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3. THE 10TH DIVISION AT SUVLA BAY

‘Twas better to die ‘neath an Irish sky,

Than at Suvla or Sedd el Bahr.’1

(From The Foggy Dew, Canon Charles O’Neill)

The separatist sentiments which provide the context for those lines from the folk song ‘The Foggy Dew’ might not have had much philosophic appeal to the Irish troops at Gallipoli but by the time of their final evacuation from that morass of incompetence, petulance and shortsightedness most would have agreed with the bald statement as expressed. The landings at Suvla Bay in August 1915 wrote the first page in another military-Gothic horror story, and like most such tales the ending was not a happy one.

By August 1915 the first of Kitchener’s New Army troops were ready to test their Byronic notions about war. The initial attacks on the Dardanelles in April had been a failure and like the gambler who throws good money after bad, General Sir Ian Hamilton was determined to turn the situation around by becoming ever more deeply embroiled in the peninsula he once described as ‘shaped like a badly worn boot’. Kitchener’s saplings were expected to extricate the British from the folly of Gallipoli when what was needed was a host of battering rams

Suvla Bay lies on the western (Aegean) side of the Gallipoli Peninsula some twenty miles due north of Cape Helles and a mere five miles from Anzac Cove, where the troops from Australia and New Zealand, who had joined to fight a war in Europe, had gained a toehold . The notion of landing troops there was not a bad one in itself. The beaches were long, wide and inviting. The area was lightly defended: three Turkish battalions were all that was left to hold Suvla after the troops of the two divisions defending the plain beyond were withdrawn to Helles and Anzac. The possibility of a repetition of V Beach was remote once the element of surprise was maintained.

The strategy was that as the Suvla force (IX Corps, under General Stopford) broke out of its beachhead the Australian and New Zealanders at Anzac Cove would do likewise and between them the two Corps would drive a wedge across the peninsula. To do this the 10th, 11th and 13th Divisions which were to form the IX Corps were required to occupy the heights around Suvla within twenty-four hours of landing and link up with the Anzacs who would be assaulting the Sari Bair ridge, which rose to almost a thousand feet, and which, with its heavily scored sides had defied their attacks and overshadowed their beachhead since the April landings, However, the plan was compromised straightaway when the 13th Division and the 29th Brigade of the 10th (Irish) Division were separated from IX Corps and sent to assist the Anzacs instead.

The 10th (Irish) Division, bar one battalion – the 10th Hampshires – was overwhelmingly Irish, a product of the recruiting frenzy of 1914. It was the first distinctly Irish division in the British Army. It had a native-born Divisional commander in Lieutenant General Sir Bryan Mahon. Mahon, a Galwayman, had been a career soldier since joining the 8th (Royal Irish) Hussars in 1883. His chief claim to military celebrity was his leadership of the column which had relieved Mafeking during the Boer War.

At the time he took over the 10th Division he was fifty-two years of age. His service in Egypt and India had bronzed his face and sown grey in his hair, but his figure and his seat on a horse were those of a subaltern. He scorned display, and only the ribbons on his breast told of the service he had seen.2

So wrote Major Bryan Cooper, rather overfondly, of his commanding officer. Mahon may well, habitually, have disguised his rank but he was, nonetheless, highly conscious of it, and of his own dignity and importance. Many would judge harshly what they were to perceive as the placing of his innate sense of self-worth and pride over the well-being of his soldiers in one of the sorriest chapters of Irish military history, the defence of Kiretch Tepe Sirt on the night of 15 August 1915. John Hargrave, who was a Sergeant in a Royal Army Medical Corps unit attached to the 10th Division offers a more colourful description of a Mahon,

with large aggressively out-jutting ears, and full lips enfolding a secret smile half hidden under a trim but strangely piebald grey-and-(startlingly)-saltwhite moustache. Without doubt one of the ‘Black Celts to the West of the Shannon’, with deepset, heavy-browed, sullen-brooding eyes, as fiercely ‘dead’ and gloomy as a Fitful Head stormcloud stagnant over Inisheer.3

