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IRISH BATTALIONS: DOWNLOAD TEXT - PASSCHENDAELE

Passchendaele, the Pig Sty: The success which the Irish brigades had at Messines under General Plumer in June 1917 was soon to be shattered just two months later at the 3rd Battle of Ypres, or as some called it, Passchendaele. In July 1917, the 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster) Divisions had been transferred to General Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army. The Irish soldiers had acquired a notoriety for their fighting spirit after Messines. Their reward for this fame was to be transferred to the 5th Army as Storm Troopers. The move was to prove fatal and spell the ultimate annihilation of the Irish Brigades in this war. Since Messines had been taken, the next stage in Gough’s overall plan was to take Ypres.

Synonymous with the third Battle of Ypres was rain. It began to fall at the end of July 1917 and continued through most of August, the result of which was to turn the countryside into a quagmire. Lieut. Glanville of the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers described the scenes; 'mud awful, no trenches, no shelter, no landmarks, all movement by night.’ The objective of the 16th (Irish) Division was to take the high ground around the village of Frezenberg. The target for the Dublin Fusiliers was the Belgian village of Langemarck. The conditions in which the men had to eat, sleep, live and eventually die in were appalling. Fr. Willie Doyle described one such front line Aid Post belonging to the Dublins as a ‘Pig Sty.’ He wrote, ‘How can a human thing live like this?’ Most of the Chaplains of the First World War worked as assistants in the Field Aid Stations run by the Royal Army Medical Corps. Roman Catholic Chaplains were generally in the front line to administer the last rites. He insisted on being up in the front line trenches with the Dubs. Around the 8th of August, following a German shelling of the Dubs line, Fr. Doyle found one Fusilier burnt by mustard gas. ‘His hands and face a mess of blue Phosphorus flames smoking horribly in the darkness.’

At 4:45am on the 16th of August, exhausted and weak from previous fighting, the 48th and 49th Irish Brigades launched their attack, with the 47th brigade in reserve. During the previous few days, there were many casualties sustained from shell fire, gas poisoning and sickness - the latter due to very adverse weather conditions, rain having fallen continuously during the previous four days and nights.

The 7th Royal Irish Rifles and the 9th Royal Dublin Fusiliers led the attack, with the 2nd Dublins in support. Some little time before zero hour on the 16th of August, the Germans had opened up a heavy barrage in which the 9th Dublins and 7th Faughs lost approx. 65% of the men in each battalion before they even began their attack. As soon as they attacked, the 48th Brigade was badly cut up by machine gun fire from German machine gun positions at the Potsdam, Vampire and Borry Farms which were in direct line of the advancing Brigade. B Company under Captain Byrne of the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers was practically annihilated, only two officers and three other ranks survived. The attack was carried out on open wet and muddy ground. A message had come back to the 2nd Dublins headquarters at Frezenberg Redoubt that the German machine gun post at Vampire Farm contained five machine guns. At 9:30 am, C Company of the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, in accordance with orders from the Brigade, moved up in support of the 9th Dublin Fusiliers who had suffered severely from intense machine gun fire and succeeded in getting to within one hundred yards of Bit Work which was their objective. Only two officers and ten men remained, the rest of the battalion were either killed or wounded. This was the end of the 9th Dublin Fusiliers. 

On the 17th of August, the 48th Brigade moved back to their camp at Vlamertinghe. The 1st, 2nd, 8th and 9th Battalions of the Dublin Fusiliers, along with the 7th Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, lost eighty two officers and 1,550 men of other ranks.

The 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers lost 50 per cent of their officers and men alone on the 16th and 17th of August, i.e. approx. 353 men. Interestingly, the records state, ‘Shell-shocked - 2.’ The battle field around the Frezenberg Ridge was described by Denys Reitz, an officer in the 7th Royal Irish Rifles:

On every side lay relics of the recent battle: broken rifles, machine-guns and mortars, blood-stained tatters of clothing and out in no-man’s land were withered corpses that could not be fetched in and several derelict tanks. Occasionally the rampart for yards on end was constructed of dead men walled in by sandbags. The trenches were crawling with rats.

By the middle of August 1917, the Irish Brigades were virtually wiped out. The 36th (Ulster) Division had lost 3,585 men and the 16th (Irish) Division had lost 4,231. They had been in the line for a considerable length of time under heavy and continuous shell fire. The 36th (Ulster) had been there for thirteen days prior to their attack. Even before they went over the top, the 16th (Irish) Division had suffered two thousand casualties. It attacked with a strength of three hundred and thirty men per battalion instead of the regulation seven hundred and fifty men. Between the 1st and 20th of August 1917, the 16th (Irish) Division had suffered a loss of 221 officers and 4,064 other ranks; 2,167 casualties occurring between 16th and 18th of August.

