3overdw.html

IRISH BATTALIONS: DOWNLOAD TEXT - OVERVIEW

Since 1905, the Germans had a detailed plan to enter France through Belgium. The plan was named after the German General who designed it, General Schlieffen. The railway system in Germany had been developed under military guidance and supervision, so strict that not even a narrow-gauge line or road-rail could be laid without the approval of the Chief of the General Staff. As a result, the number of double lines running to the western frontier had been increased from nine to thirteen between 1870 and 1914. On August the 6th, the great deployment began. German troop trains began moving west towards Luxembourg. Five hundred and fifty trains a day crossed the Rhine bridges, and altogether 3,120,000 men were carried to the front in eleven thousand trains. The plan was so precise that the German High Command knew what rail carriage and regiment was passing over what bridge at any time. They entered Belgium and France with a terrible vengeance. In the Belgium village of Dinant, the Germans shot 612 men women and children as reprisals for supposedly being fired on while fixing a bridge. Among the dead was a three week old baby. Due to a complicated chain of alliances between Britain, France and Russia, German violation of neutral Belgium set the domino effect of retaliation which dragged Britain to war. Between 10:30am and 11:30am on Saturday the 22nd of August 1914, the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers set sail from Southampton on board the S.S. Caledonia bound for the French port of Boulogne. The Battalion strength was 22 officers and 1023 other ranks. They were part of an army of 100,000 men under the command of Sir John French. In the years to follow, this army would be called the Old Contemptibles following an order made by the Kaiser who told his men to walk over ‘General French’s contemptible little Army.’ The 2nd Dublins, commonly known as ‘The Old Toughs’, were a component of the 10th Brigade, 4th Division, British Expeditionary Force. They faced a German army of approximately 250,000. They had set out upon the greatest adventure in the long and distinguished career of the Regiment and few could have foreseen how long the war was to last and - happily perhaps, none of that joyous band of adventurers realised how few of them would return from it. They arrived at Boulogne on the evening of the 22nd of August and stayed on board until the following morning. At 5:00am, the troops on board the Caledonia disembarked, formed up on the quay and marched away to rest camps on the northern outskirts of the port, near Colonne de la Grand-Armee. Between midnight and 04:30am on Monday the 24th of August, they marched out of these camps and boarded trains at Boulogne. For many in the ranks, their destination was unknown.

The British army contained all the major regular battalions of the Irish Regiments previously mentioned. Approx. 50% were reservists who had left the Army up to seven years previously and were physically unfit for combat. The first shots fired in anger by a British soldier for over fifty years on the continent of Europe, were fired by Corporal Edward Thomas of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards at 7am on the 22nd of August outside Mons. The Irish troops were met in France with cheers of 'Vive les Anglais.' John Lucy of the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles corrected them by saying, 'Nous ne sommes pas Anglais, nous sommes Irlandais.'