13 March 1916 : sailed from Port Said to Marseilles for service in France.
The 1st Battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers on the 1st of July 1916, was part of the same 29th Division from Gallipoli which was in a sector right beside the 36th (Ulster) Division. The 1st Dublins faced the Hawthorn Ridge at Beaumont Hamel. Since they came back from the Dardanelles, the 1st Dublin Fusiliers had been brought back up to battalion strength, i.e. 43 officers and 1066 men of other ranks. It was with this strength that they attacked on the 1st of July. At 7.20am the large mine at Hawthorn Ridge in front of the 1st Battalion was exploded. The main attack did not start until 7.30am which gave the German defenders time to occupy the mine crater. The 2nd Royal Fusiliers and the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers went over the top in the first wave. The Dubs were to follow and assault the German second-line system. The first wave was cut down by machine gunfire and progress through the trenches to the front line was hampered. Two companies went over the top but the barbed wire was only cut at intervals of about 40 yards, upon which the German machine guns were trained. Very few got beyond the British wire and the attack was halted at noon.
The 2nd Battalion was attached to the 4th division with 31 officers and 870 other ranks. Three companies attacked at 9am, just one battalion north of the 1st Battalion. They came under heavy fire from Beaumont-Hamel. The attack was called off five minutes later but they were still subject to enemy fire. An order to resume the attack was renewed at noon but only 60 men could be found. Out of the 23 officers and 480 men who left the assembly trenches 14 officers and 311 men had become casualties. The attack was halted.
The following is the casualty listing for the 1st Dublins on the 1st of July 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.
Killed in action Wounded Missing
Officers 4 7 1
Other Ranks 18 125 65
One Officer of the 2nd Dublins, named 2nd Lieut. Damino travelled from America to join the Dubs and died of wounds on the 2nd of July 1916.
Another sad casualty that day was Capt. George Stanton, R.A.M.C., the brother of Lieut. Bob Stanton killed in Suvla in August 1915. George had qualified in Medicine in Trinity on the 1st of July 1915 when Bob had just left for the Dardanelles. He received a wound to the stomach and was sent back to England for abdominal surgery, but he died in August 1916. His body was brought back to Cork to be buried in the family plot, unlike Bob who never came home. The War Office insisted that Mr. and Mrs. Stanton pay for the transport of George's body home. George was buried with full military honours with a military band and company from the Dublin Fusiliers. The gun carriage carrying George's body passed through the streets of Cork draped in the Union Jack. His father said of George, 'He had all the virtues of ten generations and none of their vices.' The effect George's death had on his father was devastating. He died in 1919, leaving his wife Kate to look after the remaining family. As a footnote to George and Bob Stanton, Tom Stanton, a twin brother of George and a Trinity Doctor as well, joined up in January 1917. He survived and served in World War Two. He survived that war also and returned to live Ireland. Alice, his sister joined a VAD unit in England and went to Arras in France. She was the victim of a German Gas attack. Alice returned to Ireland after the war. She was awarded the General Service medal and a Victory medal which were conferred upon her by the Chairperson of the joint women's VAD Committee on the 31st of May 1921. Alice trained as a masseusse and worked in Cork until she died in 1950. She never married.
One of those who went missing from the 1st Battalion on the 1st of July was Private Albert Rickman. The bloodbath that Pte. Rickman had witnessed was too much for him and he left his post. He was missing until the 20th of July when he was arrested in communications trenches. Six and a half weeks passed before he was brought to trial, found guilty of desertion and was shot at dawn on the 15th of September. No officer represented him at the court martial. The same fate was suffered by twenty three other Irishmen.
There is a memorial to the dead of the 36th (Ulster) Division near Thiepval. It is in the form of a tower identical to Helen's Tower at Clandeboye, Co. Down where part of the Division was trained. It holds the names of 2,000 Ulstermen killed at the Battle of the Somme.
Irish battalions serving in other divisions took part in the attack on July1. The 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers, veterans of Gallipoli, went into action in a sector neighbouring the 36th. They had 147 casualties (22 killed) and 64 missing. The 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers were in the second wave of the attack, going into battle with 23 officers and 480 other ranks: 14 officers and 311 other ranks were casualties. The 1st Royal Irish Rifles, 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, 1st and 2nd Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, 2nd Royal Irish Regiment and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Tyneside Irish Battalions of the Northumberland Fusiliers fought on that day.