One of these statistics was Fr. Willie Doyle, S.J. Fr. Willie, as he was well known, was born at Melrose, Dalkey, Co. Dublin on the 3rd of March 1873. He was the youngest of seven children, four boys and three girls. He worked as a Jesuit priest in the poor missions in Dublin and Limerick before the outbreak of war. He was on the teaching staff at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare and was the first editor of their journal, ‘The Clongownian’. He was a deeply religious man.

His strength of faith convinced him that he was surrounded by some kind of Divine protection and nothing would get through to hurt him. He once wrote, ‘I wish to die a martyr’s death - but am I willing to live a martyr’s life.’ On the 15th of December 1915, Fr. Willie noted in his diary, 'Received my appointment from the War Office as Chaplain to the 16th Division. Fiat voluntas tua.’ He had originally been assigned to the 8th Royal Irish Fusiliers. Early in December 1916, he was transferred from the 8th Royal Irish Fusiliers to the 8th Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

In January 1917, he was awarded a Military Cross for his bravery at the Somme. For various reasons he disliked this distinction. He looked upon it as a gift from God, and gave it to his father. On the 14th of August, he made his last entry in his diary:

I have told you all my escapes dearest father, because I think what I have written will give you the same confidence which I feel that my old armchair up in Heaven is not yet ready.

Two days later he was killed. There was, and still is, some confusion as to how Father Willie was killed. One account tells of him been blown to bits in a bomb shelter. Another account from a Dublin Fusilier by the name of Jimmy O’ Brien, claims that he was with Father Willie when he was shot down beside him. After his death, many Dublin people prayed to him as if he were a saint. He carried his devotion to the care of human tragedy with him to the Western Front. He died at the age of forty four giving aid to a wounded Dublin Fusilier, that fact is common to both accounts of his death. It was an honour within the Regiment to say that you were with Fr. Doyle the day he was killed, perhaps many were, such things legends are made of.

For his bravery and devotion to his men, he was recommended by General Hickie to be awarded the Victoria Cross, it never came. As an indication of the respect Fr. Doyle had amongst the Irishmen from the North and South of Ireland, perhaps the last word on this man should be left to an Ulster Presbyterian written in ‘The Weekly News,’ on the 1st of September 1917:

God never made a nobler soul. Fr. Doyle was a good deal among us. We could not possibly agree with his religious opinions, but we simply worshipped him for other things. He didn’t know the meaning of fear and he did not know what bigotry was. He was as ready to risk his life and take a drop of water to a wounded Ulsterman as to assist men of his own faith and regiment. If he risked his life looking after Ulster Protestant Soldiers once, he did it a hundred times in the last few days … The Ulstermen felt his loss more keenly than anybody, and none were readier to show their marks of respect to the dead hero priest than were our Ulster Presbyterians.

The two Irish Divisions had been shattered at 3rd Ypres. Gough tried to blame them for the failure of the attack. Had he not treated them badly in the weeks preceding the battle, things may have been somewhat different.

From the time they entered the line to the time the battle was over, the 36th and 16th divisions sustained 7,800 casualties, more than fifty per cent of their number. Their sacrifice earned them no gratitude. Haig noted in his diary that Gough,

was not pleased with the action of the Irish divisions … They seemed to have gone forward but failed to keep what they had won … The men are Irish and apparently did not like the enemy’s shelling.

There is evidence that Haig himself held prejudices. In October 1917 he was convinced that the battles of Polygon Wood and Poelcapple had a moral shattering effect on the Germans. Haig was advised by General MacDonagh, Chief of Intelligence at the War Office, that the recent battles did not affect the morale of the Germans. On the 15th of October 1917, Haig’s reply to this analysis was:

I cannot think the War Office Intelligence Dept gives such a wrong picture of the situation except that Gen. MacDonagh (DMI) is a Roman Catholic, and is perhaps unconsciously influenced by information which doubtless reaches him from tainted, i.e. Catholic sources.

Not long before the 1st battalion of the Dublins left the 29th Division to join the 16th (Irish) Division, they ‘volunteered’ to assist in attacking the German lines just outside the village of Langemarck in Flanders on the 4th of October 1915. It seems strange that ordinary men volunteer to possibly die, but, Colonel Wylly’s account in his book, Neill’s Blue Caps  states,

Hearing of this single-battalion attack the ‘Blue Caps’ sent a deputation to the Divisional Commander requesting permission to make one more attack for the honour of the 29th Division, which all ranks were grieved to leave.

