Irish Somme Campaign

Introductory Paragraphs

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Home Rule was postponed, with many believing the war would be over by the winter. The Irish view on World War I was a mixed one. Ulster Unionists, who wanted to show devotion to the monarchy and the Union, favoured it. In what would become the Free State, the story was quite different. Many Nationalists did not sign up, despite this, over 250,000 Irish men fought in the war, many of these men were Nationalists. The draw of the “King’s Shilling” appealed to them, as well as the prospect of traveling and protecting other small, Catholic countries, like Belgium. These men were encouraged by John Redmond’s Woodenbridge Speech in Wicklow on the 20th of September, 1914 “in defence

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to find out how involved the Irish were in the war; to discover what Irish soldiers achieved, particularly in the Battle of the Somme; to see how important Irish involvement was in the battle; to find out how successful the Somme campaign was and to see how the war affected Irish men involved in the war.

Significance of the study

This topic has significance for me as it was recently the centenary of the beginning of World War I. I wanted to choose an aspect of the War to focus on as it is of great interest to me. The Battle of the Somme itself is such a broad topic that I needed to find a particular thing about it to focus on and so I chose to look at the Irish involvement, as I’m aware that during the War, Ireland was seeking Home Rule, and that the 1916 Easter Rising occurred only a few months before the beginning of the Battle of the Somme.

Research

• Was the Somme campaign a success?

Review of Existing Literature

As part of this assignment, I read Michael MacDonagh’s books “The Irish at the Front” (1916) and “The Irish on the Somme” (1917). While I found both of these very useful and feel that they were a good guide, I do believe that they are somewhat limited in what they could offer as they were written during the War, and I feel that there was probably not a significant amount of time for research to be done on the Battle of the Somme.

Findings

Summary

Every Irish infantry battalion on the western front in 1916 played some part in the Battle of the Somme. At 7:20 p.m on the first day, the First Royal Irish Fusiliers were ordered to send a campaign up to take the strong point called Quadrilateral and hold it against the Germans’ counter attacks near Beaumont Hamel. Two other companies, C and D were also sent up but failed to reach the point, getting caught in no-man’s land. It was feared the Fusiliers would be overrun, but after a night of fending off counter arracks and suffering only 10 casualties they successfully defended the point. After this the Fusiliers were forced to withdraw due to the isolation of their