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 first-hand the conditions of combat, personal experience which he most certainly drew upon when designing the borders for the Records. The publishing house of Maunsel was located along Abbey Street, which was destroyed by fires that consumed many of the buildings along the North Dublin quayside. Inside were plates of Clarke’s illustrations for ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.
By Saturday, April 29, Pearse surrendered the forces from the GPO and those who occupied other sites soon followed. The Irish rebels from the central city were gathered in the Parnell Square at the north end of Sackville Street, where they spent a night outdoors and in the rain, huddled together in stillness and discomfort under the rifles and eyes of British guards.
Though the Rising was not immediately or generally popular with the Dublin citizens, the summary execution of the leaders of the military coup turned public opinion in support of the revolutionary heroes. Fourteen were swiftly shot after secret tribunals at Kilmainham Gaol in west Dublin. On May 3, only four days after the surrender, Padraig Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Thomas Clarke were executed by firing squad. Five more leaders were shot in the next two days. Within the week, six more men were executed. Thousands more were deported to prison camps in Ireland, England, and Wales. In total, there may have been as many as 500 dead by the end of the week,67 among them Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, war protestor, pacifist, and friend to artist Seán Keating, who left his home to stop looting in the city.
The dead of the Easter Rising, including the leaders and the civilian casualties, are memorialized in the Garden of Remembrance in central Dublin’s Parnell Square, the site where rebels huddled in discomfort after the surrender. A written and illuminated record of the rebellion was begun by the artist Art O’Murnaghan in 1924 as Leabhar na hAiséirghe, Book of the Resurrection, a twenty six-page book of remembrance that may be compared to Ireland’s Memorial Records. These beautiful illuminated pages are displayed at the National Museum, Collins Barracks.
The Somme, 1916
During the revolution in Ireland, British forces were engaged in battles in Mesopotamia and massive troops and equipment were moving into the Picardy region around the Somme River. What ensued was a series of battles that extended from late June 1916 to November 1916. These battles would be the proving ground for the 36th (Ulster) Division and the 16th (Irish) Division. The area had been occupied by the German army since the opening months of the war in 1914, which gave them sufficient time to deeply entrench themselves and heavily fortify the towns, including Beaumont, Bapaume, Thiepval, Guillemont, and Ginchy. By July 1916, German machine gun posts covered approaches to the area from the west, north, and south, effectively blanketing the thirty-kilometer line of the front with heavy fire. Working with the French troops under the command of Colonel Joffre, British General Douglas Haig planned to advance on 1 July 1916, following a weeklong bombardment of German lines that they anticipated would cut the wire and destroy the artillery. Beginning on June 23, the British launched a barrage of three million shells on German lines. Early in the morning of July 1, the BEF detonated seventeen mines under German positions. At 7:30 a.m., whistles blew along the miles of trenches to send the advance waves of troops over the top.68
Among those in the first wave of July 1 were the 36th (Ulster) Division under the direction of Major-General Sir Oliver Nugent, who were in trenches dug within Thiepval Wood. Although they would achieve the objective of reaching the German lines, they were unable to hold the position. The division would face heavy losses. Casualties from the first day of fighting numbered over 19,000 British soldiers. Martin Middlebrook estimates that 2,000 Ulstermen were killed on the first day of battle and 3,000 were dead by the third day.69
FIGURE 1.7
Two British soldiers standing in a wrecked German trench at Ginchy (September 1916), photograph by John Warwick Brooke. © Imperial War Museum Q 4338.
The Tyneside Irish (Northumberland Fusiliers) were situated to the east of the 36th (Ulster) Division; their objectives were La Boiselle and Contalmaison. The 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers were positioned to the northwest of the 36th (Ulster) Division, facing Beaumont-Hamel. By noon on July 1, over 60 per cent of the officers and men of the 2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers were casualties of the advance. On July 3, roll call of the 9th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles, 36th (Ulster) Division, revealed only one of four officers was alive and thirty-four of the battalion’s 115 men were dead, wounded, or missing.70
Although it was not their first action of the war, the 16th (Irish) Division is particularly associated with the attacks on the German-controlled towns of Guillemont and Ginchy on the eastern end of the line. Gerald Gliddon refers to the village of Guillemont as ‘a fortress with a chain of dugouts and tunnels that defied the heaviest artillery barrages’.71 The first attempts to take the village of Guillemont occurred on 23 July 1916. By August 27, with the rain now muddying the roads and the bodies of the