The Germans lay across the river Broembeek which runs across the north side of the village. In terms of the 29th Division it was a minor operation, however in terms of the Dublins and two platoons of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, it was nothing of the sort. It was in fact a side show to the main drama which went on further south, better known as the Battle of Broodseinde. The Dublins had to advance 1,000 yards. In their path lay a formidable German blockhouse known as Chinese House. Farther away and more to the left was a Fort on an objective line known as ‘t Goed ter Vesten Farm.' The headquarters of the Dublins was in a house on the eastern side of Langemarck which lay on the road leading out of Langemarck to Poelcappelle. Captain Stair Gillon, the Historian of the 29th Division, wrote of the Dubs that day:

They were in extraordinary fine form. It boded ill for those Germans who confronted the brilliant fighters and far from gentle foes, that Irish troops can show themselves on their day. Undeterred by the usual, inevitable, dripping downpour, under the command of Major A. Moore, D.S.O., they marched up to the front line by companies singing Irish Republican songs, the band in the camp speeding off to the strains of, ‘When Ireland is a Nation.'

(It is quite possible that Captain Gillon, being an officer in the K.O.S.B.’s may have confused this ‘Irish Republican song’ with another tune namely, ‘A Nation Once Again.’) They had reached and held their objective which was the ‘t Goed ter Vesten Farm.' Losses to the Dubs amounted to two officers and thirty other ranks killed, six officers and 127 other ranks wounded and seventeen missing, a total casualty list of 152 all for the sake of the ‘honour of the Division’. It was during this attack that the 1st battalion won their one and only Victoria Cross of the Great War. It was won by an Englishman from Portsmouth by the name of Sergeant James Ockenden. On the day he was an acting Company Sergeant-Major. Captain Gillon wrote:

He saw a platoon officer near him knocked out, and, having identified the machine gun which was holding up the advance, he rushed it. He managed to kill all the crew but one man and him he chased and slew in the open amid the cheers of his comrades - he and they, be it noted, being under fire all the time. Later in the day the same warrior attacked a farm, killed four Germans and took sixteen prisoners.

Jim had already been wounded at V Beach in Gallipoli, he was by now a battle-hardened soldier. Jim Ockenden’s war ended on the 30th of April 1918. He was invalided out of the army. Part of the bullet which struck him at Gallipoli remained in his head; he had also developed T.B. Jim was married during the war and reared a family of three children, one boy named James and two girls named Eileen and Irene. After the war he worked as a crane driver in H.M. Dockyard, Portsmouth. He died on the 27th of August 1966 at the age of 76. In September 1998, Jim Ockenden’s son, James Ockenden and his wife Joyce, attended the opening of the ‘Let Ireland Remember’ exhibition in Dublin. At the opening, James wore his own service medals and his father’s Military Medal and Victoria Cross.

On the 24th of October 1917, the 9th Battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers was disbanded and amalgamated with the 8th Battalion to form a composite battalion named the 8th/9th Battalion. Any surplus went to the 10th Battalion. On the 27th of October, Cardinal Bourne, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, paid a visit to the Irish troops in France. With General Hickie, he inspected the Dublin Fusiliers Brigade at Ervilliers. This was a reconstituted 48th Brigade made up of the 1st, 2nd, 8th, 9th Battalions of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the 7th Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. Since its raising on the 22nd of December 1915, the 9th Dubs had lost four hundred and twenty three men.

On the 24th of October 1914, a young Irish poet enlisted into the 5th Battalion of the Royal Innsikilling Fusiliers at Richmond Barracks. He had been a member of the Gaelic League. He was also a member of the National Volunteers and after the split transferred to the Irish Volunteers. On joining the army he wrote,

Some of the people who know me least imagine that I joined the Army because I knew men were struggling for higher ideals and great empires, and I could not sit idle to watch them make for me a more beautiful world. They are mistaken. I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilisation and I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.

Sentiments very similar in nobility to those of that other Irish poet who died in Flanders, Tom Kettle. Francis Ledwidge, from Slane, Co. Meath was killed working on a road outside the Belgian city of Ypres on the 31st of July 1917, at the age of twenty six. He is buried in Boesinghe Cemetery.

The war in Flanders during the Autumn months of 1917, better known as 3rd Ypres or Passchendaele, cost the Allies 275,000 casualties, including the casualties at Messines. Of these, 70,000 were killed and an unknown number wounded so badly that they could not return to the Front. This would be equivalent to thirty five men dropping every yard gained. The advance in territory was four and a half miles. The Germans suffered 200,000 casualties. The territorial gains made over four months was won back by the Germans in only three days in their March Offensive of 1918. Indeed, at an army commanders’ conference on the 7th of December, Rawlinson deemed  Passchendaele, ‘At present a really untenable position against a properly organised attack.’ Later he told his corps commanders, ‘nothing we can hope to do can make the line now held a really satisfactory defensive position. We must therefore be prepared to withdraw from it, if the Germans show signs of a serious and sustained offensive on this front.’

In the closing months of 1917, the 16th (Irish) Division had some success with the assault on the Tunnel Trench. This operation was to be a diversionary attack for the great Tank offensive against Cambrai which began on the 20th of November. The year closed with mixed emotions within the Irish Divisions. The successes which the Irish had at Guillemont, Ginchy, Wytschaete were in sad contrast to the losses at 3rd Ypres.