Royal Dublin Fusiliers 1st Battalion
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IRISH BATTALIONS: DOWNLOAD TEXT - BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 1916 (PART 1) & NATIONALISTS AT THE SOMME
The Somme: By the beginning of 1916, the Allies had come to the conclusion that trench warfare was getting nowhere. In January 1916, in an effort to end the war, the Allies decided upon a big push. The site chosen for this push was along the river Somme. The main burden of the attack was to be borne by the new British Fourth Army under the command of Brigadier General Rawlinson. Fourteen British divisions were to attack on a fourteen mile front. The plan was to bombard the German lines for several days, kill as many Germans as possible in the process, and simply walk across no-man's land and take the enemy trenches. General Rawlinson assured his Corps commanders that, ‘nothing could exist at the conclusion of the bombardment in the area covered by it.’
On the 24th of June 1916, the battle of the Somme began with the British bombardment of the German lines. Over 1.7 million shells were fired. Many of the shells fired were duds and of light calibre. An immense strain was put on the gun crews, the 4.5 inch howitzer crew called themselves ‘The Suicide Club’, so frequent were the explosions of defective shells. Just like the 16th (Irish) Division's baptism in Hulluch back on the 27th of April, the 36th (Ulster) Division was now to suffer similar tragic consequences.
The task assigned to the Ulstermen was to attack a 3000 yards front, the target of which was known as the Schwaben Redoubt. It was a parallelogram of trenches, dugouts and fortified machine gun posts lying south of the Ancre River on the high ground overlooking the river. There was a fortified concrete bunker which, like a gigantic iceberg, went twenty to thirty feet into the earth. It had a network of tunnels with telephone communications leading out from the centre linked to machine gun emplacements. Within these tunnels the Germans waited, prayed and survived this bombardment. The mental torture suffered by the Germans below the earth must have been unbearable from the fear of being buried alive. They knew that the barrage would last a few days, the end of which they could come out and face the men who put them through this torture. The bombardment lasted five days. On the 30th of June, the night before the ‘Big Push’ the Ulstermen were in Thiepval Wood, each man frightened, nervous and alone with his thoughts.
The only thing I can compare it with is like waiting for someone to die. You know it's coming and you wish to God it was over and done with. You smoke fag after fag, took sips of water, oiled the rifle, did everything over and over again. … The men, all of them, looked an odd colour, tired and drawn, like people done out. There was one fellow who took off and put on his tin hat until another man shouted at him for Christ's sake to stop it.
At 07:00 am on Saturday the 1st of July 1916, the Ulstermen in the trenches received their traditional issue of rum. Many men in the Ulster Division were teetotallers and did not drink their share leaving some men to get double or triple their share. By 07:30, the bombardment and gunfire had ceased and some of the Ulster Division battalions had advanced under the cover of smoke into no-man’s land just before zero hour. There were a few moments of silence and stillness before the Officers' whistles were blown and the men rose to their feet to commence the walk to the German parapet. The word was to walk, to run was a sign of fear that the enemy would sense. A journalist with ‘The Times' watched in fascination, ‘when I saw the men emerge through the smoke and form up as if on parade, I could hardly believe my eyes.’ They walked, they did not run or charge, but walked into the German machine guns who had been waiting for their turn to kill. What followed was absolute carnage. After two days of fighting the Ulster Division had 5,500 casualties, dead, wounded or missing. The total British casualties for the first day of the battle of the Somme was approx. 60,695 which included 19,240 dead. It was the biggest loss of human life the British had ever suffered in battle. One chap who did survive and was later killed by the IRA in the War of Independence was Major W.J. Peacock of the 11th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.
A young officer in the 9th Royal Irish Rifles (West Belfast UVF), William Montgomery wrote to his father of the effects the battle had on the 9th Rifles:
Mother would have cried and quite possibly you also when I called the remnant of my company to attention … not a few of the men cried and I cried. A hell of an hysterical exhibition it was. It is a very small company now. I took one hundred and fifteen other ranks and four officers (including myself) into action. I am the only officer and only thirty four other ranks are now with me.
