Remembering Them

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The launch of An Post stamps commemorating Gallipoli (top) this morning at the National Museum.

Meanwhile,at the National Library…

Niallc, writes:

 This (above) is a short film from the National Library on the subject, as well as broader Irish contributions to WWI in 1915….On view from today in the Library’s WWI exhibition on Kildare Street.

Earlier: We Come In Peace

National Library

National Museum

Thanks Spaghetti Hoop

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51 thoughts on “Remembering Them

    1. kurtz

      The same Turkish people who were lynching, starving and marching 1 million Armenians to their deaths?

        1. Clampers Outside!

          PORTRAIT… on bleedin’ Vimeo… why I oughta !

          It’s the end of civilization I tells ya!

          Bleedin PORTRAIT and ‘z’ instead of ‘s’ in the spell checker… we’re doomed

          DOOOOOMED !!!!

      1. Jonotti

        Yes. We should apologise to the Turks. And we should recognise the Armenian genocide. It’s not an either/ or situation. We did terrible things to the Turks at Gallipoli.

        1. Mé Féin

          I agree. The Turks were no saints but the Irish then had absolutely no business attacking their country. The Irish now have no business celebrating a crime against humanity like WW1.

  1. ReproBertie

    This is an edited excerpt from “The Irish at the Front” by Michael McDonagh which was published in 1915. It reports on Gallipoli based on letters from officers and men as well as company reports. This excerpt deals with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and Royal Munster Fusiliers April 25th landing:

    The Royal Munster Fusiliers and Royal Dublin Fusiliers were to land at ” Beach V ” immediately below the castle and village of Sedd-el-Bahr, strongest of the Turkish positions. In this particular landing very remarkable use was made of a steamer called the River Clyde, turned into a troopship. She had about 2,500 troops on board, all Dublins and Munsters, save two companies of the Hampshire Regiment, who formed part of the same brigade, the 86th. So closely packed were the men that they could scarcely move. The plan was to run her ashore, full steam ahead, and when she was beached the troops were to emerge through openings cut in her sides, on the lower deck, and passing down narrow gangways make a dash for the shore over a bridge to be formed of some lighters which accompanied her.
    While the preparations were in progress three companies of the Dublins were being brought ashore in open boats drawn by steam pinnaces, five or six boats in each tow, and over thirty men in every boat. No sign had yet been given that any of the enemy were bout on the cliffs and hills, shrouded by the dust and smoke caused by the shells of the Fleet; and it looked almost as if the landing would be unopposed. But the enemy were there in their thousands, lying low with rifles and machine-guns.
    The scene of the landing was, in configuration, like an amphitheatre with the beach as a stage. The beach itself is a strip of powdery sand about three hundred yards long and ten or twelve yards wide. Behind it is a steep rising ground of sandstone and clay grown with prickly scrub. Barbed wire entanglements were cunningly concealed in the shallows of the foreshore. The Turks were posted with artillery on the heights, and had sharpshooters and also machine-guns ensconced in holes made in the face of the cliff less than a dozen yards from the sea.
    When the picket-boats, or steam pinnaces, got to within two hundred yards of the shore they cast off; and the cutters, with the Dublins, continued on their way towards a narrow strip of rock jutting out from the beach, which made a natural landing-place. Then it was that the Turks concentrated upon the boats a most destructive fire of rifles, and machine-guns from the amphitheatre, and shrapnel from the fort at Sedd-
    el-Bahr. The attacking party was practically wiped out. Only a few passed through this tornado of lead unscathed.
    Meanwhile the landing of the Munsters from the River Clyde was about to commence. The Munsters caught glimpses from the lower deck of the appalling scenes of tumult and slaughter attending the landing of the Dublins. They saw the boats drifting by loaded with the mangled bodies of their fellow-countrymen. They saw corpses floating on the sea. They saw the waters, as smooth as glass, turned from blue to crimson. As the Dublins set out for the shore they cannot have had any adequate conception of the withering tempest of lead that awaited them. The Munsters witnessed the whole horrid tragedy. The task before them was every whit as desperate, and fearsome, and knowledge of its nature added to its terrors.
    The officer stepped through the hole on to the gangway, with the men pressing close behind him. At the moment the bullets were rattling like diabolic hailstones against the steel sides by which the hull of the vessel were strengthened. What happened then is graphically described by Private Timothy Buckley, of Macroom, County Cork. Lying wounded in a military hospital in England, he said :
    “The captain of my company asked for 200 volunteers, and as I was in his company I volunteered. We got ready inside on the deck, and opened the buckles of our equipment, so that every man might have a chance of saving himself if he fell into the water. He gave the order to fix bayonets when we should get ashore. He then led the way, but fell immediately at the foot of the gangway. The next man jumped over him, and kept going until he fell on the pontoon bridge. Altogether 149 men were killed outright and 30 wounded.”

