cover as fast as they could as it was their only chance. I then went under again. Someone caught hold of me and began pulling me ashore.’ Sheltering behind a bank he looked out to sea and saw ‘the remnants of my platoon trying to get to the shore, but they were shot down one after another, and their bodies drifted out to sea or lay immersed a few feet from the shore’.9
Sergeant J. McColgan was in a boat with thirty-two men; only six of whom got out alive. He himself was hit in the leg as he dived overboard. ‘One fellow’s brains were shot into my mouth as I was shouting to them to jump for it. I dived into the sea. Then came the job to swim with my pack, and one leg useless. I managed to pull out the knife and cut the straps and swim ashore. All the time bullets were ripping around me.’10
Lt Henry Desmond O’Hara, the only son of W.J.O’Hara, Resident Magistrate, of Ballincollig, Co. Cork and a nephew of the Bishop of Cashel, was more fortunate than most of his fellow officers. He would play a leading role in the drama that followed the landings, but as he watched his battalion being torn to pieces he was aboard the River Clyde with W Company. ‘Meanwhile,’ he later recalled, ‘our ship, instead of grounding as had been arranged, struck about fifteen yards from the shore, and it was that that saved our lives, as we had to stay where we were.’11 When he came ashore at about midnight he would be forced to assume command of what was left of the battalion. His level-headedness and quiet heroism would help him survive and earn him a DSO, the second most prestigious gallantry award. He was youngest officer at that time to have received the honour. But in the early hours of the morning of 25 April he could only watch with horror as the remnants of the 1st RDF dragged themselves up the shore and took some shelter under cover of a bank.
Then it was the turn of the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers who had been witnessing the slaughter with rising apprehension from on board the River Clyde. Unlike the Dublins who had, at least, been caught by surprise, the Munsters now knew what to expect. While they waited, bodies of dead and drowned Dublin Fusiliers floated by. As with many of the regular Irish battalions the Munsters, though overwhelmingly Irish among the NCOs and other ranks, were, in the main, led by English officers. A number of these have left accounts behind, most notably the CO, Lt Col Tizard, Capt Geddes, who commanded X Company, and Lt Guy Nightingale, who, like Henry Desmond O’Hara, found himself, briefly, in effective charge of his battalion on the beach. Their narratives, relatively free of military humbug and bombast, provide a blood-curdling account of the slaughter of the Irishmen under their command.
The plan for the Munster’s landing went wrong from the start. The River Clyde beached too far from the shore, as indicated by O’Hara, and the barges which were to have formed the gangway from the vessel to the beach, instead of going straight ahead went wide of the collier and had to be pulled back under a hail of murderous fire by crew members and Fusiliers. Unwin and one of his midshipmen won VC’s for this action, awards which, though well-deserved were in marked contrast to the treatment of the unsung heroes of the two Irish regiments who actually landed at V Beach.
With the barges in position Tizard gave the order to disembark. Captain Henderson was in position with Z Company on the starboard side and Captain Geddes was to lead X Company down the gangway on the port side. The gangway on the port side jammed and briefly delayed X Company. Once again the barges let the Munsters down. Strong currents caused the barge on the port side closest to the beach to break adrift into deep water.
Capt Geddes leading his men jumped over the side and had to swim about tweny yards before he could wade ashore. A good many who followed him sank owing to the weight of their equipment and were drowned. The crew again went out to try and get the barges straight. These barges were filled with dead and wounded, very few of the men from the two companies had got ashore. Those who had were taking cover behind a bank about 8 feet high that ran along the beach 10 yards from the water’s edge. In front of this bank was a line of barbed wire entanglements about 25 yards distant.12
Geddes made it to the shore by swimming, but many of the men of his company, unable to swim or weighed down by their huge packs, drowned in the treacherous currents. ‘We got it like anything,’ Geddes later wrote; ‘man after man behind me was shot down but they never wavered. Lt Watts who was wounded in five places and lying on the gangway cheered the men on with cries of “Follow the Captain”. Captain French of the Dublins told me afterwards that he counted the first 48 men to follow me and they all fell.’13 The first of the Munsters to actually make the beach was Sergeant Patrick Ryan who swam ashore in his full kit. He subsequently received the DCM for some risky reconaissance work.
Meanwhile Henderson’s company, on the starboard side of the ‘River Clyde’ was faring no better. One of his platoon commanders, Captain Lane, survived to write an account of the nightmarish assault on the beach.
All the way down the side of the ship bullets crashed against the sides but beyond a few splinters I was not hit. On reaching the first barge I found some of the men had collected and were firing. I mistrusted the second barge and the track to the shore so I led them over the side, the water nearly up to our shoulders. However, none of us were hit and we gained the bank. There I found Henderson badly hit and heaps of wounded. Any man who put his head up for an instant was shot dead, and we were rather mixed up with the Dublins. Nearly all the NCOs were hit.14
Of the first 200 men down the gangway 149 were killed outright and 30 were wounded. Private Timothy Buckley of the Munsters, a native of Macroom, Co. Cork, counted 26 men down the gangway before him: ‘I stood counting them as they were going through. It was then I thought of peaceful Macroom, and wondered if I should ever see it again.’ Instead of running down the gangway he jumped over the rope and straight onto the pontoon. Two more followed suit and lay flat on the pontoon bridge. ‘. . . the shrapnel was bursting all around. I was talking to the chap on my left, and saw a lump of lead enter his temple. I turned to the chap on my right. His name was Fitzgerald. He was from Cork, but soon he was over the border.’15
A safe distance (or so he thought) from the massacre on V Beach on board a Royal Navy support vessel was seventeen-year-old Thomas Leavy from Dublin. He was well acquainted with a number of the 1st Dublins, some of whom were boys close to his own age. He watched with sickened dismay as they went to their deaths. His ship was maintaining a constant covering fire. ‘After things settled down we were out in a boat pulling the dead bodies onto an island there called Rabbit Island … it was terrible to see it, we couldn’t do anything, all we could do was fire over their heads with our two 14” guns.’ Almost sixty years after the landings he still believed that ‘the undertaking was all wrong … it was a blunder. There wasn’t a hope in hell of taking the place.’16 Also watching from naval vessels offshore were a number of newspaper war correspondents. One of the more naive members of the group, watching through field glasses noticed the the men lying on the beach and was heard to ask ‘Why are our men resting?’ It was pointed out to him by the veteran correspondent H.W. Nevinson that they were not resting but dead.
By the time he got to the shore Geddes felt badly in need of a rest.
[I] was completely exhausted and lay on the beach until I was able to crawl up to the slender cover the Dublins were holding – ten yards from the water’s edge . . It was the most ghastly hell you can imagine and you might just as well have walked the plank. You can form no idea of the horror of the undertaking – two splendid regiments practically wiped out.17
Movement on the beach was practically impossible. As Captain Lane discovered, any man who worked himself into an exposed position was inviting instant death. He was hit running for cover. ‘The bullet went through my right ankle and carried on sideways smashing my left leg to bits. One of my platoon then came out very pluckily and pulled me into safety. I had only been on the beach five minutes and never saw a Turk.’18
Tizard, watching from the River Clyde realised that it was impossible to carry out the original plan of attack which had been devised by Brigadier General Hare, Commander of the 86th Brigade.
Nothing
