n liners, steam pinnaces, rowing boats, and tramp
steamers. A fresh landing, at Suvla Bay, had been in progress all
through the night. The first great landing, on April 25th, at
Sedd-el-Bahr, at the toe of the Peninsula--in which the first
battalions of the Dublin and Munster Fusiliers won imperishable
renown--had secured a foothold in Gallipoli, but the hills and forts
which guarded the passage up the Dardanelles to Constantinople, on the
east, were still held by the Turks. Now a new and stupendous effort
was about to be made to break the enemy's grip on the Peninsula.

The date, August 7th, 1915, should be ever memorable in the history of
Ireland, and also in that of the whole United Kingdom. On that day a
Division of the New Armies raised for the war--"Kitchener's Armies,"
as they are popularly called--was brought under fire for the first
time, and collectively engaged in battle. These citizen soldiers were
Irish. Irish professional soldiers have always fought most gallantly
for England in all her wars. But on that day, for the first time in
the long and embittered relations between England and Ireland, a
distinctively Irish Division (the 10th), voluntarily raised in Ireland
and composed of 20,000 young men of fine character and high purpose,
representative particularly of the Nationalist and Catholic sections
of the community, were found on the side of England.

The 10th Irish Division was formed in the autumn and winter months of
1914. They left Ireland at the end of April, 1915, to complete their
training in the great camp of Aldershot. At the end of June they
embarked from England as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary
Force. On Friday evening, August 6th, they parted from the olive
groves and vineyards of beautiful islands in the AEgean, off the coast
of Asia Minor, where they had been stationed a couple of weeks, and
were brought up to Gallipoli. Here, then, were clerks from offices and
counting houses, assistants from drapery and grocery shops, civil
servants, public school boys, artisans, labourers, farm hands--a
heterogeneous collection of youths from all walks in life--and
officered chiefly by barristers, solicitors, engineers, and University
students, who had only been a few months in training, and who before
this call to arms suddenly rang through the Empire, seemed destined
for peaceful and secure careers in civil life. Now, within a few hours
of hearing, for the first time in their lives, a shot fi