He wasted little time in volunteering, and in September 1914 joined the Royal Engineers as a corporal. When he enlisted he asked to be considered for a role with the Signals Division, and in October 1914, he joined the Signals GHQ.
In January 1916 he got a temporary commission as a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. His war service then took him to Basra, where he arrived in June 1916. Six months later he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. On 8 April 1917 he qualified as a flying officer, but his time in the skies would only last a matter of days. He was reported missing ten days later, and was then reported killed in action.
The precise nature of how he died is unclear, as no details are contained on his army file in the archives in London. However, the documents do reveal that at his burial German and Turkish officers were in attendance, which suggests that he was killed behind enemy lines. The archives also reveal that his grave was marked by a propeller blade. The ceremony was described as ‘most impressive’.
Craig’s relatives back in Ireland were informed of his death, and his possessions and outstanding army pay were forwarded on to them.
The former Trinity College student was 27 years of age when he died. Today, he lies in a cemetery in Iraq in a place that bears the names of long-forgotten regiments who fought to free the city from the grip of Turkish forces.
Nine months before Craig died, thousands of Irishmen battled the Turkish army in a different theatre of war. In August 1915 in the waters of the Aegean, the hospital ship HMS Gloucester Castle was packed with men who were wounded, dead or dying. It was the final resting place of many young Irishmen before they were buried at sea.
On 16 August 1915, two bodies lay amongst the dozens being cared for by nursing staff. Their war was over. They were brothers in peacetime and comrades in battle. The story of the siblings from County Wicklow is one of the saddest accounts to emerge from the Gallipoli campaign.
Three young men from the same family left Dublin to go to fight the Turkish forces, and only one returned. The two brothers who did not come back died in the same place on the same day.
George Grant Duggan and his brother John Rowswell Duggan lost their lives on a summer’s day on the Turkish coastline. Their youngest sibling, George Chester Duggan, who also witnessed the carnage, survived the conflict, and returned home to the safety of Ireland. Their family story is a tale of military service, death and heartbreak.
It begins with George Grant Duggan, a talented international athlete who enjoyed long-distance running and cross-country competitions. His love of athletics came to the fore as he studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree at Trinity College in Dublin. Born in 1886, he was the son of George and Emilie Duggan, from Ferney near Greystones in County Wicklow. George senior was the manager of the Provincial Bank in Dublin. He sent his son George Grant to be educated at the high school in Dublin and then he entered Dublin University. It appears that life at Trinity College for the young student was rarely dull, and George Grant Duggan filled his time with athletics and studying.
When he was not in the lecture room or in the library he could be found running across laneways and around the playing fields at College Park. He developed a passion for cross-country competitions, organised college races and took a lead role in the management of the Dublin University Athletic Union. His success in race meetings at Trinity led to wider recognition. On 26 March 1908 he represented Ireland the International Cross Country Championship at the Stade de Matin, Colombes near Paris.
Eleven athletes from Ireland made the trip, competing against their French hosts, England, Scotland and Wales. George Grant Duggan took part in the 16km cross-country event and ran it in fifty-seven minutes, and was placed forty-ninth. The race was won by an Englishman, Arthur Robertson, who finished the course in just over fifty minutes.
In 1908 he graduated from Trinity College and began working with the Irish Lights Commissioners, and at this time he was also a member of the university’s Officer Training Corps (OTC). Duggan was one of the original members of the OTC. He was made a corporal in 1910, and immersed himself in the activities of the Training Corps, which he clearly enjoyed. Such was his attitude that he and a number of other cadets were selected to attend the Coronation of King Edward VII. George Grant Duggan may have got his love of the military life from his grandfather, Colonel Charles Coote Grant, who was in the Bedfordshire Regiment. His passion for military adventure was shared by his brother John Rowswell Duggan, who was eight years younger than George, and also became a member of the OTC. John, like George, had a great love of the outdoor life, and was a keen marksman, often winning trophies for his rifle shooting.
After he graduated, George Duggan’s personal life changed when he married Dorothy Isabella Tuthill in a ceremony at Christ Church in Dublin in August 1910. They had two children and, keeping up the family tradition, they named their first son, who was born in 1911, George. A year later their second son, Dermot, was born.
That same year George Duggan received a commission as an officer with the Training Corps, and in February 1913 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Whilst the military exercises took up much of his evening and weekend work, he also devoted much of his time to the Boy Scouts. He was a Scoutmaster of the 6th County Dublin Troop, and served on committees for the County Dublin Association and the Sea Scouts.
By 1914, George Duggan was becoming more involved in the work of the Training Corps, attending the School of Musketry at Hythe, and was later given a platoon to command. When the war broke out in the August of 1914, it was only natural that George Grant Duggan and his brother John volunteered for service. George Grant Duggan joined the 5th Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and his two other brothers, John and George Chester, joined the Royal Irish Regiment. George Grant was commissioned as a lieutenant, and he was quickly promoted to the temporary rank of captain in October 1914. For the next few months he was involved in training, and by the summer of 1915 he and his brother were ready to do battle with Turkish forces in the Gallipoli Peninsula.
In July 1915, as part of the 10th Irish Division, George Grant, John and George Chester set sail to take part in a battle that would have devastating consequences. The journey to the Aegean Sea took a number of weeks, and the objective was to establish a foothold on the peninsula and push the Turkish forces back towards Constantinople and force them to surrender. The invasion by British and Commonwealth troops had been ordered after two British ships were sunk, and other ships came under attack, from Turkish forts along the peninsula. In April 1915, thousands of Australian and New Zealand soldiers (Anzacs) were joined by French and British troops. The attack they mounted on Turkish soil was a bloody failure; thousands were killed in the water before they reached the shore, and the attacks did little to push the Turkish forces back.
Keen to find a new way to attack the Turkish coastline, the British high command came up with the plan of surrounding an area to the north of where the Anzacs and the British had attacked in April. The new plan revolved around an area called Suvla Bay, and the aim was to land forces by boat and then push the Turkish forces inland. Desperate to keep their plans watertight, only a handful of senior British officers were aware of the precise nature of the plan. As the men of the 10th Division sailed to their destination, they had no idea what to expect.
As they approached Suvla Bay, men from the Royal Irish Fusiliers were placed on a number of boats, one called Honeysuckle and the other Snaefell, which was named after the highest mountain on the Isle of Man. As they came closer to the coastline the men could hear the sound of gunfire, and they all knew that their disembarkation was imminent.
Nothing could have prepared the Duggan brothers for what they were about to experience, which one Gallipoli veteran would later describe as a nightmare. After the war, Captain G.W. Geddes, who served with the Royal Munster Fusiliers, reflected on his days fighting the Turkish forces:
Hell
