5th Connaughts:--

"Heartiest congratulations from the New Zealand and Australian
Division on your brilliant achievement this evening, which is a
fitting sequel to the capture of Kabak Kuzu wells, and will go
down to history among the finest feats of your distinguished
regiment. Personally as an Irishman who has served in two Irish
regiments it gives me the greatest pride and pleasure that the
regiment should have performed such gallant deeds under my
command. Stick to what you have got and consolidate."

But all was in vain. Gallipoli had to be abandoned. The British
withdrew from the Peninsula in January, 1916. The cost of the invasion
in men, killed, wounded and missing, was 114,555. The casualties in
the 10th Irish Division were cruel. At least a third of the forces
were killed, disabled, or invalided by bullets, shells and dysentery.

Gallipoli had become a place of shadows and phantoms to the 10th Irish
Division. As they looked back upon it they could not but think of the
maelstrom of thick and prickly scrub, yielding sand, rocky defiles,
and steep hills of that roadless country; of strong Turkish
entrenchments, the continuous roar of guns, bullets, shells, concealed
snipers; of broiling heat, sweat, thirst, tormenting flies, lack of
water, and dysentery, into which they were plunged on August 7th; of
scrambling and bloody fighting; and of the want of foresight and
imagination in their high commanders that followed. It was a soldiers'
campaign, in which the bayonet and the man behind it counted for
everything, and the brains of the Generals--if indeed there were
any--for nothing. The whole network of memories made a horrid
nightmare of confusion, agony, and sacrifice of life unparalleled in
the history of the British Army, relieved only--but how magnificently
relieved--by the endurance and gallantry of the troops, unequalled and
unsurpassable.

Yet the 10th Division were loth to leave that dread Peninsula, which,
like a fearful monster, had devoured the young men of Ireland. They
were sorry to go, because the purpose of the campaign was unachieved;
still more sorry to part from their dead comrades. Because of those
dead Gallipoli will ever be to the Irish race a place of glorious
pride and sorrow. Well may that huddled heap of hills between Suvla
Bay and Sari Bair be haunted by the wraith of Irish tragedy and grief;
well may the wailing cry of the banshee be ever heard there.