To see the ground gained by the attack, 'One needs a magnifying glass and a large scale map.' Ulster had many heroes on the 1st of July. The highest award for bravery to be given to all ranks in the British army is the Victoria Cross. On the 1st of July 1916, four V.C’s were awarded to the men of the Ulster Division. They were Eric N.F. Bell of the 9th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, killed in action. Lieutenant Geoffrey Cather, of the 9th Royal Irish Rifles, also killed in action. His Victoria Cross medal was donated to the Regimental Museum of the Royal Irish Fusiliers (The Faughs) in Armagh by his family. William Frederick Mc Fadzean, of the 14th Royal Irish Rifles made a heroic sacrifice by throwing himself over a box of grenades which were about to explode in a crowded trench. His Victoria Cross was donated to the Regimental Museum of the Rifles in Belfast. Finally Robert Quigg, a Rifleman with the 14th Royal Irish Rifles, survived the Somme and indeed the remainder of the war. He died in 1953 and his medal is in the Regimental Museum of the Rifles in Belfast.
The 36th (Ulster) Division was practically wiped out. The fact that it was raised on a comrades or Pals basis added a further tragedy. On the 11th of July 1916, the 36th (Ulster) Division left Picardy. They were a very different body of men from the one that arrived in France many months previously. They would never be the same again. Villages and townlands throughout that part of Ulster from where the Division was recruited, were like the streets of Dublin in April and May of 1915, shattered with grief. In Derry, ‘the women were out on the streets, screaming and crying, some homes had lost more than one man. It was … just terrible.’
In the decades that followed the Ulster Division's day on the Battle of the Somme, the words Thiepval, Ancre, and Somme would be embroidered onto Orange Banners. In the years that followed in Ireland, the image of the Somme would be monopolised in Northern Ireland as wholly Protestant and Unionist with no recognition as to the role that the other Irish men and women played in it. Regrettably, the memory of the men from the South of Ireland and the Nationalist men from Northern Ireland who took part in the Battle of the Somme on the 1st of July would be lost between the extremes of Unionism and Nationalism.
The 1st Battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers on the 1st of July 1916, was part of the same 29th Division from Gallipoli which was in a sector right beside the 36th (Ulster) Division. The 1st Dublins faced the Hawthorn Ridge at Beaumont Hamel. Since they came back from the Dardanelles, the 1st Dublin Fusiliers had been brought back up to battalion strength, i.e. 43 officers and 1066 men of other ranks. It was with this strength that they attacked on the 1st of July. At 7.20am the large mine at Hawthorn Ridge in front of the 1st Battalion was exploded. The main attack did not start until 7.30am which gave the German defenders time to occupy the mine crater. The 2nd Royal Fusiliers and the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers went over the top in the first wave. The Dubs were to follow and assault the German second-line system. The first wave was cut down by machine gunfire and progress through the trenches to the front line was hampered. Two companies went over the top but the barbed wire was only cut at intervals of about 40 yards, upon which the German machine guns were trained. Very few got beyond the British wire and the attack was halted at noon.
The 2nd Battalion was attached to the 4th division with 31 officers and 870 other ranks. Three companies attacked at 9am, just one battalion north of the 1st Battalion. They came under heavy fire from Beaumont-Hamel. The attack was called off five minutes later but they were still subject to enemy fire. An order to resume the attack was renewed at noon but only 60 men could be found. Out of the 23 officers and 480 men who left the assembly trenches 14 officers and 311 men had become casualties. The attack was halted.
The following is the casualty listing for the 1st Dublins on the 1st of July 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.
Killed in action Wounded Missing
Officers 4 7 1
Other Ranks 18 125 65
One Officer of the 2nd Dublins, named 2nd Lieut. Damino travelled from America to join the Dubs and died of wounds on the 2nd of July 1916.
Another sad casualty that day was Capt. George Stanton, R.A.M.C., the brother of Lieut. Bob Stanton killed in Suvla in August 1915. George had qualified in Medicine in Trinity on the 1st of July 1915 when Bob had just left for the Dardanelles. He received a wound to the stomach and was sent back to England for abdominal surgery, but he died in August 1916. His body was brought back to Cork to be buried in the family plot, unlike Bob who never came home. The War Office insisted that Mr. and Mrs. Stanton pay for the transport of George’s body home. George was buried with full military honours with a military band and company from the Dublin Fusiliers. The gun carriage carrying George’s body passed through the streets of Cork draped in the Union Jack. His father said of George, ‘He had all the virtues of ten generations and none of their vices.’ The effect George’s death had on his father was devastating. He died in 1919, leaving his wife Kate to look after the remaining family. As a footnote to George and Bob Stanton, Tom Stanton, a twin brother of George and a Trinity Doctor as well, joined up in January 1917. He survived and served in World War Two. He survived that war also and returned to live Ireland. Alice, his sister joined a VAD unit in England and went to Arras in France. She was the victim of a German Gas attack. Alice returned to Ireland after the war. She was awarded the General Service medal and a Victory medal which were conferred upon her by the Chairperson of the joint women’s VAD Committee on the 31st of May 1921. Alice trained as a masseusse and worked in Cork until she died in 1950. She never married.
