My grand father,hero of Gallipoli
When David Davin Power found an old family album he was shocked to discover his ancestor’s history. Now, he’s made a documentary
It was just five years ago that RTÉ’s David Davin Power by coincidence found out about his grandfather’s past in World War I. The station’s political editor had been assigned to travel with President Mary McAleese to Gallipoli in Turkey, site of one the Great War’s bloodiest and most futile campaigns.
Just before he travelled, he came across a photo album that an elderly relative had given him.
‘And in it was my grandfather who, it showed, had been in Gallipoli during the war. I’d had no idea.
‘It was quite remarkable stuff really, postcards and the like describing his time there. I’d had no idea about this part of my family’s history.
‘He worked with the railways and was the equivalent of a sergeant major out there, organising transport and logistics.
‘He had died before I was born and it was never mentioned to me. He was Jack Power from Kimmage and he had a bit of a struggle with drink through his life and, given what he must have seen over there, it’s probably no wonder.
‘After Gallipoli, there were more postcards from east Africa – we reckon he must have been invalided out of Turkey and eventually he ended up in a hospital bed in South Africa, where he had influenza, which was very serious in those days.’
When he found out about this family link, of course it piqued his interest. And, he says, that is the reason he returned to the dusty terrain of the Turkish peninsula to make a documentary about it.
‘The memory of Gallipoli, which was a military disaster that nearly ended Churchill’s career, was played down in Britain, but after a hundred years its resonance for Ireland has never been stronger.’
On Tuesday evening, RTÉ One viewers will see Davin Power present a documentary on the thousands of Irishmen who fought at Gallipoli in World War I.
One hundred years to the week after the campaign began, ‘Gallipoli – Ireland’s Forgotten Heroes’ will commemorate the estimated 3,400 Irish who gave their lives there with the British and Anzac forces.
At the same time, President Michael D Higgins will become the first President ever to travel to Gallipoli to attend the international commemorations along with other world leaders.
It is widely accepted that the Gallipoli campaign was one of the Allies’ great disasters in World War 1. It took place between April 25, 1915, and January 9, 1916, on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire, now Turkey. The doomed campaign was dreamt up by Winston Churchill to end the war early by creating a new war front with the Russians, after deadlock on the Western Front.
Had it succeeded, it could have shortened the war by several years. As it was, bad leadership, planning and luck, combined with a shortage of shells and inadequate equipment, condemned the Allies to a humiliating defeat but not before some 300,000 Turkish men and an estimated 214,000 Allied troops lost their lives.
The Irishmen who survived the battle andhadleftasheroes in 1915 returned as pariahs to an Ireland transformed by the Easter Rising. Back at home, a wave of silence closed over their sacrifice, regarded by many people as a ‘west Brit’ business that had no place in Irish history.
Most, like Davin Power’s grandfather, never spoke of the horrors they saw or their time serving the King.
The RTÉ man says it’s ‘a hugely interesting story’ with many families around Ireland having relatives who would have taken part in the battle.
‘At the time, the most celebrated reference to their sacrifice was a derisive one. “Better to die/ ’neath an Irish sky/ than at Suvla or Sedd el Bahr”, the words of the Foggy Dew reflecting popular attitudes at the time to those slaughtered in the Suvla Bay landings,’ he says.
Mike Lee, the documentary’s director, also has a strong personal connection to the campaign.
His grand uncle Lt Joseph Bagenal Lee was killed, while another great uncle, Tennyson Bagenal Lee, survived but was ‘never the same again’, according to Davin Power.
The documentary also relates the experiences of Dr Andrew Horne, a medic from Dublin, as told by his daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth, who have just donated their father’s archive to the National Museum.
Several other families also share their ancestors’ stories in the documentary which is part of RTÉ’s 100
year commemoration of World War I.
Among them are the relatives of Philip Brennan, a young Tipperary man who emigrated to Australia and enlisted in the army there and was killed at Gallipoli. William Cosgrove from Whitegate in Cork, who won a Victoria Cross for his valour in clearing barbed wire from V beach, one of the pivotal battle locations, is also remembered.,
Michael Richardson, another young Dublin man who went out, only to lose his life just at the end of the campaign, is also featured.
‘We tell the story of Gallipoli by highlighting the sacrifice of these men,’ says Davin Power.
The conditions on the dusty Turkish peninsula were every bit as appalling as on the Western Front, he says.
Besides those who were shot, many were burned in bush fires. Dysentery was also a major killer. Records show that the troops were desperate for water. The Turkish army had poisoned wells, and others were contaminated by the large number of dead bodies in the area. Many of the corpses were never repatriated and instead were thrown into the sea.
The scale of the killing took every one by surprise.
‘The initial operation around V beach in April, the date of which is commemorated each year, saw a thousand Irish casualties killed and wounded in just four days,’ says Davin Power.
‘The only successful part of the engagement was the evacuation in January 1916. The generals had predicted thousands of casualties, but in the event only three deaths were recorded.’
This year, for the first time ever, there will be a separate commemoration for the Irishmen who were at Gallipoli.
Davin Power says the Turkish authorities were extremely helpful to the RTÉ crew in the making of the documentary. The country continues to host and welcome families of those lost in the campaign, a fact he says that shows great generosity of spirit.
‘You have to remember this was a failed bloody invasion of another country. In that context, it’s quite remarkable how welcoming the Turks have been and continue to be, particularly the great leader Ataturk who, in 1934, sought to give solace to the relatives of those who died in his country.
‘Given the time, his words are really quite extraordinary and I think they’re worth remembering.
‘He said: “Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…
“You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours…
‘You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace; after having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.’
Conditions on the dusty peninsula were as appalling as at the Western Front