The 10th brought with it to Suvla Bay its own, unofficial, historians. It is one of the most exhaustively chronicled campaigns in which Irish soldiers played a major role in the Great War. Chief among them was Bryan Cooper. Cooper had been a Unionist MP for South Dublin until 1910, one of the last to be elected to a southern constituency (bar Edward Carson who as MP for Trinity was an exceptional case, and Maurice Dockrell, elected in Rathmines in 1918). He would later serve as an Independent TD for Dublin County before throwing in his lot with Cumann na nGaedhael in the 1920s (sometime after he had helped save that government in a crucial division, by, reportedly getting the ‘tiebreak’ TD drunk and putting him on the train back to Sligo before the vote). When he died, in 1930, the symbolism at his funeral might have served as an appropriate metaphor for so many of Ireland’s World War 1 veterans, his coffin was draped in both the Tricolour and the Union Jack. A clue to his temperament is provided by Professor Joe Lee, who describes him as ‘a respected ex-Unionist –respected not least for his formidable capacity for alcohol’.4

After seven months of training in Dublin, at the Curragh and in Basingstoke in England the men of the 10th were eager for action. After a few days at Gallipoli the romantic gloss of war, so typical of that era, would wear off quickly. One of the most celebrated units of the 10th Division, D Company of the 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, would suffer more than most. It consisted of footballers (mostly rugby players) who had responded to a call to enlist as a ‘Pals’ unit and had done so at Lansdowne Rd. Thirty five year old Frank Laird, a member of D company, had joined out of a combination of curiosity and peer group pressure. Once their pith helmets had been issued he knew the 10th was not destined for the Western Front. Canny souls decided that tightly cropped hair cuts might make for a more comfortable life in the Mediterranean heat.

One of the sergeants had secured a hair clippers (some said a mule clippers) and, with several brethern of the three stripes, set about shaving the heads of as many of the men as wished for the performance. When the supply of these failed they chased divers others, laid violent hands on them, and shrove them of their flowing locks. We were given to understand that a Hunnish head was an asset in hot spots like the Dardanelles.5

As their transport ship pulled away from Devonport, en route to the Dardanelles, on 13 July 1915 – destined, according to Philip Orr to ‘sail right out of history’6 – Sgt John Hargrave of the 32nd Field Ambulance experienced a certain ominous foreboding, undiminished by the Fife Band of the Irish Fusiliers playing The Wearing of the Green.

A Cockney sailor standing by the bow of a coastal sloop cupped his hands and bellowed across the water, ‘Are we downhearted?’There was time to count seven before a few Irishmen shouted ‘No!’ At this rather half-hearted response, the cheery Cockney grinned a Seven Dials grin and bellowed: ‘Wotcher lookin’ so glum abaht?’ To which no answer came. Before a month was out there was no fife band. It had perished to a man at Suvla Bay.7

While awaiting orders for Gallipoli the 10th was stationed at Mudros on the Aegean island of Lemnos, and at Mitylene. Here, Cooper records, their officers got some idea of what might lie in store for their raw troops, most of whom had yet to experience combat. Some officers of the 29th Division, which had been mauled at V Beach, were at Mudros, resting, many of them had friends among the 10th.

Thus we learned from men who had been in Gallipoli since they had struggled through the surf and the wire on April 24th [sic] the truth as to the nature of the fighting there. They taught us much by their words, but even more by their appearance; for though fit, they were thin and worn, and their eyes carried a weary look that told of the strain that they had been through.8

Such was the understandable level of paranoia after the disaster of V Beach in April that the secrecy surrounding the Suvla landings became a sort of mantra among the higher echelons. It was as if there was some fervent aspiration towards the absoute retention of information within a small and elite coterie. As if the ultimate goal was that nobody should know of Hamilton’s intentions, bar Hamilton and a few upper echeleon staff-wallahs in his confidence. In the end this fetish proved counterproductive. Mahon’s division suffered more than most as a consequence, never fighting as a single unit and, at one point, operating under three separate commands.

Other units were split off by accident but the removal of the 29th Brigade9 from Mahon’s command was deliberate. Its four battaliions, the 10th Hampshires, the 6th Royal Irish Rifles, the 5th Connaught Rangers and the 6th Leinsters were sent to assist General Birdwood’s Anzacs who were still stranded at Anzac Cove more than three months after the April landings there. Here they served briefly under Divisional commander General Sir Alexander Godley, late of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, cousin of Lord Kilbracken of Killegar and (subsequently) the author of an autobiography entitled Life of an Irish Soldier (1939).