One of those who went missing from the 1st Battalion on the 1st of July was Private Albert Rickman. The bloodbath that Pte. Rickman had witnessed was too much for him and he left his post. He was missing until the 20th of July when he was arrested in communications trenches. Six and a half weeks passed before he was brought to trial, found guilty of desertion and was shot at dawn on the 15th of September. No officer represented him at the court martial. The same fate was suffered by twenty three other Irishmen.
There is a memorial to the dead of the 36th (Ulster) Division near Thiepval. It is in the form of a tower identical to Helen’s Tower at Clandeboye, Co. Down where part of the Division was trained. It holds the names of 2,000 Ulstermen killed at the Battle of the Somme.
A tragedy of errors - Nationalist Ireland on The Somme: The loyalist men of Ulster had played their part in the terrible drama of the Somme in early July. The months of July and August along the Somme valley were days of attack and counter attack, advance and retreat, success followed by failure, i.e. stalemate. Thousands people had lost their lives in vain.
In Ulster, the words Thiepval, Somme, Ancre are familiar to Protestant school children. The words Ginchy and Guillemont carry no significance at all to school children in the Republic. In September 1916, it was now the turn of the Nationalists of Ireland to enter on to the stage at the Somme. The village of Guillemont lay north of the Somme near the town of Albert. It was well fortified by German concrete machine gun posts. Several times during the campaign it was attacked and failed to be taken. On the 1st of September 1916, the 47th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division attacked the village. The 47th brigade was made up of men from the 6th Royal Irish Regiment, the 6th Connaught Rangers, the 7th Leinsters and the 8th Munster Fusiliers.
The shelling of the village began at 8:15 am and many of the shells dropped short. The 6th Connaughts, under the command of Lieut. Col. Jack Lenox-Conyngham, suffered two hundred casualties before they left their trenches. Today it would be called ‘friendly fire.’ In the attack, the 16th (Irish) Division won their first Victoria Cross. Lieut. J.V. Holland aged twenty seven, one of eight children from Athy, Co. Kildare, was a former officer in the National Volunteers, and was now with the 7th Leinsters. He was nicknamed ‘Tin Belly’, as he had previously served in the 2nd Life Guards. Holland led the charge of the Leinster bombers into the village of Guillemont. Taking a gamble, he led his men ahead of the British barrage and caught the Germans by surprise. Apparently he had laid a bet with one of his fellow officers that he would be the first man over the top when the whistle blew. He survived the war, seeing service in WW2 before retiring to Tasmania.
A war correspondent of the ‘Daily Chronicle’ reported:
The charge of the Irish troops through Guillemont was one of the most astonishing feats of the war, almost too fast in its impetuosity … a wild and irresistible assault.
The Irish troops the reporter was talking about were in fact the 6th Battalion of the Connaught Rangers. A second Victoria Cross for bravery was won by the Irish that day. It was awarded to a Connaught Ranger by the name of Pte. Thomas Hughes from Coravoo, Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan. His Battalion went over the top screaming and charging at the German lines.
A piper went with them blowing as if his cheeks would burst, though pathetically nothing could be heard of the pipes above the screeching din.
Pte. Hughes won his Victoria Cross for taking a German machine gun post while injured in the leg and returning with the German machine gunners as prisoners. The attack on Guillemont was a success in terms of gaining their objective. Over three hundred German prisoners were taken. However, out of an Irish Division of 2,400 men,1,147 were killed, wounded or missing, one of whom was the Commanding Officer of the 6th Connaught Rangers, Col. Jack Lenox-Conyngham. He was fifty-four years of age when he died. He came from an Ulster family who were active in setting up and running the U.V.F. in Co. Derry. Ironically, he died commanding a battalion which was mainly composed of Belfast Nationalists.
Lieut. Thomas Kettle, MP.
