On April 27, 1916, three days after Patrick Pearse stepped onto the portico of the General Post Office in Dublin to proclaim the new Irish Republic, 2,128 men of the 16th (Irish) Division suffered horrifically from a German gas attack.
It occurred near the German-held village of Hulluch, in France. As the rebellion roared in Dublin, more than 540 men of the Irish Division were killed instantly from the effects of the gas; the remainder would suffer chronic lung and breathing condit
ions for the rest of their lives.
The timing of this gas attack on April 27 by Bavarian troops was, in an Irish context, very poignant. News of the Easter rebellion in Dublin reached the Irish troops along the Western Front.
Many of the troops were very bitter about what happened.
Irish nationalist politician John Redmond pronounced the Rising a "German invasion of Ireland, as brutal, as selfish, as cynical as Germany's invasion of Belgium". He contrasted the "treason" in Dublin with the fortitude and loyalty of the Irish troops of the 16th (Irish) Division in France.
The Dublin Fusiliers, with several other Irish regiments of the British Army, were involved in the early stages of putting down the rebellion when it broke out.
The 10th Dublins fought at the Mendicity Institute along Usher's Quay and the 4th Dublins fought the rebels along the railway line from the Broadstone Railway Station up to the Cabra Bridge.
Eleven members of the regiment were killed or died of wounds.
In early November 1917, every Irish regiment, including the Dublin Fusiliers, was moved from Ireland to either England or Scotland, and replaced mainly by English regiments. The British military command in Dublin was worried about guns going over the barrack walls.
In 1996, a maintenance team clearing out a derelict house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, found a British Army death certificate and a Press cutting for a Pte Joseph Pender, regimental number 8477, of the 9th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
The date on the death certificate was April 27, 1916, date of the battle at Hulluch. Joseph was 17 when he died. So, too, was Pte Paddy Byrne, from Summerhill in Dublin, who died alongside him.
Running through the battlefield facing Hulluch stands the magnificent Loos Memorial. All the men listed on the memorial have one thing in common: their bodies were never found. Among those names are Joseph Pender and Paddy Byrne, two young Irish men who died in Easter week 1916.
When the republican military parade passes the GPO in Dublin this Easter, spare a thought and a place in your heart for these two young lads – they were Irish soldiers too!
Tom Burke,
Ayrfield, Dublin 13.
