A chara, - Kevin Myers's tribute to the generosity and courage of Alex Maskey in commemorating the Irish dead of the Somme (including no doubt the Tyneside Irish Brigade wiped out in the advance on Contalmaison) is fitting and well- timed (An Irishman's Diary, July 16th). But the time is surely also at hand for the British Government (and perhaps also the Australian and New Zealand governments) to display a similar generosity by acknowledging in some suitable fashion the heroism of the Irish dead at Gallipoli.
The assault on Gallipoli was spearheaded by the 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers and 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers of the 29th Division, and they were annihilated at Cape Helles on V Beach, on the collier the River Clyde and in the village and castle of Sedd-el-Bahr on April 25th and 26th 1915. The Times History of the War (London, 1915) records that "the glorious annals of the British Army present no example of a position carried against more dreadful odds".
Even more disastrous from Ireland's point of view was the destruction of the Tenth (Irish) Division of Kitchener's First New Army at Suvla Bay in August and Setember 1915.
With this tragic and monumental sacrifice of Irish young men (mostly well educated), the cause of Irish Home Rule and peace in Ireland was doomed. - Is mise,
GERALD MORGAN, FTCD,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.