On the night of the 4th of September, in a trench before the attack on Guillemont, an officer of the 9th Battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers wrote a poem to his daughter named Betty, with the title, ‘To my daughter Betty, the gift of God.’
In wiser days my darling rosebud, blown
to beauty proud as was your mother's prime,
In that desired, delayed, incredible time,
You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,
And the dear heart that was your baby throne,
To dice with death. And, oh! They'll give you rhyme
And reason; some will call the thing sublime,
And some decry it in a knowing time.
So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh, with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,
But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,
And for the secret Scripture of the poor.
He was the Nationalist M.P., Lieut. Tom Kettle. His story is the story of Nationalist Ireland's participation in the Great War. He was born in Artane, North Dublin in 1880. He was educated first at the Christian Brothers school in Richmond Street and in 1894 went to Clongowes Wood College. In 1897, he went to UCD in which he was Auditor of the Literary and Historical Society. In 1902, he entered The King's Inns and was called to the Bar in 1905. After his brother died and due to ill-health, he dropped out of college for a year. He protested against The Boer War and the playing of ‘God Save the King,’ at the graduation ceremonies of the Royal University stating, ‘We desire to protest against the unjust, wasteful and inefficient Government of which that air is a symbol.’
He was elected the first president of the Young Ireland Branch of the United Irish League and in 1905 became editor of ‘The Nationalist’ newspaper. In 1906, he was nominated to contest the East Tyrone seat for the House of Parliament and narrowly won. At an election speech in 1910, he told the gathering that ‘he preferred German invasion to British finance.’ This was from the same man who just four years later would wear the uniform of a British soldier. Ironically, before the war broke out in August 1914, the Germans seemed to be very popular with the alternatives in Irish Politics. The Unionist leader, Sir James Craig, in January 1911, said that the German ruler would be preferable to John Redmond. In 1909, Kettle was appointed Professor of National Economics at UCD and wrote a paper on the Economics of Nationalism. In 1913 he formed a peace committee to try and end the bitter labour dispute between Larkin and the employers.
He was prominent in organising the Irish National Volunteers and in fact was in Belgium secretly buying rifles for the Volunteers when he witnessed the German invasion. He was a war correspondent for the Daily News in August and September 1914. It was the witnessing of German brutality that drove Tom Kettle into the British Army. His wife wrote;
He was horrified at the philosophical lie at the back of all this greed of territory and power … he was horrified by the thought that if Germany won, Belgium would be what he had mourned in Ireland - a nation in chains.
He passionately believed in reconciliation with Ulster. In the final letter to his brother he wrote; 'Out of this disastrous war, we may pluck, as France and Belgium have plucked, the precious gift of national unity'. In a letter to his wife he wrote; ‘One duty does indeed lie before me, that of devoting myself to the working out of a reconciliation between Ulster and Ireland. I feel God speaking to our hearts in that sense out of this terrible war.’ In writing his Political Testament in 1916, he had an idea he would be killed. He makes a dying plea for the realisation of his dream.
Had I lived, I had meant to call my next book on the relations of Ireland and England: The Two Fools: A Tragedy of Errors. It has needed all the folly of England and all the folly of Ireland to produce the situation in which our unhappy country is now involved. I have mixed much with Englishmen and with Protestant Ulstermen and I know that there is no real or abiding reason for the gulfs, saltier than the sea, that now dismember the natural alliance of both of them with us Irish Nationalists. It needs only a Fiat Lux, of a kind very easily compassed, to replace the unnatural with the natural. In the name, and by the seal of the blood given in the last two years, I ask for Colonial Home Rule for Ireland-a thing essential in itself and essential as a prologue to the reconstruction of the Empire. Ulster will agree. And I ask for the immediate withdrawal of martial law in Ireland and an amnesty for all Sinn Fein prisoners. If this war has taught us anything it is that great things can be done only in a great way.
On the night of the 8th of September, Kettle wrote to his wife, his brother and friends sharing with them his fears of dying and his ambitions for Ireland should he survive. To his brother he wrote of his beloved Dublin Fusiliers.
We are moving up tonight into the battle of the Somme. The bombardment, destruction and bloodshed are beyond all imagination, nor did I ever think the valour of simple men could be quite as beautiful as that of my Dublin Fusiliers. I have had two chances of leaving them - one on sick leave and one to take a staff job. I have chosen to stay with my comrades.
In a letter written to his wife shortly after he arrived in France, he spoke of the men in the Dublin Fusiliers with whom he served.
