SHORT RECORD OF THE SERVICE AND EXPERIENCES OF THE 5TH BATTALION ROYAL IRISH FUSILIERS IN THE GREAT WAR

The 5th Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers formed part of the 10th (Irish) Division raised at the outbreak of the Great War in response to Kitchener’s call for volunteers. This very concise history relates the battalion’s exploits which began at Gallipoli in July 1915. After a hard mauling in this doomed campaign, the battalion recuperated on the Greek island of Lemnos before being hurled into yet another forlorn enterprise : the attempt to save Serbia from being overrun. The unit’s two years in the Balkans ended on the Macedonian front, to which they bid farewell in the autumn of 1916, with memories ‘chiefly composed of hardship, disease and ennui’. The battalion’s next port of call was the Palestine campaign of 1917-18, exchanging mountain warfare for the desert. In Palestine the Battalion at last tasted victory against the Turks, helping to drive them from the Gaza-Bethsheba line and deep into the hills of Judea. The battalion finally embarked for France in May 1918. After a well-deserved spell of leave, and despite enduring its first gas attack, the battalion joined the pursuit of the Germans across the River Scheldt in the final weeks of the war.