Allies, and a maple leaf for the Canadians. However, badges of the North Irish Horse and South Irish Horse are not included, nor are the colours of the Royal Engineers, the Royal Army Medical Corps, or the Labour Corps, all of which contributed several hundred Irish casualties to the war effort. There is no record of why certain regiments were included in the Records or why others are absent. Two regiments are decidedly non-Irish: the 15th (King’s) Hussars and Royal Berkshire Regiment. Inclusion of the 15th (King’s) Hussars can be explained because they served at Suvla Bay with the Royal Irish Fusiliers and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
However, the inclusion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment is a minor mystery. According to Casey, the Royal Berkshire Regiment contributed twenty-eight casualties to the total of Irish-born Irish dead in the war, while the 15th Hussars contributed four.47 The 3rd (Special) Battalion of the Berkshires trained recruits at Portobello Barracks in Dublin from 1917 to 1918, which may have resulted in a connection with Irish families; however, ironically, the 2nd Battalion was sent to Dublin in 1919 to fight against the IRA.48
This brief survey does not do justice to the complications that arise from trying to identify a definitive set of names that could or could not be included in Ireland’s Memorial Records; however, we can make some conclusions. For one, while the method of gathering names of the committee was perhaps not ‘haphazard’ as Casey purports, it was definitely imperfect. Second, the regimental badges represented in Clarke’s borders are incomplete; many Irishmen were killed while serving with non-Irish regiments. For example, the 11th Hampshires trained with the 10th (Irish) Division at the Curragh and ultimately lost sixty-three Irishmen enlisted with their regiment.49 In addition, there were hundreds of Irish born who served with Scottish and Northern English regiments, such as the Northumberland Fusiliers famous 103rd (Tyneside Irish) Brigade, which suffered heavily at the Battle of the Somme. While these regiments are not artistically rendered in the decorative borders, the names of the soldiers themselves are listed in Ireland’s Memorial Records.
Ultimately, these are questions for the military historians to winnow and sift. I have chosen to consider the eight volumes of Ireland’s Memorial Records as a complete artefact of their time and place. While the numbers and names can be contested, and their value as military records falters today, the history of their publication and the neglected history of Harry Clarke’s accomplishment are important to the legacy of Ireland’s artistic achievements in the twentieth century.
Significant Conflicts in 1915 and 1916
Irish people were involved in all aspects of the military campaigns from 1914–18, filling medical, combat, and labour roles. In each major battle, Irish soldiers served and died, whether fighting with Irish divisions or English. In addition, 11,000 military-trained Irish Volunteers remained at home, taking decisive steps toward Irish independence. A brief history of the Irish involvement in the First World War must take into account three events of military importance involving dedicated Irish divisions: Gallipoli, the Easter Rising, and the Battle of the Somme.
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