What impresses and moves me above all, is the amazing faith, patience and courage of the men. To me it is not a sort of looking down on but rather a looking up to appreciation of them. I pray and pray and am afraid, but they go quietly and heroically on. God make me less inferior to them. … I am calm and happy but desperately anxious to live … the big guns are coughing and smacking their shells … the men are grubbing and an odd one is writing home. Somewhere the Choosers of the Slain are touching, as in our Norse story they used to touch, with invisible wands those who are to die.
The next day on the 9th of September, Tom Kettle was killed leading his men of the Dublin Fusiliers in the attack on the village of Ginchy. One young eighteen-year old 2nd Lieut. who was with Tom Kettle when he was killed, was Lieut. Emmet Dalton, who won the Military Cross that day and would later fight against the British Army in the War of Independence. He later became Director of Munitions and Training in the Irish Army. He said of Ginchy that it was a, ‘Sad, glorious victory with terrible losses.’ Another officer of the 8th Dublins that day was Captain Jack Hunt, who like Dalton ended up with Michael Collins and later was one of the founding fathers of the Irish Army into which he recruited many ex-Dublin Fusiliers after the war.
In Dublin, a committee comprising of friends of Tom Kettle raised money a bust. It was completed in 1921 and the committee planned to place it in St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin. Its placement was held up by the disturbed political situation in Ireland and a lengthy strike at the quarry where the stone came from in Stradbally, Co. Laois. In March 1927, a date was set for the bust to be officially unveiled but the Commissioners of Public Works intervened and objected to the use of the words, ‘Killed in France,’ being used on the inscription. They also objected to the words in the last three lines of Kettle’s famous sonnet: ‘Died not for flag nor King, nor Emperor / But for a dream born in a herdsman’s shed / And for the secret scripture of the poor.’ However in the end, the Commissioners withdrew their objection to the later quotation, but, ‘Killed in France,’ was replaced by, ‘Killed at Ginchy 9th September 1916.’ Inscribed on the bust is ‘Tom Kettle, Irish patriot, died in Ginchy 1916'. [Betty (Dooley) died in a Dublin nursing home on the 20th of December 1996 and she was buried in the family plot in Swords, Co. Dublin.]
On the 9th of October 1916, the 2nd battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers were not far from Ginchy, they were in a place just east of Trones Wood. The battalion diarist wrote:
Every place is now very desolate owing to the previous bombardment. The camp is of tents and owing to the recent heavy rains - in a very muddy condition.
The front line lay less than a mile due east of Le Transloy. It was a misty morning and the attack was delayed in the hope that visibility would improve. At 2:30pm on the 23rd of October, the ‘Old Toughs’ went over the top in four waves. Their objective was a German machine gun position known as Gun Pits to the east of Lesboeufs. It was a strongly built fortification and was defended with four machine guns. Fifty men of the 2nd Dublins along with the Seaforth Highlanders had tried to take it ten days earlier with a bayonet charge and had failed. On this occasion, however, the whole battalion attacked and little opposition was encountered until the charge was about ten yards from the German lines. It was if the German machine gunners were waiting to get their target in very close range. The leading line of the charge was caught in the machine gun fire. They lay down and managed to crawl into the trenches. Hand to hand fighting followed with all the barbarism associated with such horrific fighting. Gun Pits was taken by the Dublins and in the process three officers and fourteen other ranks were killed. Five officers and 124 other ranks were wounded. Thirty six men were missing. The bulk of the wounded were the result of the hand to hand fighting. In terms of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers action outside the village of Lesboeufs, a little bit of history was made: the regiment won its first Victoria Cross of the Great War. It was awarded to a Glaswegian from Springburn named Sgt. Robert Downie, No 11213. He was member of B Company. The London Gazette of the 25th of November 1916 read:
For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty in attack. When most of the officers had become casualties, this non-commissioned officer, utterly regardless of personal danger, moved about under heavy fire and reorganised the attack, which had been temporarily checked. At the critical moment he rushed forward alone, shouting, ‘Come on the Dubs’. This stirring appeal met with immediate response and the line rushed forward at his call. Sergeant Downie accounted for several of the enemy and in addition, captured a machine gun, killing the team.