The 29th Brigade was landed after dark to avoid the attentions of enemy gunners and to conceal from the Turks the fact that reinforcements were arriving in large numbers for an offensive operation. They had little time to wonder why their resting place on that first night was called Shrapnel Gully before they found out the hard way. Nor had they much opportunity to take in their new surroundings, an arid and deadly environment which had already witnessed the killing and maiming of thousands of young Australians, New Zealanders and Gurkhas. It was a truly inhospitable place.

Take a sheet of brown paper – say two feet by one – fold it lengthways, a few inches from one side and crumple up the bit below the fold into innumerable and inextricable miniature valleys and gullies, running in and out of each other anyhow with razor-edge ridges between them; but ridges which never seemed able to keep a straight line … That gives a rough idea of what the Gallipoli coast line at and near Anzac is like.10

One company of the Leinsters got an early taste of what the Turks had been doing to the Anzac forces. They were sent to relieve a company of Australian troops holding an area called Courtney’s Ridge.

It was like hurrying up a steep flight of stairs to an attic … The trenches were more like permanently built passages, with heavy overhead cover, than normal trenches. The first night’s experience was typical of many other nights – tremendous bursts of rifle and machine-gun fire, kept up for an hour or longer, with short intervals, but often nothing more developed and one was led to conclude that the Turks must have plenty of spare ammunition.11

For the 10th Division the 29th Brigade’s detachment to Anzac Cove was a brutal sideshow. The main event was the landing at Suvla Bay on 7 August. For the first time the sporting ‘Pals’, in D Company of the 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, would go into action as a unit. Jocularly known as the ‘Young Toffs’ or the ‘Toffs in the Toughs’ (the ‘Toughs’ being the nickname of the Dublin Fusiliers) they were barely a week away from annihilation on the rocky scrub-covered slopes of Kiretch Tepe Sirt. But their morale was high as they approached the peninsula, first passing by Cape Helles as they made their way north on board the Fauvette. As they passed Achi Baba, viewed from the Aegean side, it was a mass of bursting shells.

Suvla seemed about as far away as Wicklow Head is from Howth, and some of them thought the coast looked like Dublin Bay. The large naval shells bursting on Achi Baba suggested a house going on fire with a suden blaze and immediately going out again, the noise sounding like one continuous roll of thunder.12

Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, destined for a career in Military Intelligence, but on this day a junior offiicer in the 5th Inniskilling Fusiliers, had no idea where his battalion was about to land as his troopship dropped anchor a mile or so from shore. He could hear rifle fire and then,

as the light improved we saw our troops advancing inland. Soon the guns of the fleet opened fire. We could see huge sheets of yellow and purple flame on the hill side … A minelayer appeared and proceeded to lay a line of mines between the shipping and the open sea. They dropped over her stern and bounced some 10 or 15 feet before settling down. They looked like plum puddings of unusual resilience.13

The 7th Dublin Fusiliers landed without much incident, though Frank Laird recalled that shrapnel had caused some injuries in the lighters before the shore was reached.

It afforded food for philosophic thought to consider the time, money and trouble expended in ten months training of a soldier who stops a bullet before he can ever set foot on enemy ground … Our steam barge ran up on a sandy beach without mishap, the hinged gangway in the bow was turned over, and we walked down it on to the soft sand with somewhat of the picnic feeling with which we had often made a landing on Ireland’s Eye in the piping days of peace.14

Oddly, to Lieutenant Noel Drury of the 6th Dublins, Suvla at night lit up by bursting shells had a sort of compelling, bizarre elegance. ‘The scene was very beautiful with star shells going up, and the loom of the early dawn lit up with the beautiful lemon-coloured flash of the naval guns.’15 In fact neither side was oversupplied with guns to effect, or defend against, a landing. The Turks were forced to alternate their fire between the troops on shore and those being landed by the Navy in lighters. The British had only two small calibre mountain guns to support the landing. ‘These two guns were a source of amusement to the men, as every time they were fired they ran backward down the hill with a sweating crowd of gunners chasing after them to haul them into position again.’16

The Dublins, along with most of the remainder of Mahon’s Division had landed much farther south than had been originally intended. The northern part of Suvla Bay had been designated A Beach, it was there that the 10th was supposed to come ashore. But inadequate charting and intelligence, constant bombardment and a level of ‘discretion’ – which came in for subsequent criticism – had prompted the Navy to put them ashore south of Nibrunesi Point. To labour Hanna’s analogy, if the Division had been due to land near Howth Head, it was put ashore closer to Wicklow. The 5th Inniskillings, along with the 6th and 7th Munsters were landed nearer to their original objective. But not, as Ivone Kirkpatrick recorded, until the late afternoon. ‘We ran nicely ashore, the drawbridge worked perfectly and we landed. It was just after four o’clock. I assembled my platoon. At the water’s edge were several British dead, struck down almost before they had set foot on land.’17

