Ireland and the Great War - Casualties

Casualties

Numbers too vast to imagine. Wounds too ghastly to contemplate. Death as close as the next cigarette. Images too seared on the brain to erase.

Recalling the horrors of battle

Fifty years after the Battle of the Somme, Dr Charles Dickson MC returned for a television documentary. This clip recreates the horror of the battlefield as Dickson reminisces and reflects on the courage of those who had to clean up the carnage.

Shot at Ypres

Few soldiers survived the war unscathed. In this clip, Jimmy O'Brien of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers describes how he was shot in battle at Ypres.

"I got blown out sky high"

This veteran of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers tells how he was injured in a shell explosion at Opie Wood which killed his three companions. He had to wait in the shell-hole for a day before being evacuated.

"I began to get sick into me gas mask"

Jack Campbell remembers the frightening experience of being gassed at the Somme. His brother was killed that day in the same battle.

"I would never like to see it again anyway"

Casualties in some actions ran into thousands, but the dead and wounded were often left lying in no-man's land until a break in the fighting made it safe to clear the remains off the field. Jack King describes horrific scenes of dead soldiers being buried on battlefields only for their corpses to be blown-up again later.

"You might get the mules killed"

Edgar Poulter recalls being told by an officer that mules were more valuable than men, as dead men could easily be replaced, but mules were scarce.