By all accounts, it was a bloody encounter, so much so that Sgt. Downie never spoke about the day to anyone again, not even his own family. When he returned to Springburn in Glasgow, he was given a Civic Reception at the Town Hall. In the evening he was given a special reception by the United Irish League and was given a gold watch by his former school and a purse containing treasury notes. He left the army in March 1919 and in addition to the V.C., he also was awarded the Military Medal and the Mons Medal, as well as the Russian Order of St. George. In addition, he was mentioned in despatches twice. He was an extremely modest man, who when asked how he won these medals, would either answer, ‘I shot the cook’, or, ‘It wasn’t me, it was my brother.’ Bob Downie married Miss Ivy Sparks. They had three children, one of whom died. His father came from Donegal. Bob was a Roman Catholic and was a devout supporter of Glasgow Celtic. After the war, he worked as groundsman at Celtic Park and his picture hung on the wall in the Director's office along side Jock Stein. He died on the 18th of April 1968 at the age of 74.
The Battle of the Somme had been raging since early July. The final battalion of the Dublins to enter the closing act of this tragedy was the 10th Battalion who were attached to the 2nd Royal Marines. The assignment of the 10th Dubs to a Naval Division and not the 16th (Irish) Division caused much concern amongst members of the Irish Nationalist Party. The leader, John Redmond, claimed that drafts for the Irish Division had been diverted to other units and that the 16th Division’s wounded were not sent back to their own battalions upon recovery. According to Redmond, the 10th Dubs was, ‘One of the finest battalions ever raised in Ireland.’ The possible cause for this assignment of the 10th Dubs to a Naval Division must be analysed against the background of the unfounded mistrust the British High Command had of Irish regiments following the Easter Rebellion. This mistrust of Irish regiments had no foundation. No Irish regiment ever mutinied during the Great War, they stuck to their task in many cases to the bitter end with little or no recognition for their endeavours, an example being the 2nd Royal Munster Fusilier’s stand at Etreaux in August 1914. The only experience the 10th Dubs had at been shot at was from the Irish Volunteers in Dublin during the rebellion of Easter 1916. It wasn’t until the 23rd of June 1917 that the 10th Dublin Fusiliers were attached to the 48th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division.
On the 13th of November 1916, the 10th Dubs had a battalion strength of 24 officers and 469 other ranks. They were posted in the Hamel section. On the 12th of November, X Day as it is recorded in the battalion diary, the battalion assembled outside the village of Engelbelmer which is approx two miles west of Hamel. They spent the night in the open. The next day they attacked the Germans facing them in the Hamel section. Four months earlier on the 1st of July, the 1st Battalion of the Dubs had faced the Germans at Beaumont Hamel approximately two miles north of Hamel.
At 5:45 am on the November the 13th 1916, the assault commenced over a depressing and dripping battlefield that was shrouded in fog. This effectively covered the movement of the troops who burst upon the surprised Germans. Across the River Ancre units of the 63rd (R.N.) Division battered their way into the German front line. They suffered heavy losses due to machine gun fire. In a driving snow storm which turned to sleet and then rain, the 10th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, a battalion of shopkeepers, supported by two tanks which stuck in the chalky mud, rounded up 400 prisoners. It was at this point that the Battle of the Somme ended in mutual exhaustion.
In terms of ground and objectives gained, the attack was a success. They had pushed on to take Beaucourt approximately two miles north of Hamel, and there the advance stopped. The 10th Dubs had entered the drama of the Somme in the closing act. Beaumont Hamel had at last been taken by the 51st (Highland) Division. What began in July with an offensive of high hopes ended in November in mud and misery. On the 13th of November 1916, the shopkeepers and bank clerks of the 10th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, faced the Germans at Hamel. They set out with a battalion strength of twenty four officers and 469 other ranks. At 8:00am on the 16th of November, the battalion cleared the trenches and went into billets on the Engelbelmer - Martinsart Road arriving at 2:30pm. They suffered 51% losses, i.e. 242 men killed or wounded or missing. The statistics read as follows. Officers killed in action, six; Officers wounded, nine. (2nd Lieut. Boyd suffered shell shock but remained at duty). Other ranks killed in action, thirty two; Died of wounds, three; Wounded 132. Shell shock, three; Missing, fifty seven.
As the First Battle of the Somme ended in November 1916, each side was preparing for a new offensive in 1917. The British dead on the Somme in the four months since the 1st of July, amounted to 95,675. The French ‘Somme’ toll was 50,729. The total number of Allied dead on the Somme was 146,404. The German death toll was 164,055.