As they surveyed the landscape of the furnace into which they had been plunged the eyes of the men of the 10th Division would have been drawn towards the heights around the crescent shaped bay in which they had landed. Close by the southern perimeter of Suvla Bay (Nibrunesi Point) was a low, rolling hillock, one hundred and fifty feet high at most, called Lala Baba. It had been taken in darkness before the 10th had landed. It afforded some protection from the sightline of Turkish troops who were well entrenched on a more distant hill, which, because of the colouration of the soil on its slopes (or the colouring of the burnt scrub, depending on which version you accept) became known as Chocolate Hill. This hill, about two hundred feet in height, was visible on the far side of what the few maps carried by officers characterised as a ‘Salt Lake’. In moister seasons a salt lake it may well have been but on the morning of the 7 August 1915, it was little more than a salty marsh of white sticky mud measuring about a mile across. Nonetheless it constituted an obstacle which had to be circumvented. A direct approach to Chocolate Hill from Lala Baba was not possible, the option was to tour the lake by a northern or southern route, thus leaving oneself wide open to shrapnel and shells. Beyond Chocolate Hill was Green, or Burnt Hill, similar in shape and size to its neighbour. Beyond that again, less than a mile to the north-east was Scimitar Hill. Overlooking a distant plain, dotted with cornfields and olive trees, as well as useless scrub land, was the 900 foot-high Tekke Tepe ridge, the ultimate short-term objective of the troops involved in the Suvla campaign. To the south-east the land rose to join the Sari Bair ridge which overlooked Anzac Cove.

Physically more imposing, however, and looming far more ominously, was a long humpback ridge to the north which dominated the skyline from east to west and whose craggy, water-scraped slopes ended in the sea at the northernmost limit of the bay, Suvla Point. The ridge, Kiretch Tepe Sirt, rose to over 600 feet in places and featured a peculiar erratic cairn in the centre, which was to become known as the ‘Pimple’.

Dry, dusty and fly-infested though it was at the time, the area was not without a stark physical beauty. This has been well captured in the paintings of an artist who accompanied the invading force, Lt Drummond Fish. They depict the area in a rather more sumptuous light than do modern colour photographs but Fish, with the discerning and sceptical eye of the artist, was genuinely impressed with the physical beauty of the place.

The colours were the most wonderful thing about Gallipoli. There were mornings when the hills were as rose peaches – times when the sea looked like the tail of some gigantic peacock, and the sands looked like great carpets of glittering cloth of gold – the place was an inspiration in itself, and if beauty could have stopped a war, that scenery would have done it.18

The Irishmen would have been conscious of a number of other things within minutes of landing. The smell of thyme pervaded the foreshore. It had not yet been obliterated from their nostrils by the stench of putrefying bodies which would be another lasting sensory memory of those who survived Gallipoli. John Hargrave, with the Royal Army Medical Corps, was quick to identify another characteristic odour, that of ‘human blood soaking its way into the sand’.19 A constant irritant would have been the large and persistent flies. These initially, however, merely issued their calling cards, a brief prelude to more unwelcome return visits. Loaded down with packs weighing upwards of sixty pounds the men would also have been conscious of the extreme heat, especially as the morning wore on. A heavy shower in the early afternoon offered some welcome relief.

But the overweening impressions borne in on the first of ‘Kitchener’s 100,000’ to go into action were that soldiering was thirsty, dangerous and rather chaotic work. John Hargrave had made an astute choice, as it turned out, while still on board his transport vessel. He had been offered some sweet, reviving tea but would have had to hand up a pint from his own water issue for boiled water for that tea. ‘I decided that a pint of cold water later on might be a better asset than a pint of hot tea now. I was right – a shade too Boy-Scoutishly prudent in spirit perhaps, but eminently practical.’20 When they boarded the lighters which took them ashore each man carried one and a half pints of water with him. They were told not to drink it unless it was absolutely necessary and then only to take a sip or two at a time. It was one of the many ironies of the Suvla debacle that the lighters themselves actually carried extra water rations but

So far as the lightermen were concerned, speed! speed! was the essence of the operation. Therefore, as soon as each lighter was empty of troops it put about and went back for the next load and that reserve of water was never distributed.21

Frank Laird noted that the killing had started before his battalion arrived.