    Thus men in khaki poured out of the side of the River Clyde and raced down the gangway or jumped from it at once on to the first lighter. Two men out of every three fell. Soon the first and second lighters were piled high with wounded and dead, twisted into all sorts of horrid shapes, and the men who escaped being instantly shot were to be seen stepping and jumping and even walking over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Then the horrors of the situation were added to by a most unfortunate mishap. The lighter nearest to the beach gave way in the current and drifted backward into deep water. The men in it jumped out in the hope of being able to swim and wade to the shore. Most of them were drowned by the weight of their equipment. But the Munsters never quailed. All the time they continued emerging from the River Clyde in an unbroken stream, two men out of every three still dropping on the gangway or on the bridge, and the survivors still pressing forward with their faces dauntlessly set for the land. Those who got to the shore rushed to join the Dublins under the scanty cover afforded by the low sandy escarpment.
    Altogether more than 1,000 men had left the River Clyde by 11 o’clock in the morning. Two-thirds of them had been shot dead, drowned, or wounded. The landing was then discontinued. It was resumed under the shelter of darkness, when, strange to say, the 1,000 men remaining on the River Clyde got ashore without a single casualty. In fact not a shot was fired against them.

          1. ReproBertie

            Why don’t you go and ask them? While you’re at it, ask them what they thought would happen when they decided to recover their balkan losses by joining an alliance with Austria and Germany against France, Britain and Russia, declared a jihad on Britain, France and Russia and tried to cross the suez canal to raise an Islamic revolt in Egypt.

            Maybe when you’re finished talking to them you can go and ask the populations of the countries invaded by and occupied by the Ottoman empire what they thought of being invaded and occupied. I’d pay particular attention to the Armenians in that part of your studies.

          2. Jonotti

            I get a feeling that you don’t like any nation that wouldn’t submit to the British Empire. I know all about the Armenian genocide, the Turks killed a lot of people. Not as many as the British Empire did, but then the deaths that the British Empire caused doesn’t matter to people like you, who regard non-Western beings as subhuman life-forms.

          3. ReproBertie

            Wow. I try to give people an idea of what the Irish, many driven by poverty and political lies, were put through on the centenary of the suffering and death of many of them and you come up with this bullsh1t in response.

            First you’re all concerned for the Turks so I point out that they were just as guilty as the British or Germans in empire building and forcing the war so you change tack and accuse me of racism.

            As far as I’m concerned the only good thing to come out of the First World War is the death of the empires – British, French, German and Ottoman.

            Never mind a stick, you would get the wrong end of a f’king hula hoop.

  2. Soundings

    Filthy collaborators who assisted our enemy, and allowed our enemy divert resources to suppress our rebellion for freedom. I wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire.

        1. Don Pidgeoni

          I know who you sound like now! You know those kids at uni who do one human geography course and then spout off about American imperialism at any given chance while still using their fancy smartphones made from resources pulled from the ground by the hands of 5 year African child soldiers and wearing converse with no sense of irony? That’s basically you but more boring and annoying.

