How many Irishmen........

Snickers Man

...Belgians and Google employees does it take to determine the length of a piece of string?

I've alluded to this initiative elsewhere but this would appear to be the most appropriate forum.

The Irish and Belgian authorities are teaming up with Google to come up with an estimate for how many "Irishmen" died in the First World War. All well and good, but bound to be problematic when we get down to the nitty gritty.

Primary question, on which all else hinges: what's an Irishman?

Somebody born in Ireland, you might think? Well, OK but there is a great tradition of loyalty to the "oul' country" of people born abroad to Irish parents. I have a book entitled "Ireland's Generals of the Second World War" which tells the story of 19 "Irishmen" who rose to the rank of general, or higher in a few cases, in "WWII. Only six of them were born in Ireland and few of the others ever spent any time here at all.

(The six were Tim Pile, Sr John Dill, Nelson Russell, David Dawnay, Frederick Loftus Tottenham and Eric Dorman-Smith. Go on then, how many of you have heard of any of them? )

Then there were the great heroes of the Irish Revolution, like the seven signatories to the Procalmation of the Republic, all of whom were later executed and whose faces gazed down from the walls of every national school in the country when I was a kid. Two of them were born in Britain; namely Tomas Clarke and James Connolly.

As well of course as the fact that many soldiers born in Ireland were no more Irish than the rugby internationals Jamie Heaslip or Brendan Mullin are Israeli. They were both born in Jerusalem for the same reason so many Englishmen were born in Ireland; their father's were on temporary assignment to military duty in those places.

County Kildare has a large number of native sons on the British Army's role of honour. At least part of which is down to the presence of the Curragh Army Headquarters in that county.

If you were to limit the definition of "Irish soldiers" to those born in Ireland, then, you would introduce an error. But if you were to include every soldier born to Irish parents you would be introducing an even bigger one. You could lay claim to a significant proportion of Australian Army casualties, for a start.

A glance at the CWGC records for many of the graveyards in Gallipoli shows an astonishing range of Irish surnames, many of whom died serving with the Anzacs. And the vast majority of whom were born in Australia. This can be verified quite easily because the individual service records, including enlistment papers, for all of these men are viewable online. Sadly, most of the corresponding documents for soldiers of the British Army were destroyed by bombing in WWII. Happily, Australia was out of range of the Luftwaffe.

Whatever number these quys come up with will be wrong. But I hope they honest about defining the parameters which they use to denote their subjects.

mrbrianj

Plenty of Irish regiments in the British numbers at Gallipoli.
I think that one was particularly bad for Paddy!

English figures are 27 thousand plus, Irish figures are 49 thousand plus killed in WW1.

Not all Irish would join Irish regiments though. Anybody resident in England would likely join locally, and there may well be connections (historic or family) with regiments based here but not from here - if you know what I mean.

I think it was a lot more fluid at the time. Its easy to look very black and white now, especially after the political upheaval of independence

Snickers Man

mrbrianj wrote: »

Plenty of Irish regiments in the British numbers at Gallipoli.
I think that one was particularly bad for Paddy!

I've actually done some personal research on Gallipoli and can tell you that approximately 3,000 men were killed in that campaign while serving with Irish regiments. Going by the CWGC records for graveyards and memorials on the peninsula and in cities in neighbouring countries to which many wounded would have been evacuated before succumbing.

All eight of the Irish infantry regiments had at least one battalion in that campaign. There was after all an entire "Irish" Division sent out half way through it.

How many were Irish? Impossible to say because details of next of kin are only available in a minority of cases. But I would say AT LEAST 60% were born and raised in Ireland and joined up from there. There are some names among the Irish regimental casualties that simply did not exist in Ireland, going by the census of four years earlier which is freely searchable online. I don't mean names of individuals, I mean no record of ANY people with certain surnames anywhere on the island. So it is clear that the numbers were topped up by recruits from elsewhere in the UK.

As against that of course there were more Irish in other regiments. Just how many is too involved a task for a solitary researcher like myself to determine. But whatever way you cut it and however narrowly your definition of Irishman it's almost certainly true to say there were more Irishmen killed in Gallipoli than New Zealanders. And that's without claiming any Irish born Kiwis as our own.

Fascinating the different way that campaign is regarded in our separate countries isn't it?

"It was better to die neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud el Bahr"

Tabnabs

If you have a name you'd like to submit to the list, who do you contact?

mrbrianj

Its pretty sad it takes almost 100 years to view fighting in the army in world war 1, and fighting Britain in the war of independence as two separate acts.

enfield

Tabnabs, what name is that?

kabakuyu

Some stats for the Irish born casualties killed /died at Gallipoli.

1st Batt RMF = 256

1st Batt RDF = 410

1st Batt RIF = 283


8th Batt Welsh = 11

1st Batt Lan Fus.=17

1st Batt KOSB = 11

I hope to have a look at the 10th Div if time permits and other Divs involved at Gallipoli.

Had a look at the 5th Connaught Rangers,

They had 134 Irish born enlisted men killed/died at Gallipoli, they were in Gallipoli 5th August - 30th September 1915.

Snickers Man

Thanks for that, Kabakuyu. But having said that, let me respectfully disagree with some of your figures.

I estimate a total of 350 fatalities from the Ist Bn Royal Munster Fusiliers, 558 from the Ist Bn Royal Dublin Fusiliers and 390 from the 1st Bn Royal inniskilling Fusiliers. There are of course many more fatalities from other Irish battalions and regiments.

I arrived at these estimates primarily by simply counting the gravestones, or the memorial plaques, recorded on the CWGC website of members of the Irish battalions likely to have died in the fighting in Gallipoli.

Identifying all the memorials on the Gallipoli peninsula gets you so far; I garnered quite a few more by identifying records of fatalities in 1915 or early 1916 at Alexandria, Limnos, Malta and Gibraltar from the Irish battalions known to have been at Gallipoli. Wounded soldiers would have been evacuated to Mudros or Alexandria and many would have died there. Some might have died while being repatriated back to Britain. Some made it all the way home before succumbing to their wounds. I only know of one such soldier, however, by a fortuitous encounter with a descendant.

Where, may I ask, do your figures come from?

kabakuyu

Some were old figures I had , only the 5th CR were recent,which I did yesterday sourced from the SDGW digital database.
Earlier figures I compiled may not have included deaths after evacuation from Gallipoli and were from SDGW hardcopies.I only included Irish born men as far as I can recall.

Just found numbers from "Orange Green and Khaki" ISBN-10: 0717119947 by Tom Johnstone,
his figures are very similar to yours

RMF-397
RDF-569
RIF-428 all 29th division.

He calculates 2017 deaths for the 10th Irish at Gallipoli, officers were not included.

Just checked, I just counted Irish born casualties.

Just re checked the 1st RMF and the Irish born casualties for their time at Gallipoli is 261 enlisted men.source SDGW digital archive.

Snickers Man

I have a copy of Orange, Green and Kakhi somewhere. I must dig it out.

And yes, my figures were for all fatalities in the Irish Battalions at Gallipoli, regardless of where the soldiers came from.