On our right were pitiable groups of wounded and dead men, stretched under shelter of the head of the beach. Overhead the shrapnel burst continually. A long continuous procession of stretcher bearers passed us, carrying inanimate forms to the beach, with pith helmets placed over their faces to save them from the blazing sun.22

Edgar Poulter was a comrade of Laird’s in the ‘Pals’ Company. ‘They said “Look out for land mines” and we saw the odd fellow coming back, leg blown off or wounded with stick bombs or land mines. For the first time we all began to be a little funny in the pit of the stomach.’ The 7th Dublin’s corpulent CO Lieutenant Colonel Downing seemed unconcerned by the Turkish shrapnel. He promenaded along the shore with a long staff in his hand muttering. ‘Oh don’t mind anything you hear lads it’s not near you it’s over your head, carry on.’23

James Cahill, another Dublin Fusilier, spoke to the author a fortnight before his death in 1990 at the age of 96 and still remembered his apprehension on reaching the beach. ‘It was a muddle up to get there, because you’re under shellfire and men were lying around dying and roaring and the order was “Form up in three lines.”’24

Most of these fresh untried troops would have been too inexperienced and too preoccupied with their own thoughts and fears to have paid much attention to the confusion and disorder which had seized those in command of the Suvla operation. In part the claustrophobic chaos on the beaches can be ascribed to the obsession with secrecy and the pusillanimous and unimaginative approach of those in charge of the operation. In retrospect it is clear that, even before the Irish landed, the entire Gallipoli campaign had been seriously compromised by egregious mismanagement. By the time they had been ashore for twenty-four hours it had been well and truly lost beyond redemption.

Contemporary photos showing hundreds of troops packed into small areas, waiting to be told what to do next, tell the story adequately. Nobody seemed to know who exactly was in control of events. They knew who was in command: there was a military chain which led to the Corps commander General Stopford, who spent 7 August off-shore in a yacht, the Jonquil. While Stopford may have been in command he certainly never exercised control. That chain, theoretically, extended beyond Stopford to the Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, General Sir Ian Hamilton. But it was equally clear that Hamilton was not in control either. In fact he was completely starved of information as Stopford failed to communicate with him for some hours after the landings went ahead.

Stopford, as Corps commander was privy to Hamilton’s strategy. The Divisional commanders Hammersley (11th) and Mahon (10th) knew what part their troops were expected to play in the execution of that strategy. But Mahon, ludicrously, had failed to inform one of his Brigade commanders, Brigadier General Hill, about the role the 31st Brigade was expected to play. Some time after its dismal failure the conduct of the Gallipoli campaign was investigated by a Commission which revealed that Mahon had been given his orders on 28/29 July, but then couldn’t get a ship to take him from Lemnos to Mitylene, a distance of 70 miles, where the 31st Brigade (and half the 30th) was stationed, to convey those orders to Hill. Unable to communicate his instructions personally he attempted to do so by cypher telegram. His efforts failed. ‘When Hill arrived with 6,000 men under his command,’ wrote John Hargrave,

he not only had no idea what the operation was in which he and his troops were supposed to take part – he did not even know where he was! He could see, as we all could, a landing was in progress, but it might have been at Walvis Bay or Botany Bay for all the information he had been given. He had no map of Suvla, had never seen a map of Suvla, did not know where Suvla was, and had no instructions what to do now that he was there!25

A much quoted anecdote which illustrates the fog of ignorance among senior officers of even their destination, let alone what was expected of them when they arrived, involved Lt Col F.A. Greer, Commanding Officer of the 6th Royal Irish Fusiliers. On board the destroyer taking them to Gallipoli he was informed by the ship’s Commander that he was prohibited from giving the Colonel any information about his destination until midnight. ‘At twelve midnight’, according to Greer, ‘I went up again to the bridge and repeated my request. He said, “I have orders to put you ashore at Beach C.” I said, “Where on earth’s that?” “Suvla Bay”, he said. “Where on earth’s that?” I asked. He showed me a chart.’26

At 6.00 am on the morning of 7 August, Brigadier General Hill, commanding the 31st Division reported to Stopford on board the Jonquil. The original plan had been for the entire 10th Division to take the heights of the Kiretch Tepe Sirt. This would have meant landing on the most northerly of the beaches, within Suvla Bay itself, designated A Beach. But, according to John Hargrave ‘near panic’ overtook the naval transport authorities.

