checking the first steps of a few towards drunkenness and vice. In all this he had had the invaluable assistance of his company sergeant-major, and an intimacy had grown up between them of no ordinary kind. When it was severed, as it too often was, on the field of battle, the survivor felt that he had been maimed and deprived of an invaluable support.

On a smaller scale a similar relationship arose between the subaltern and his platoon-sergeant, while among the specialists, signallers and machine-gunners, the bond between officer and men was even closer as became those who shared a common mystery. The whole unit had grown up together; the men in the ranks had watched the subaltern who had joined ignorant of the rudiments of drill acquire knowledge and self-confidence, and in the process had learned to trust him themselves. The officers had seen with pleasure a boy selected for a lance-corporal’s stripe because he showed signs of intelligence, gradually gaining experience and the power to command men, until sometimes he graduated into an excellent sergeant. There were many common memories; wet days on the Curragh, long treks in the Hampshire dust, scuffles in the hedgerows during a field-day, bivouacs in a twilight meadow, all combined to cement the feeling of friendship between officer and men. Sometimes these memories went back to a period before the War. Nearly all the officers were Irish, and most of them were serving in their Territorial units, with the result that they often found privates who were their near neighbours and knew the woods, and the bogs, and the wet winding roads of home. All this was good; it gave the Division a character that it could not otherwise have obtained, but it had its black side when men began to fall. It was not merely Number So-and-so Private Kelly who was killed, it was little Kelly, who had cooked (very badly) for the mess at Basingstoke, or Kelly who had begged so eagerly not to be left behind with the first reinforcements, or Kelly, the only son of a widowed mother, who lived on the Churchtown Road, three miles from home.

To the staff and the High Command, men must necessarily be no more than cyphers on a casualty list, but to the regimental officer it is very much otherwise, and every man who falls causes a fresh pang to his commander’s heart. Few things are more distressing to an officer than to hear the roll of his unit called after an engagement, to look in vain among the thinned ranks for many familiar faces, to hear no answer given to name after name of the men with whom his life has been bound up for months. This and not any extreme of physical suffering is the hardest ordeal that a soldier has to face.

Nor was this loss of friends and comrades the only cause of sorrow. The same feelings have been felt in every unit of the New Army after a strenuous engagement, but the 10th Division had a special reason for regret since the 10th Division was a thing unique in itself. Ireland is a land of long and bitter memories, and those memories make it extremely difficult for Irishmen to unite for any common purpose. Many have believed it impossible, and would have prophesied that the attempt to create an Irish Division composed of men of every class, creed and political opinion would be foredoomed to failure. And yet it succeeded. The old quarrels, the inherited animosities were forgotten, and men who would have scowled at one another without speaking became comrades and friends. Only those who know Ireland can realise how difficult this was.

The Division was not composed of professional soldiers; many of the officers and men had played, or, at least, had relatives who had played, an active part in the agrarian and political struggles that have raged in Ireland for the last forty years. Yet all this went for nothing; the bond of common service and common sacrifice proved so strong and enduring that Catholic and Protestant, Unionist and Nationalist, lived and fought and died side by side like brothers. Little was spoken concerning the points on which we differed, and once we had tacitly agreed to let the past be buried we found thousands of points on which we agreed. To an Englishman this no doubt appears natural, for beneath all superficial disagreements the English do possess a nature in common and look on things from the same point of view, but in Ireland up to the present things have been very different. It is only to be hoped that the willingness to forget old wrongs and injustices, and to combine for a common purpose, that existed in the 10th Division, may be a good augury for the future.