A chara, - I was much moved by Fergus Pyle's review (October 30th) headed "A nightingale over the Somme". I agree with him as to the barbarity of the war and the persevering courage of those who endured "the mud and the lice, the rats and the decomposing corpses for months on end". I might add that that was the experience of the 16th (Irish) Division no less than the 36th (Ulster) Division.
I might add, too, that the Tenth (Irish) Division in Gallipoli suffered no less in the endurance of heat and thirst. But it is an error to say that the men were foolhardy in "stand(ing) upright in a hail of bullets." They did not stand upright; they charged the enemy through a hail of bullets until they, too, lay dead among the mud and the lice. To have done otherwise would have been to disobey their officers, to be disloyal to their comrades, and to dishonour their country.
In the same way, part of the flower of the working class of Dublin and of Cork in the 1st Dublin Fusiliers and the 1st Munster Fusiliers (I do not doubt the nobility of the working class Irishman who remained behind in Ireland) followed their officers to their deaths through the blood soaked waters at Scdd el Bahr on April 25th, 1915. - Mise lc meas,
Arts Building.
Trinity College.
Dublin 2.