          1. Spaghetti Hoop

            Yup. Have a beer and lose the angst over historical events that none of us can change or re-write or even agree upon.

          2. Soundings

            It’s okay Spaghetti, Don’s going through a difficult period. Until this very day, his consciousness believed the term “collaborator” didn’t apply in Ireland, it was something to do with the Nazis and Vichy France perhaps, certainly nothing to do with us. He now knows Grandpappy Pidgeroni meets the definition of collaborator, and in future, he’s going to have to remember his ancestors privately. Don’t fret Don, the shame is not yours. And, you’re welcome for the enlightenment.

            Anyway, it’s Friday night. Time to go with family on a spin of our local inferior nutrition establishments – chippers and pizza joints – so we can point and laugh at the lardarses. A propos to which, did you see the BBC’s top news item yesterday (no 2 on radio broadcasts) that diet is primarily responsible for obesity, and that exercise is of limited value for combatting obesity? No, of course you didn’t because every Irish media outlet is dependent on advertising from the obesity merchants.Here’s the BBC story.

            http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32417699

    1. Formerly known as @Ireland.com

      I would prefer if all irish military men were fighting for Irish freedom, rather than fighting a war that achieved nothing. However, I see that their situation may not have been as black and white as you see it.

      1. Steve

        @formerly…but they were fighting for Irish freedom.

        Asquith had brought in the 3rd home rule bill which was to be enacted after ww1. Redmond had asked the Irish volunteers to show solidarity with the British who were offering home rule and fight against the Germans / hapsburgs/ ottomans.

        1. Jonotti

          They were fighting for Irish freedom in the same way that Kim Kardashian is fighting for feminism. Most of them joined up for the pay. And those who joined up thinking they were fighting for Irish freedom should not have used that as an excuse to go invading other countries such as Turkey.

        2. Formerly known as @Ireland.com

          @steve – unfortunately, we are still waiting for the home rule bill to be enacted.

          1. Steve

            Ah yes jonotti because in most armies the grunt soldiers get a say in where they are sent by the generals

  3. Clampers Outside!

    The Turks, great bunch o’ lads, sent us money during the famine…

    I remember it well, and Sally, the way she might look at ya, like you were dinner.

    Good times, better than aul skinflint Victoria!

    More here…
    “It is generally accepted that the sultan sent a personal donation of £1,000 to London – an act of considerable generosity, particularly when it is remembered that there were no links of any real significance between Ireland and Turkey. But some accounts suggest that he did much more than that. In one version of the story, the sultan tried to give as much as £10,000 [£1 million now], only to be told that it would be diplomatically embarrassing for him to donate significantly more than had Victoria.”

    From – https://allkindsofhistory.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/queen-victorias-5-the-strange-tale-of-turkish-aid-to-ireland-during-the-great-famine/

  4. Truth in the News

    The British send two Regiments of Irishmen to invade another counrty
    and we issue stamps to commomorate it all, we should hang our heads
    in shame that all those who were duped and scarficed at the behest of
    the likes of John Redmond and his supporters….defending small nations
    mar yeah….what was the thanks a year later, and a couple more on with
    the Black n Tans…..is there a certain section of this Nation deluded or what.

    1. Formerly known as @Ireland.com

      I am in Australia. It is Anzac day, here. The propaganda machine is strong. Apparently, landing on Gallipoli made this a nation. They were cannon fodder for an empire in a futile war. Remembering the dead is one thing, using it to tell Aussies that the Aussies were better soldiers than everyone else is a fabrication and a silly fantasy.

      Ex-PM Keating refers to it as Anzacery, I have also heard Branzac day (due to commercialisation.

      And the band played waltzing matilda hit the right note.

  5. Sinabhfuil

    Many’s the good Irish Volunteer cut down at Gallipoli and the Somme. Many’s the good Turk and German cut down at Gallipoli and the Somme. Every one of them some mother’s boy.

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