The Irish at the Front

by Michael MacDonagh

CHAPTER VI

THE 10TH IRISH DIVISION IN GALLIPOLI[ToC]

LANDING AT SUVLA BAY, AND CAPTURE OF CHOCOLATE HILL

At the dawn of Saturday morning, August 7th, 1915, the Ægean Sea and the Gulf of Saros, to the north-west of Gallipoli, were swarming with the most variegated collection of shipping, of all sorts and conditions—transports, cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, trawlers, barges, ocean liners, steam pinnaces, rowing boats, and tramp steamers. A fresh landing, at Suvla Bay, had been in progress all through the night. The first great landing, on April 25th, at Sedd-el-Bahr, at the toe of the Peninsula—in which the first battalions of the Dublin and Munster Fusiliers won imperishable renown—had secured a foothold in Gallipoli, but the hills and forts which guarded the passage up the Dardanelles to Constantinople, on the east, were still held by the Turks. Now a new and stupendous effort was about to be made to break the enemy's grip on the Peninsula.

The date, August 7th, 1915, should be ever memorable in the history of Ireland, and also in that of the whole United Kingdom. On that day a Division of the New Armies raised for the war—"Kitchener's Armies," as they are popularly called—was brought under fire for the first time, and collectively engaged in battle. These citizen soldiers were Irish. Irish professional soldiers have always fought most gallantly for England in all her wars. But on that day, for the first time in the long and embittered relations between England and Ireland, a distinctively Irish Division (the 10th), voluntarily raised in Ireland and composed of 20,000 young men of fine character and high purpose, representative particularly of the Nationalist and Catholic sections of the community, were found on the side of England.

The 10th Irish Division was formed in the autumn and winter months of 1914. They left Ireland at the end of April, 1915, to complete their training in the great camp of Aldershot. At the end of June they embarked from England as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. On Friday evening, August 6th, they parted from the olive groves and vineyards of beautiful islands in the Ægean, off the coast of Asia Minor, where they had been stationed a couple of weeks, and were brought up to Gallipoli. Here, then, were clerks from offices and counting houses, assistants from drapery and grocery shops, civil servants, public school boys, artisans, labourers, farm hands—a heterogeneous collection of youths from all walks in life—and officered chiefly by barristers, solicitors, engineers, and University students, who had only been a few months in training, and who before this call to arms suddenly rang through the Empire, seemed destined for peaceful and secure careers in civil life. Now, within a few hours of hearing, for the first time in their lives, a shot fired in anger, they were to be plunged right into the fiery and bloody whirlpool of war.

Gallipoli, as it looked from the decks of the troopships, even in the wonderful dawn of that August Saturday morning, had a mysterious and sinister appearance. The men saw yellow clayey cliffs, rising almost sheer from intensely blue water, and beyond these a huddle of pointed and desolate hills, to which no access seemed visible. To their right they could see Achi Baba—a head and shoulders, with two arms extending on each side to the sea—dominating the end of the Peninsula, like a Chinese idol, inscrutable, and disdainful of the shells from the battleships which raised clouds of smoke and dust about its face. The general objective of all the troops engaged in this new enterprise—English, Scotch, and Welsh Territorials, as well as the Irish Division of the new Armies—was the capture of the Anafarta Hills, a network of ravines and jungles to the north of the high mountain of Sari Bair, the key of the situation in this upper part of the Peninsula. The Australians, New Zealanders, and Maoris had been attacking Sari Bair since dark on Friday night, from their position at Anzac, lower down the Peninsula.

The 10th Division was wholly Irish, save for one English battalion, the 10th Hampshire Regiment. The 29th Brigade, composed of the 5th Connaught Rangers, 6th Leinsters, 6th Irish Rifles, and the 10th Hampshires, was detached from the Division, and landed at Anzac, to co-operate with the Dominion Forces. But the other two Brigades were entirely Irish. These were the 30th, consisting of the 6th and 7th Dublin Fusiliers, 6th and 7th Munster Fusiliers; and the 31st, consisting of the 5th and 6th Inniskilling Fusiliers, and the 5th and 6th Irish Fusiliers. In addition, there was the Pioneer Regiment, the 5th Royal Irish Regiment (Colonel, the Earl of Granard, K.P.), the purpose of which was to facilitate the progress of the troops by removing obstructions, but which also took part in the fighting. These two Brigades had orders to clear the Turks out of the heights of Karakol Dagh, a long ridge fronting the Gulf of Saros, to the north; and to take a particular hill a few miles to the south, about three or four miles inland from Suvla Bay. This hill is known to the Turks as Yilghin Burnu. It was called Chocolate Hill by the invading army as part of its surface had been burnt a dull brown by shell fire. The Division was under the command of General Sir Bryan Mahon, a Galway man, who saw much service in Egypt and the Soudan, and in the South African War led the column which relieved Mafeking.

In a way, it is a pity that things were not so arranged as to have brought these unseasoned and unhardened Irish troops gradually to the great and searching test of war, that they were not afforded the opportunity of feeling the land of the foe under their feet, and becoming somewhat familiar with its extraordinary geographical conditions and climate, before they had to rush into battle. In warfare all that depends, usually, upon unforeseen circumstances, and the chance disposition of the forces. But it may have happened by special direction in this case; and, if so, it was a compliment to the 10th Division. "It is true they are new and untried, but they are Irish," it was probably said at Headquarters, "and being Irish, they may be relied upon, however hard and tough their job." In any case, both Brigades were successful in the enterprises to which they were set.

The disembarkation was carried out under fire from the Turkish batteries on the hills. The men were taken from the transports in steam-driven barges, and though the barges had sheltering sides of steel, several men were killed and wounded by exploding shells even before they reached the shore. Half of the 30th Brigade, consisting of the two battalions of the Munsters, to whom was allotted the task of capturing Karakol Dagh, were landed to the north of Suvla Bay, just under the ridge. "How I wish that their fathers and mothers could know more of how these brave fellows fought and died!" writes the Commanding Officer of one of the Munster battalions in a letter to his relatives. "They, alas! for the most part just see the names of their dear ones in a casualty list, and can learn nothing further. The beach on which we landed was sown with contact mines, and as we crossed it to form up under cover of a small hill, many a poor chap was blown to bits—not very encouraging for those approaching in other boats. But they never wavered, but landed, and formed up as quietly and steadily as they used to do on the parade ground at the Curragh. I asked one poor chap who was slightly injured how he had got through, and he said, 'All I could think of, sir, was how anxious you must be to see how we would behave.' That is the spirit that one likes to see in a battalion."