The 16th (Irish) Division was composed of the 8th and 9th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, 6th Royal Irish Regiment, 6th Connaught Rangers, 7th Leinster Regiment, 8th and 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers, 7th Royal Irish Rifles, 7th and 8th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and 7th and 8th Royal Irish Fusiliers.

The week of the Easter Rising in Ireland, the Irish of the 16th were at the front near Loos. A German gas attack on the Irish trenches caused devastation: about 1,590 injured, 538 dead. An RDF Chaplain writing to his father wrote:

"There they lay, scores of them (we lost 800, nearly all from gas) in the bottom of the trench, in every conceivable posture of human agony; the cloths torn off their bodies in a vain effort to breathe while from end to end of that valley of death came one long unceasing moan from the lips of brave men fighting and struggling for life."

Private Joseph Pender, regimental number 8477, of the 9th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, died on 27th of April 1916 from gas poisoning. He and 8th Battalion Fusilier, Paddy Byrne, died in agony, lungs burning from the effects of the gas, both aged just 17.

Two days later, the Germans experienced the horrors of gas, when having launched another attack, the wind changed and the poison blew back into their own trenches.

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