Take a trip back to Easter 1916 - with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers
It occured near the German-held village of Hulluch, in France. As the rebellion roared in Dublin, more than 540 men of the Irish Division were killed instantly from the effects of the gas; the remainder would suffer chronic lung and breathing conditions for the rest of their lives.
The timing of this gas attack on April 27 by Bavarian troops was, in an Irish context, very poignant. News of the Easter rebellion in Dublin reached the Irish troops along the western front. Many of the troops were very bitter about what happened. Some, like the poet Francis Ledwidge who served with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, had a certain amount of sympathy with the rebels. Sgt Edward Heapey of the 8th Dublins had come safely through the attack at Hulluch. He was one of the many who wrote home on the issue of Sinn Féin and the effect the rebellion had on the men’s morale and sense of betrayal: ‘I wish I had my way with the Sinn Féiners. I would put every one of them here and make them do some real good fighting and make them realise what war is like.’
Many of the Dublin Fusiliers were worried about the safety of their folks in Dublin. Writing to a young Dublin lady, Pte Joseph Clarke stated: ‘I was sorry to hear of the of the rebel Rising in Ireland, but I hope by the time this letter reaches you, the condition will have changed and things normal again. There is no one more sorry to hear of the Rising than the Irish troops out here. Their whole cry is, if they could only get among them for a few days, the country would not be annoyed with them any more.
‘Some of the men in this Battalion are uneasy about the safety of their people and one or two poor fellows have lost relatives in this scandalous affair. We just have had some men returned off leave and they tell us Dublin is in ruins. It is awfully hard to lose one’s life out here without being shot at home. We of the 2nd Battalion, the Dublins, would ask for nothing better that the rebels should be sent out here and have an encounter with some of their so-called allies, the Germans.
‘These men are pro-German, pure and simple, and no Irish men will be sorry when they get justice meted out to them, which ... should be death by being shot.’
Eugene Sheehy was an officer in the 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers who survived the war to become a legal staff officer in the national army and a judge of the Irish Circuit. His sister Mary Sheehy was married to another Dublins officer, Lieut Tom Kettle MP, who was later killed during the Somme offensive. Eugene’s other sister, Hannah, was married to Francis Skeffington. In hindsight, Eugene wrote about the Irish who joined the British Army and their attitude to the Easter Rising. He was a little more forgiving than Pte Clarke.
‘The Rising in Easter week was a source of heartbreak to me and to the tens of thousands of Irish nationalists who joined the British army. We had done so at the request of our leaders - who were the elected representatives of the people - and the vast majority of the nation applauded our action.’
John Redmond pronounced the Rising a ‘German invasion of Ireland, as brutal, as selfish, as cynical as Germany’s invasion of Belgium’. He contrasted the ‘treason’ in Dublin with the fortitude and loyalty of the Irish troops of the 16th (Irish) Division in France.
German newspapers were aware of the Dublin rebellion and this news travelled to the German lines at the front. One headline read: ‘Irishmen! Heavy uproar in Ireland. English guns are firing on your wives and children.’
The Easter Rising in Dublin occurred roughly one year after the Gallipoli landings and the Gas attack at St Julien. The people who lived in inner city Dublin had not yet recovered from the terrible loss of loved ones resulting from those attacks. News about this latest loss of Irish life at Hulluch had made its way back to Dublin not long after the Rising. Initially, the rebellion and the rebels were unpopular among the people of inner Dublin, where many of the Dublin Fusiliers came from.
The Dublin Fusiliers, along with several other Irish regiments of the British Army, were involved in the early stages of putting down the rebellion when it broke out. The 10th Dublins fought at the Mendicity Institute along Usher’s Quay and the 4th Dublins fought the rebels along the railway line from the Broadstone Railway Station up to the Cabra Bridge. Eleven members of the regiment were killed or died of wounds, one of whom was Lieut Gerald Aloysius Neilan, 10th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, from Mount Harold Terrace, Dublin, who was killed by a sniper on Easter Monday. He was an ex-student of Clongowes Wood College, Co Kildare. His brother took part in the Rising with the Volunteers and was deported to Knutsford Detention Barracks. Lieut Neilan is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
In early November 1917, every Irish regiment, including the Dublin Fusiliers, was moved from Ireland to either England or Scotland, and replaced mainly by English regiments. The British military command in Dublin was worried about guns going over the barrack walls.
In 1996, a maintenance team clearing out a derelict house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, found a British Army death certificate and a press cutting for a Pte Joseph Pender, regimental number 8477, of the 9th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers. The date on the death certificate was April 27, 1916, the date of the gas attack at Hulluch. Joseph was 17 when he died. So, too, was Pte Paddy Byrne, from 19 Summerhill in Dublin, who died alongside him.
Running through the battlefield facing Hulluch stands the magnificent Loos Memorial. All the men listed on the memorial have one thing in common: their bodies were never found. Among those names are Joseph Pender and Paddy Byrne, two young Irish men who died in Easter week 1916.
When the military parade passes the GPO in Dublin this Easter, spare a thought and a place in your heart for these two young lads - they were Irish soldiers too.
Tom Burke
Ayrfield Rd
Ayrfield
Dublin 13