Having had enough of A Beach and finding themselves faced by the fearful hazards of landing troops there in broad daylight, they decided to put Hill’s 6,000 10th Division troops ashore at C Beach, below Nibrunesi Point – on the wrong side of the bay. This was fatal.27

Hargrave blames the Navy for not finding an alternative to A beach which was closer to Kiretch Tepe Sirt. They finally did so but only after sending one and a half brigades miles out of their way. They discovered a safer landing place, closer to Suvla Point and called it ‘A West’. It was on that beach that the last of the 10th’s battalions, the 5th Inniskillings, came ashore. Stopford’s instructions to Hill were that, as he was going to have to land near the troops of General Hammersley’s 11th Division, he might as well put his men under Hammersley’s command ‘until the arrival of his own divisional general’. Mahon had, in fact, already arived from Mudros but Stopford was not aware of this. When Mahon did announce his presence he was given three battalions to take Kiretch Tepe Sirt instead of an entire Division. He is reported to have ‘nearly resigned his command there and then’.28 By the end of the day his previously unified command had been scattered across three different battle zones.

Though abetted by the Navy in fouling up the actual landings the subsequent displays of incompetence by the Mediterranean military hierarchy was all its own work. Chronic delays and indecision followed the arrival of the troops. Much of the procrastination had its origins in the lassitude and ineffectual leadership of the Generals but some was undoubtedly due to the change in military culture brought about by almost a year of static trench warfare on the Western Front. Historian Martin Gilbert puts it thus:

The generals hesitated: surprised by such a swift advance. Their minds, fashioned by the warfare on the Western Front, were attuned to ‘victories’ of a hundred yards. A virtually unopposed advance of half a mile bewildered them. The hesitation was decisive and disastrous. The bulk of the force stayed close to the beach, where many men enjoyed an unexpected and relaxing swim. These aquatic pursuits could be seen from Anzac Cove. The tired and dirty Australian and New Zealand troops were not impressed.29

It was this dilly-dallying which, according to the German commander in Gallipoli, Liman van Sanders, proved crucial in the campaign that followed. Even juniors officers on the ground, like Lieutenant Noel Drury of the 6th Dublins could not understand the delay in moving inland.

There has been no fighting all day and the Turks haven’t fired a shot, and are probably rushing up reinforcements and digging new trenches. The men are all talking about the waste of valuable time. We have quite a lot of old soldiers who know a good deal about this sort of war and they are all grousing like blazes, saying we are throwing away any chance and will pay for it later.30

Drury’s assessment was unerringly accurate. The Turks were, indeed, rushing reinforcements to Suvla where, on the day of the landing the British had a numerical superiority of at least 10:1. British inertia began right at the top. Stopford, on the evidence available, was (understandably) delighted that most of his troops had got ashore without mishap. He doesn’t seem to have addressed himself sufficently energetically to what they should do once the beachhead had been established. As John Hargrave observed ‘forty-one hours after the landing the troops had not reached the hills – but they were ashore. The Corps commander himself had not ventured as far as that.’31

They were indeed ashore and doing what came naturally on the Western Front, digging in. Their commanding officers (at various levels) decided to strengthen positions which were under no obvious threat of attack from the retreating Turks. In the following days, when it was already too late, attacks would be pressed home but in clearly inadequate numbers by parched troops against reinforced defenses. During the course of that first day orders had been issued at the top of the hour, countermanded on the half hour and then reinstated at the top of the next hour to the confused and thirsty troops on the beaches. Finally a move was made against Chocolate Hill (though the aptly named Brigadier General Sitwell, of the 11th Division, declined to allow his troops to participate). The 7th Dublins, the 6th Inniskillings and the 5th Irish Fusiliers, were despatched to join the assault, with the 6th Dublins in reserve. However, their landing on C beach meant they were forced to undertake a ridiculous trek around the northern perimeter of the Salt Lake before they could get into position for the attack. They were instructed to ditch their heavy packs after a mile or so. ‘We never saw them again, and of all the possessions we had so anxiously packed in Basingstoke there now remained to us only what we had in our haversacks and pockets.’32 Most of the march was over exposed terrain where they were subjected to shelling. This was at its worst around the area known as ‘The Cut’ where the sea entered the lake itself.

