Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, Turkey Beggars Bush 1915

This is a very late and tragic example of the place name. The naming can be fixed to a very short period, responsibility for naming can be limited to a small group, and their situation at the time is known  It falls within the same general circumstances  as the other ‘frontier’ sites, but even more intense and dangerous. However, it may not arise from the literary usage but have it’s origins in another location.

Notes to medals awarded to Private A.J. Owens, 1st County of London Yeomanry (Middlesex Duke of Cambridge’s Hussars) killed in action on 1^st September 1915 say “The regimental history records that the Middlesex Yeomanry moved into the front line in August 1915, at a position known as “Beggars Bush” . . . . relieving a battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. During this period of duty in the front line . . . the battalion spent its time digging and repairing the front line trenches, which were both narrow and shallow, and enfiladed by the enemy’s guns.”

I have not been able to locate the site precisely.

The 5^th Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers arrived at Suvla Bay on 7^th August 1915. They suffered heavy casualties and were left with only one officer after 15^th August following the attack on the crest of the Kiretch Tepe Sirt, which was taken and then lost.

This fixes the naming of the site to August 1915, and almost certainly by someone from the Royal Irish Fusiliers. These trench names would have been given by troops on the ground, usually junior officers.

Many locations at Gallipoli were identified using commonly known names from home, such as Piccadilly Circus, Brighton Beach, Dublin Castle, Warwick Castle, Oxford Street and Sauchiehall Street. Others were descriptive, e.g., Chocolate Hill, Lone Pine, The Pimple, Rhododendron Ridge, Scrubby Knoll and The Zig-zag. Finally, there were locations that were descriptive of the soldier’s experience, e.g., Dead Man’s Ridge, Hell Spit, Johnson’s Jolly , Sniper’s Ridge, and Rest Gully. This pattern of naming is consistent with trench names at the same time on the Western Front.

The medal website says the location was named after the army barracks of that name in Donnybrook, Dublin. That is possible, although there are few trenches named after barracks. The Regimental History of the Royal Irish Fusiliers shows that 5^th (Service) Battalion had been formed in August 1914 in Armagh and there is no record that it was ever at Beggars Bush Barracks in Dublin. However, the barracks were probably well known within the Army and by Dubliners. If the name of the barracks was the primary origin the experience of the location may have brought the literary phrase to mind. There are also records of scrub/bush between the trenches over which they fought which may have prompted the name. Junior officers might have been educated and aware of the literary usage. On the Western Front there were five examples of the cognate Queer Street probably from the works of Charles Dickens.

Reading

Medal Citation

Military Medals Online

Chasseaud, Peter, Rats Alley; Trench Names of the Western Front 1914-1918, Spellmount, Stroud, 2006

Thanks

Peter Chasseaud

Jonathan Maguire, Royal Irish Fusiliers Museum

Posted: March 19th, 2011 | Filed under: Places | Tags: Donnybrook, Literary, Suvla Bay, frontier | No Comments »