and raked, with, as the Dublins and Munsters would have seen when coming ashore, a sheer ridge to the left, about fifty feet in height, and the old fortress to the right. Beyond the fortress was the village of Sedd-el-Bahr. The beach itself provided little cover for invading troops against machine-gun or rifle fire. The operation was in the hands of a Royal Navy officer, Commander Unwin who had conceived the idea of using the River Clyde for the landings. Over two thousand troops were squashed aboard the boat as it approached V Beach. ‘That night I don’t think anyone slept,’ wrote Tizard. ‘ … When it became light enough the ships began the bombardment of the fort and the village of Sedd el Bahr and the ground adjoining the beach and we slowly steamed in.’5 Each man was well supplied (too well, as it transpired) carrying two hundred rounds of ammunition and three days iron rations as well as a greatcoat and a waterproof sheet. Packs weighed about sixty pounds.
Disaster struck the Dublin Fusiliers first. Initially their boats were towed and then set adrift with sailors manning the oars which would take them to the shore. At first it appeared that the landing would be virtually unopposed. One unidentified officer of the Dublin’s wrote:
The ships’ shells were simply ripping up the ground, and with my field glasses I could see many of the Turks running for their lives. I thought then that we would have no difficulty in landing. Then machine guns galore were played on us from a trench unseen at the bottom of the cliff, not ten yards from us. Shrapnel burst above our heads at the same time and before I knew where I was I was covered with dead men. Not knowing they were dead, I was roaring at them to help me up, for I was drowning . . . We got the dead and wounded off on to the mine-sweeper, and gathered another three boatloads of men to take ashore and face the same thing again.6
Captain A.W. Molony, writing home, told of a ‘perfect tornado of fire, many men were killed and wounded in the boats, and wounded men were knocked over into the water and drowned, but they kept on, and the survivors jumped into the water in some cases up to their necks and got ashore; but the slaughter was terrific. Most of the officers were killed or wounded.’7 The CO of the Dublins, Colonel Rooth, made it to the shore but was shot dead at the edge of the water. Major Fetherstonhaugh, his second-in-command, was mortally wounded in his boat. The litany of death continued with five more officers killed, most before they got as far as the beach. The men fared just as badly. The 1st RDF was, largely, recruited from among the working classes of an impoverished Dublin. The diet of the average Dubliner in the early years of the twentieth century was nutritionally deficient. As a consequence working-class Dubliners were small in stature, averaging around 5’ 4” in height. The water, even quite close to the beach, was more than a fathom deep.
Lt Col Tizard watched the carnage from on board the River Clyde waiting to send his own men into the same shambles.
I saw many cases just then where men who had jumped out of the boats having to wade ashore got hit and fell face downwards in the water; a chum, who had got ashore, seeing this, would come back and pull him out of the water so that he should not be drowned. In nearly every case the men who did this were killed. Men in the boats who were hit tried to get away from the hail of lead by getting out of the boats on the far side in order to keep out of sight, thus getting the boat between them and the shore. There were four or five boats along the shore at intervals broadside on to it, and behind each of them were four or five men who had been hit. Some were holding on to the gunwales and others were hanging on with their arms through the ropes which are looped round the boats so as to prevent themselves sinking in the water which was up to their waists. After a time I noticed these men sank from exhaustion and loss of blood and were drowned. The water by this time all along the shore and especially around the boats was red with blood.8
This could even be seen from the skies, a Royal Navy flier, Lieutenant Commander Sampson, who was monitoring the invasion beaches from the air, flew over V Beach and noticed that the water was a peculiar colour. On closer examination he realised that it was red with blood to a distance of about fifty yards from the shore.
Some did manage to make it to the beach. Lt Maffet of X Company found himself in a boat where most of the sailors fell victim to Turkish shrapnel and small arms. ‘The men had to take over their oars, and as they did not know much about rowing the result was that we often got broadside on to the shore and presented a better target to the enemy.’ Then the boat was hit by incendiary shells. ‘Several of the men who had been wounded fell to the bottom of the boat, and were either drowned there or suffocated by other men falling on top of them; many, to add to their death agonies, were burnt as well.’ Maffet himself was hit in the head by a machine-gun bullet; others tore into his pack. In this instance its bulk certainly saved his life but he was knocked out of the boat. ‘I went under water and came up again and tried to encourage the men to get to the shore and under cover as fast as they could as it was their only chance. I then went under again. Someone caught hold of me and began pulling me ashore.’ Sheltering behind a bank he looked out to sea and saw ‘the remnants of my platoon trying to get to the shore, but they were shot down one after another, and their bodies drifted out to sea or lay immersed a few feet from the shore’.9
Sergeant J. McColgan was in a boat with thirty-two men; only six of whom got out alive. He himself was hit in the leg as he dived overboard. ‘One fellow’s brains were shot into my mouth as I was shouting to them to jump for it. I dived into the sea. Then came the job to swim with my pack, and one leg useless. I managed to pull out the knife and cut the straps and swim ashore. All the time bullets were ripping around me.’10
Lt Henry Desmond O’Hara, the only son of W.J.O’Hara, Resident Magistrate, of Ballincollig, Co. Cork and a nephew of the Bishop of Cashel, was more fortunate than most of his fellow officers. He would play a leading role in the drama that followed the landings, but as he watched his battalion being torn to pieces he was aboard the River Clyde with W Company. ‘Meanwhile,’ he later recalled, ‘our ship, instead of grounding as had been arranged, struck about fifteen yards from the shore, and it was that that saved our lives, as we had to stay where we were.’11 When he came ashore at about midnight he would be forced to assume command of what was left of the battalion. His level-headedness and quiet heroism would help him survive and earn him a DSO, the second most prestigious gallantry award. He was youngest officer at that time to have received the honour. But in the early hours of the morning of 25 April he could only watch with horror as the remnants of the 1st RDF dragged themselves up the shore and took some shelter under cover of a bank.
Then it was the turn of the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers who had been witnessing the slaughter with rising apprehension from on board the River Clyde. Unlike the Dublins who had, at least, been caught by surprise, the Munsters now knew what to expect. While they waited, bodies of dead and drowned Dublin Fusiliers floated by. As with many of the regular Irish battalions the Munsters, though overwhelmingly Irish among the NCOs and other ranks, were, in the main, led by English officers. A number of these have left accounts behind, most notably the CO, Lt Col Tizard, Capt Geddes, who commanded X Company, and Lt Guy Nightingale, who, like Henry Desmond O’Hara, found himself, briefly, in effective charge of his battalion on the beach. Their narratives, relatively free of military humbug and bombast, provide a blood-curdling account of the slaughter of the Irishmen under their command.
The plan for the Munster’s landing went wrong from the start. The River Clyde beached too far from the shore, as indicated by O’Hara, and the barges which were to have formed the gangway from the vessel to the beach, instead of going straight ahead went wide of the collier and had to be pulled back under a hail of murderous fire by crew members and Fusiliers. Unwin and one of his midshipmen won VC’s for this action, awards which, though well-deserved were in marked contrast to the treatment of the unsung heroes of the two Irish regiments who actually landed at V Beach.
With the barges in position Tizard gave the order to disembark. Captain Henderson was in position with Z Company on the starboard side and Captain Geddes was to lead X Company down the gangway on the port side. The gangway on the port side jammed and briefly delayed X Company. Once again the barges let the Munsters down. Strong currents caused the barge on the port side closest to the beach to break adrift into deep water.
Capt Geddes leading his men jumped over the side and had to swim about tweny yards before he could wade ashore. A good many who followed