Members of the United Irish Ex Services Association Australia gather before marching in the Sydney’s Anzac Day parade on April 25.

THE recent Anzac Day commemoration was the 95th anniversary of the beginning of the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey – one of the bloodiest battles in the First World War.

But a row has erupted over film footage of Irish and New Zealand soldiers there being deliberately misidentified as Australians.

Gallipoli was the first major battle for the soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac).

Irish soldiers were heavily involved in the campaign from the first day, in both the British and Anzac ranks.

In March, President McAleese laid wreaths in Turkey and paid tribute to the more than 4,000 Irish soldiers who died at Gallipoli.

“The cost to the Turks was dreadful. The cost to the Allies was dreadful. The cost to the Irish became a story lost, suppressed and neglected for many decades in between,” said Mrs McAleese.

An Australian submarine which breached the Turkish defences on April 25th, 1915, was commanded by Dubliner Henry Dacre Stoker, cousin of Dracula author Bram Stoker. But New Zealand military historian Chris Pugsley has accused an Australian War Memorial historian of knowingly labelling soldiers from the 5th Irish Fusiliers fighting at Suvla Bay as Australian.

Dr Pugsley, a lecturer at Britain’s Sandhurst Military Academy, identified the Irish soldiers by comparing a still photograph with the film footage.

He describes the 21-second scene as “perhaps the most iconic trench-fighting sequence that exists, where you see these guys in pith helmets furiously firing away”.

The footage was originally shot by Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, a British war correspondent, and edited by Australian War Memorial historian Charles Bean in 1919. A five-second scene involving New Zealand soldiers has also been misidentified until now as being Australian.

Dr Pugsley identified the New Zealanders by their distinctive hats – known as “lemon squeezers” – and a diary entry from commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel William Malone that confirmed Ashmead-Bartlett had filmed them.

“He seemed a bit swollen-headed, and full of his own importance,” wrote Lt Col Malone. “I gave him a couple of thrills by taking him to a place open to Turkish fire at about 300 yards’ range.”

Dr Pugsley says the misidentification of the Irish and New Zealand soldiers by Bean was deliberate.

“Gallipoli had become the iconic centrepiece of the Australian achievements in the First World War, and so he looked at all these images and assessed how he could tell the Australian story with them,” he said.

“It wasn’t a mistake, it was deliberate. He wanted to tell the Australian story, and he wanted to tell it in popular terms, and so he used the best images that he had.”

Sydney author Jeff Kildea, whose book Anzacs And Ireland prominently covers the Gallipoli campaign, welcome President McAleese’s recent visit to Turkey.

“I see this as part of an ongoing process of growing recognition of the role of the Irish in the First World War,” he said.

“In Ireland the Gallipoli campaign is largely unknown, and yet Irish troops played a very significant part in it.

“Overall, the Irish lost more than New Zealand at Gallipoli throughout the course of 1915,” said Mr Kildea, who is a practicing barrister and teaches Irish Studies at the University of NSW.

by Pádraig Collins

Irish President Mary McAleese will visit Gallipoli on March 24.

IRISH President Mary McAleese is to visit the World War I battlefield of Gallipoli in Turkey on March 24 to remember the 3,000 Irish soldiers who died there.

Mrs McAleese will dedicate a foundation stone of a proposed memorial to Irish casualties at a cemetery in the Suvla Bay area, where the 10th Irish Division were part of an invasion force in August 1915.

Last September, Mrs McAleese attended a ceremony in Killarney, Co Kerry to commemorate local men who served and died in the First World War.

Mrs McAleese said that when Ireland was “undivided” and a British colony, at one time 40 per cent of all those serving in the British forces were Irish.

“Time allows us to look differently at things,” she said.

The Echo understands that a relative of the President was one of those who lost their lives at Gallipoli.

The President’s trip has been welcomed by Sydney author Jeff Kildea, whose book Anzacs And Ireland prominently covers the Gallipoli campaign.

“I see this as part of an ongoing process of growing recognition of the role of the Irish in the First World War,” he said.

“In Ireland the Gallipoli campaign is largely unknown, and yet Irish troops played a very significant part in it.

“She’s going to commemorate a memorial to the 10th Irish Division, which landed in Gallipoli in August 1915 and served alongside the Australians at Lone Pine. Overall, the Irish lost more than New Zealand at Gallipoli throughout the course of 1915.

“The Irish landed on the first day. The 29th Division landed on April 25. The 10th Division landed in August as part of the big offensive.

Over 3,000 Irish were killed at Gallipoli,” said Mr Kildea, who is a practicing barrister and teaches Irish Studies at the University of NSW.

“There has been an awakening in recent years in Ireland about the involvement of Irish soldiers in the First World War. It had long been suppressed because it didn’t fit the nationalist narrative.

“In recent years people have been able to come to terms with the fact that a lot of Irishmen fought in that war, even though it was often regarded as England’s war.

“For many nationalists it was seen to be a way of trying to assure home rule, [showing that] the Irish could be trusted to do their bit. But the war went on too long and [Home Rule Party leader John] Redmond lost control and the Sinn Féin group gained control and the war became very unpopular,” said Mr Kildea.

“Those who fought in the war, when they came home, were often treated pretty badly. It has taken a few generations before people have been able to reconcile the two narratives and getting a situation where the people of Ireland are starting to commemorate [those who died in World War I].

“Now you even get Sinn Féin officials saying ‘my grandfather was there’. Alex Maskey, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast, laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Belfast,” he said.

“More and more there has been reconciliation and the President has been very much in the forefront of that. She is part of that movement that is trying to put away the bitterness of the past and commemorate Irish soldiers.

“Over 200,000 Irishmen fought in the First World War and 50,000 were killed.”

by Pádraig Collins

Dubliner Brian Finnegan, with wife Rebecca and daughter Briana, received his Aussie citizenship on Australia Day in Hobart.

His grandfather fought for Australia at Gallipoli during WWI, and his great- grandfather served as a member of parliament for Bourke in NSW, but it was only last month that Dubliner Brian Finnegan finally received his own Australian citizenship.

The Finnegan family’s amazing Irish Australian story came full circle in Hobart on February 26 when Brian formally became an Aussie citizen, with his wife Rebecca and daughter Briana proudly looking on.

The Clontarf native, who has lived in Australia for the last four years, achieved a lifelong dream last year when he opened up his own barbershop in Hobart, thus following in the footsteps of both his father and his grandfather who were both barbers.

The Finnegan family originally hailed from rural NSW, but Brian’s grandfather moved to Ireland after the war to start a barbershop in Inchicore.

He then went on to establish the well-known Waldorf Barbers on Westmoreland Street in Dublin city centre, a shop in which Brian’s father Liam and sister Linda still work.

It was in Inchicore that Brian’s father Liam learned the family business, and where Brian himself performed his first haircut at the age of seven.

Now the Finnegan story had come full circle, with little Briana the next Finnegan in line to learn the ropes of the family business.

“My family were all originally from New South Wales, so it was always a dream of mine to come back to Australia,” Finnegan said.

“I was on a working holiday in 2003 and I was out for a few beers in Canberra when I met Rebecca.We returned to Ireland in 2004 and stayed a couple of years.”

After a couple of years spent in that rain, Brian and Rebecca finally decided to up roots and return to the sunnier climes of Australia, setting up home in Hobart.

Now, it seems, there’s no turning back.