Capt Paddy Tobin was a popular young officer with D Company of the 7th Dublin Fusiliers. In a letter to his father he described the experience of running hard through heavy sand before reaching

a little sheltered bank like the Alps at Dollymount, only not so high, where we rested. Here were collected great numbers of troops huddled together. Well across that neck of land I expected every minute to fall … Shrapnel and high explosives were bursting as frequently as the tick of a clock … I found myself under the bank in a paroxysm of fear, and chattering my prayers between my teeth.33

The CO of the 7th Dublins, Colonel Downing, led by example, frequently exposing himself to shell and shrapnel fire while ushering men across the ‘Cut’. The relative lack of Turkish artillery came to their aid. The Turks did not have enough guns to maintain a constant barrage on one particular spot for any length of time. The shelling settled into a predictable rhythm, a measurable interval elapsing between blasts. Taking advantage of this the men were sent scurrying across in the gap between shell bursts. Some of the Dublin troops, in blackly humourous vein, unofficially renamed the area. ‘Owing to the many casualties this spot was cheerfully dubbed “Dunphy’s Corner” after the place of that name in Dublin where the many funerals of old and young pass on their way to Glasnevin.’34

The bottleneck at ‘Dunphy’s Corner’ had caused a major delay in the movement of the three Irish battalions earmarked for the assault on Chocolate Hill. The hold-up did little to enchance the state of mind of tired, hungry, thirsty and inexperienced troops:

Except for a cup of tea about 3 a.m., and a mouthful hastily swallowed before moving off, they were fasting, and already many of the more improvident had emptied their water-bottles. In addition, these young soldiers who had never seen war before, had been since four in the morning exposed to shrapnel fire, with but little chance either of taking cover or of retaliating. They had seen their comrades fall stricken at their sides without the consolation of knowing that the enemy was suffering to an equal extent.35

This was true, up to a point, but the Turks, with access to the wells in that sector, were not suffering from thirst. The shower of rain at about one o’clock in the afternoon had cooled the area down and provided some short-term relief but the soldiers advancing on Chocolate Hill were already thoroughly dehydrated.

The Turks were well entrenched on Chocolate Hill, which although a mere 160 feet high, rose steeply from the surrounding plain and commanded an excellent view of the advancing Irish battalions. At the outset of their movement, closer to the beach a German officer noted that they had marched ‘bolt upright as though on parade without using cover’.36 As they neared their objective intense rifle and shell fire made this unwise.

The rushes were by platoon after platoon. They had to cross ground which was very open and exposed to machine-gun and rifle fire from Chocolate Hill. It was uncultivated, with a few bushes here and there affording no substantial cover. The troops on the left, however, were able to advance over better ground, as it was much more closely covered with rocks and scrub, resembling the lower slopes of Ticknock.37

It was heavy going for inexperienced troops who had gone rather soft after five weeks on board transport ships or awaiting orders on the Aegean islands.

Frank Laird was not involved in the charge that finally took Chocolate Hill but he was still required to inch his way across the plain towards the outcrop where, ‘we heard for the first time the gentle whisper of enemy bullets over our heads … A young Dublin chap near me at one stopping-place gave a sudden choke, stiffened, and lay dead, shot through the throat.’ Laird had made an agreement with Charles Frederick Ball, Assistant Keeper of the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, that they would stick together. They managed to keep the compact. Others, however, got separated from their units. As the ‘Pals’ dived in and out of gullies and ditches to avoid shrapnel bursts one of their number, identified only as ‘John Willie’ by Laird, was knocked unconscious. When he came to he dutifully continued to advance on his own, in a straight line. His battalion, however, had wheeled right while he was unconscious so he found himself between the British and Turkish lines. He didn’t manage to extricate himself until after dark!38

Among the officers ducking and diving through the scrub was Major Tippet of the 7th Dublins, a man who had served for years in the old Dublin City Militia and who, latterly, had been employed as a political agent in an English constituency. Alongside him was Paddy Tobin who was slowed down by a bullet in the triceps. ‘I had to stop for a minute or two to put on my field dressing, and here I’m sorry to say the Major went on ahead, and I lost him pro tem.’39 As Tobin found out later he had, in fact, lost Tippet permanently. The latter was killed as he went forward, shot in the head. Another significant casualty was Lt Ernest Julian, the Reid Professor of Law at Trinity College. He died on 8 August, of wounds received in the Chocolate Hill assault.