Gallipoli

In late June General Hunter-Weston departed his command of the British VIII Corps, suffering some indeterminate ailment. This marked the end of Helles as the main front at Gallipoli. The British attempted no more major offensives there for the remainder of the campaign. Weber Pasa, having lost Liman Pasa's confidence was sent back to Germany. The fighting now concentrated along Sari Bair range and at a new landing at Suvla. In support of this offensive in August, a diversionary attack was made at Helles which resulted in heavy fighting around Krithia Vineyard. Helles was finally evacuated on the 8th January 1916.

The landing at Suvla Bay was an amphibious landing made at Suvla on the Aegean coast of Gallipoli peninsula as part of the August Offensive , the final British attempt to break the deadlock of the Battle of Gallipoli. The landing, which commenced on the night of 6th August 1915, was intended to support a breakout from the Anzac sector, five miles to the south. Despite facing light opposition, the landing at Suvla was mismanaged from the outset and quickly reached the same stalemeate conditions that prevailed on the Anzac Helles fronts. On the 15th August, after a week of indecision and inactivity, the British commander at Suvla, Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stopford was dismissed. His performance in command was one of the most incompetant feats of generalship of the First World War.
The 10th Irish Division would see its first action during the August Offensive, but before we look at the Suvla landing, and the other engagements wich came about let us have a brief look at the 10th ( Irish ) Division.

Divisional Insignia

The 10th ( Irish ) Division, was a New Army Division, and one of Kitchener's New Army Group divisions raised largely in Ireland from the Irish National Volunteers in 1914. Like the 16th Irish Division, the 10th Irish was comprised mainly of John Redmond's Volunteers, a rival force to Carson's Ulster Volunteers. The Division though, was a combined force of many famous Irish regiments. This combination brought Irishmen of many different social classes and religions together. The men trained in Ireland and at Basingstoke.The Division first saw action at Gallipoli where it then went to Salonika and Palestine. It was the first Irish Division ever to take the field in war. The Division comprised the following brigades:

5th Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment
6th Battalion, The Royal Irish Rifles
5th Battalion, The Connaught Rangers
6th Battalion, The Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment ( Royal Canadians )
10th Battalion, The Royal Hampshire Regiment
1st Battalion, The Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment ( Royal Canadians )

6th Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers
7th Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers
6th Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers
7th Battalion, The Royal Dublin Fusiliers
1st Battalion, The Royal Irish Regiment
38th Battalion, Dogras
46th Battalion, Punjabis
1st Battalion, The Kashmir Rifles.

5th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
6th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
5th Battalion, Princess Victoria's ( Royal Irish Fusiliers )
6th Battalion, Princess Victoria's ( Royal Irish Fusiliers )
2nd Battalion, Princess Victoria's ( Royal Irisg Fusiliers )
2/42nd Battalion, Deolie
74th Battalion, Punjabis
2/101st Grenadiers
38th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers ( aka Jewish Legion )

Pioneers: 5th Battalion, The Royal Irish Regiment.

On the 6th and 7th August 1915 Irish Citizen soldiers in General Sir Bryan Mahon's 10th ( Irish ) Division were trown into their first battle at Gallipoli. The 10th, a ' green ' division in General Sir Frederick Stopford's IX Corps, was to effect a surprise landing at Suvla Bay, take the Kiretch Tepe Sirt Heights in the north of the Peninsula and then link up with the ANZACs precariously established on the coast, in order to break out east and inland to captures Sari Bair Ridge, considered the key. Anglo-Irishman General Sir Alexander Godley, GOC 1st Australian and New Zealand Division, under General Birdwood, GOC the ANZAC Corps.

  General Sir Alexander Godley Lieutenat General Sir F. Stopford

Of Lieutenat General Sir F. Stopard, IX Corps, Bryan Cooper writes: " We knew little of him, but we knew he was an Irishman and were prepared to take him on trust ' A professional soldier, Stopford had served a s ADC in Egypt and the Sudan in the 1880s, and had been military secretary to General Buller in the early bleak months of the Anglo Boer War. At sixty-one Stopford was not in good health and had been living in retirement since 1909. He seems to have been a man of considerable charm and a keen student of military history, but he had never commanded troops in battle and through no fault of his own his experience of actual fighting was minimal. He arrived in the Peninsual only in July and was sent to Cape Helles to gain some battle experience.