of another brigade and [while] the right flank of his battalion was in the rear, he carried out the protection of the flank, under intense fire, by the employment of machine-guns in selected commanding and successive positions. After dark, whilst going about supervising the consolidation of the position, he, with only one sergeant escorting, found himself confronted by a party of the enemy, consisting of one officer and twenty men. By his prompt determination the party were overawed and, after a few shots, threw up their arms and surrendered.
Many years later, Dalton would remember Ginchy as ‘sad … a glorious victory with terrific losses’.12 The 16th Division suffered very heavy casualties in the period 3 September to 9 September – 224 officers and 4,090 men killed or wounded.13
Dalton was wounded in the fighting and was to spend time in hospital in France. While Dalton’s father may have had misgivings about him joining the British Army in the first place, he seems to have had a considerable sense of pride about his son being injured heroically in the war against the Germans. A notice in the Irish Independent on 21 September 1916, that appeared to have been placed by the family, declared: ‘Lieut. Emmet Dalton, Dublins, wounded, is a son of Mr J.F. Dalton J.P., 8 Upper St. Columba’s road, and 2, Talbot St., Dublin.’ The notice was accompanied by a photograph of a youthful Dalton in military uniform, sporting a military-style moustache.
Dalton received treatment for his wounds at The Liverpool Merchants Hospital at Étaples, France. It was one of a number of military hospitals situated in a sprawling base camp near the old town and port of Étaples, which lies at the mouth of the River Canche, in the Pas de Calais region of Picardy. He was one of the officers to receive a letter from a distraught Mrs Mary Kettle seeking details about her husband’s death, and the possible location of his remains. On 14 October Dalton replied to Mrs Kettle, apologizing for the delay in answering the letter. ‘I presume by now that you are utterly disgusted with me for failing to reply to your letter, but I assure you that if I had been in a fit condition I would have replied before now.’ He described the last moments of Tom Kettle, clearly trying to be as sensitive and consoling as possible.
Although an articulate man, decades later, in his RTÉ interview with Cathal O’Shannon, Dalton would struggle to find the words to convey the horrors of the Battle of the Somme: ‘It would be very hard to describe the Somme – I don’t know if there has ever been a battle like it.’ The butcher’s bill for this long-running fight was enormous. It has been recorded that between 1 July and mid-November 1916, the British Army suffered a massive 432,000 casualties – an average of 3,600 for every day of the blood-soaked encounter.
Return to Dublin
Dalton, no doubt to the great relief of his family, was stationed in Dublin for a period following his treatment in hospital. His mother, in particular, fussed over him, sewing leather cuffs onto the sleeves of his uniform.14 By early 1917, Dalton was attached to the 4th Battalion, RDF as an instructor in a musketry course. This was located at Bull Island, off the north Dublin suburbs of Clontarf and Dollymount, which was commandeered by the British Army in 1914 for a military training ground. A School of Musketry was established there complete with rifle ranges and facilities to teach trench warfare tactics. The clubhouse of the Royal Dublin Golf Club was taken over as quarters for officers. Dalton had probably established a reputation as a marksman to be selected as an instructor for this particular course.
In March, Dalton worked as an instructor on another course in his home city – an anti-gas attack course at the Irish Command School, Dublin. Both sides in the war mounted gas attacks, inflicting heavy casualties, and causing much fear and trepidation among troops targeted by chemical weapons.
Awarding of Military Medal by King George
A few weeks after giving the anti-gas course, Dalton travelled to London to collect his award for bravery from the British crown. On 2 May 1917, at Buckingham Palace, King George V awarded a range of decorations to members of the British Army and Commonwealth forces, ranging from the Distinguished Service Cross to the Military Cross. Among the approximately seventy military personnel who received the Military Cross, there were just two from Irish regiments – Second Lieutenant Richard Marriott Watson, Royal Irish Rifles, and Second Lieutenant Emmet Dalton, of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.15 Dalton’s luck held out and he would, of course, survive the war. Marriott-Watson, a poet and only son of the Australian-born writer, Henry Brereton Marriott-Watson, was killed the following March during the retreat from St. Quentin.
Decades later, Dalton reminisced to an American friend about the day he was presented with the Military Cross. Even though he had opposed the Easter Rising, it appears that nationalist sentiment engendered by the Rising had been having an effect on Dalton. The execution of the leaders, and their bravery in facing death, had stirred up public sympathy. He privately told journalist Howard Taubman about his feelings during the ceremony held in the presence of the King at Buckingham Palace. According to Taubman, the protocol was that when the riband with the Military Cross was hung around his neck, Dalton was to bow from the waist down in deference to the King. Thinking about the Easter Rebellion the previous year, he decided not to make the obeisance, and stayed standing ramrod straight in defiance of the court etiquette The moment the last presentation had been made, Dalton bolted from the room and left the palace.16
Dalton was promoted from 2nd Lieutenant to Lieutenant on 1 July 1917, and just over a week later was deployed abroad to Salonika, where allied forces were engaged in hostilities with the Bulgarians. He was now with the 6th Battalion, Leinster Regiment, having been transferred from the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. The Prince of Wales’ Leinster Regiment had its home depot at Crinkill Barracks, Birr, in the Irish midlands, and drew its recruits largely from counties such as Longford, Westmeath, Offaly (King’s County) and Laois (Queen’s County). The regiment had been in the thick of the fighting at Gallipoli.
Bulgaria, which occupied a strategic position in the region, had entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, attacking Serbia in October 1915. The 10th (Irish) Division was among the Allied formations deployed to the region. The 6th and 1st Battalions of the Leinster Regiment were located in the Struma Valley. During his service in Salonika, Lieutenant Dalton, like many other Irish soldiers, contracted malaria. While in a rest camp he encountered a Scotsman who had been a professional golfer. The Scot instilled in Dalton an interest in golf that would develop into a life-long passion.17 However, his first opportunity to test his skills on the green would come in an unlikely place, Egypt, a country not then noted for its golfing facilities.
War in the Middle East
In September 1917, the 10th (Irish) Division moved from Salonika to Egypt for service in the Middle East. The British top brass had decided that it was more urgent to confront the Turks in Palestine than the Bulgarians. It was on 14 September that men from the 6th Leinsters embarked on the steamer Huntsgreen. Five days later, after an uneventful voyage, they arrived at the ancient, bustling port of Alexandria. For Dalton and many of the Leinsters, this would be their first experience of the exotic world of Arabia. It would be an interesting period of service for Dalton, and he would learn about living under canvas in the desert and the rugged hills of the region, and the more mobile nature of the war in the Middle East.
On arrival at Alexandria, the 6th Leinsters boarded trains and travelled by way of Ismailia to Moascar where the battalion set up camp with other elements of the 10th Division. The battalion began a programme of desert route marches along with regular bathing in the salt water lakes of Ismailia which, it was hoped, would help cure the malaria that affected many of the men. Dalton would have first glimpsed the commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), General Allenby, when the latter came to inspect the camp, with the men of the battalion lining up outside their tents. Then they marched along the Suez Canal, finally reaching Kantara on 2 October, where Dalton and his comrades put their surplus kit in storage. Allenby had been developing and upgrading railway facilities through the Sinai to facilitate the movement of troops to areas close to the front line. Dalton’s battalion moved by train to Rafah, reaching it on 4 October. Training was carried out by the battalion. The water had to be piped from Kantara and was in short supply. Each man was limited strictly to three-quarters of a bottle a day ‘for all purposes’.18
Allenby’s