The 16th Irish Division

"Remeber these brave boys from Ireland who stood proud and tall
Who fought and died in their thousands with their mates on the battlefields of France and Belgium.
They gave their lives for Civilization and Freedom so that we could be free. Never forget these men from " Eireann's shores "

is a complicated one. You may ask why this is so?

Well you have to look at the political atmosphere that existed in Ireland and Britain at the outbreak of the Great War. Hopefully the following pages will give the reader an insight into the creation of this incredibly ' brave ' Division, which sadly has been very much neglected and forgotten about , yet it is only in recent years that the sacrifice made by these men from the ' small Island of Ireland ' was far greater than any of us could ever have imagined. They fought for what they believed in. They fought with friends and died with brothers.They will never be forgotten and these pages are a tribute to each and every one of them. The men of the 16th Irish Division!!

The 16th ( Irish ) Division, was a division of the New Army, raised in Ireland from

 early months of the war Irish Regular soldiers in the British Army fought and died in their

General Byran T. Mahone, Commander of the 10th ( Irish) Division

One of the major problems which was very much present in Ireland

from the 1880s, was the subject of the ' Home Rule Bill ' for Ireland, a move to transfer rule from the parliament at Westminster to Dublin, and the trouble flared at the possible passing of a third Home Rule Bill promoted by the Liberal Government and due to come into force in 1914. The Protestant Unionists in Ulster were always vehemently against Home Rule: To them Home Rule meant ' Rome Rule' because of the strength of the Roman Catholic Church and passions always ran high. From 1913 Ulster Volunteers under the leadership of Sir Edward Carson MP, had been forming to protest against imposition of Home Rule and at the end of December 1913 in Sothern a similar organization, the Irish Volunteers, inspired by the Ulster Volunteer, was formed under professor Eoin MacNeill with the opposite intent, " to ensure the implementation of Home Rule " Both organizations were already armed and the possiblity of open conflict between the two or between the British Army and one or both of them was a very real problem for the British Government in early 1914. And there you have the whole feuding atmoshere in a nut shell. An army for the South and an army for the North. The government eventually backed down on the implementation of the Home Rule Bill due to an incident known as the " Curragh Mutiny "

This incident occured in March 1914.The clock was literally ticking between North and South. The " Curragh Mutiny " was an incident in which some Irish in the British Army were placed in a difficult position that almost caused a split in the army itself.

 Occurred in the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland.

The Currragh Camp was then the main base for the British Army in Ireland. Today it is the headquarters for training of the Irish Army.

In the spring of 1912, the British Government of Herbert Asquith had introduced the Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland, which proposed the creation of an autonomous Irish Parliament in Dublin. A large section of Unionist had objected to inclusion to potential rule by the proposed Dublin Parliament and had founded the Ulster Volunteers paramilitary group to fight if necessary against the British Government. By the spring of 1914, the Ulster Volunteers possessed three million rounds of ammunition and 25,000 rifles purchased in Germany plus 12,000-15,000 rifles already aquired. One of their Slogans at the time was " Mauser or Kaiser, Any King Will Do " an implied threat that if they were not allowed to be armed against Home Rule, they would seek to become part of the German Empire. To deal with the potential threat of violence from the Ulster Volunteers should the Home Rule Bill be passed in the British Parliament, the Commander of the Curragh Base, Sir Arthur Paget, was ordered by the War Office in London in March 1914 to start preperations to march to Ulster should violence break out there. Paget misinterpreted his orders for precautionary deployments as an immediate order to march against Ulster and, acting on his own initiative, he ordered the officers under his command the choice of resignation rather than fighting against the Ulster Volunteers

57 out of the 70 British officers based in the Curragh Camp, many of them Ulster Unionist threatened to resign their commissions in the British Army rather than enforce the Home Rule Act 1914 in Ulster. This followed the British Government's decision to send 800 soldiers to Ulster to enforce the Bill and to resupply depots in the province, which was thought necessary since the illegal importation of thousands of rifles from Imperial Germany by the Ulster Volunteer Force. The men were led by General Hubert Gough. The men were not technically guilty of Mutiny as they had not yet refused to carry out a direct order.

Asquith's Liberal Government backed down, claiming an " Honest misunderstanding " and men were reinstated. The War Office in London declared that the army would not be used to enforce the Home Rule Act, but the emn who issued this statement were later forced to resign. The event contributed to unionist confidence and the growing Irish Separist Movement, convincing nationalists that they could not expect impartiality from the British Army in ireland.

A Civil war in Ireland was almost certain but the Great War intervened like a plague sucking in men from every walk of life. The effect it had on the political situation in Ireland was that it temporarily settled the political situation. The Volunteers who had armed themselves to the teeth from the north and south now chiefly formed the other two divisions of citizen soldiers that Ireland sent to the War ( not forgetting the 10th irish division) these being the 36th ( Ulster ) Division and the 16th Irish Division, who became the standard bearers at the front of Unionism and Nationalism respectively. When the two political leaders, Sir Edward Carson representing the Ulster Volunteers and John Redmond MP representing the Irish Volunteers, decided to support the war, both men hoped their volunteers " would earn the right to make the political demands once the war was over "

  John Redmond MP Sir Edward Carson

Lord Kitchener was not at all sympathetic to any politicizing, but he was well aware of the formidable qualities of the UVF, seen as the best prepared civilians in the British Isles ans o he sent his famous message to Carson: " I want the Volunteers " With the governments promise that the Home Rule Bill, although passed would be held in abeyance until after the war. Carson could invite his volunteers to sign up in the British Army for service abroad, but not until he had successfully campained to keep his Ulstermen together and, as he announced on 3rd September the word ' Ulster' would accompany the number 36 when a division was proposed to him. Most of the Ulster Volunteers who had signed the Ulster Covenant now enlisted in the 36th, however distrustful they were of the British Government over Home Rule.