Nimy Bridge is being defended by a single company of the 4th Royal Fusiliers and a machine gun section with Dease in command. The gunfire is intense and the casualties very heavy, but the lieutenant continues to fire in spite of his wounds, until he is hit for the fifth time and is carried away.
Dease wins the first Victoria Cross to be awarded in the Great War and he receives it on the first day of the first significant British encounter in that war.
When Lieutenant Dease has been mortally wounded, Private Sidney Godley offers to defend the Railway Bridge while the rest of the section retreats and is also awarded the Victoria Cross. He is taken prisoner of war.
Commissioned into the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in 1909, O’Sullivan spends much of the next three years serving in China with his unit, 2nd Battalion. From 1912, the battalion is based in British India but on the outbreak of World War I is brought back to England.
The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers form part of 29th Division, intended for service in the Gallipoli campaign. Now a captain in the 1st Battalion, O’Sullivan commands a company during the landing at X Beach on the Gallipoli peninsula on April 25, 1915, and acquits himself well during the early stages of the fighting. On June 18, 1915, the Turks mount an attack on positions adjacent to those of O’Sullivan’s company, forcing the troops manning the defenses to abandon it. He leads his company in a counterattack to reclaim the lost position which exchanges hands several times during the next few hours. The commanding officer in the area, Brigadier General W. R. Marshall, eventually directs O’Sullivan to lead a party of Inniskilling and South Wales Borderers soldiers to capture the position which is achieved at dawn the following day.
Two weeks later, O’Sullivan is involved in a further action near Krithia, and this results in his recommendation for the Victoria Cross (VC). The citation, published in The London Gazette on September 1, 1915, reads as follows:
“For most conspicuous bravery during operations south-west of Krithia on the Gallipoli Peninsula. On the night of July 1-2, 1915, when it was essential that a portion of a trench which had been lost should be regained, Captain O’Sullivan, although not belonging to the troops at this point volunteered to lead a party of bomb throwers to affect the recapture. He advanced in the open under a very heavy fire and in order to throw his bombs with greater effect, got up on the parapet, where he was completely exposed to the fire of the enemy occupying the trench. He was finally wounded, but not before his inspiring example had led his party to make further efforts, which resulted in the recapture of the trench. On the night of June 18-19, 1915, Captain O’Sullivan had saved a critical situation in the same locality by his personal gallantry and good leading.”
The wounds O’Sullivan receives in the action of July 1-2 necessitates his evacuation to Egypt for medical treatment, but he quickly recovers and returns to his unit on August 11, 1915. The 29th Division is now at Suvla Bay and preparing for a new offensive. The Inniskillings are tasked with the capture of a feature known as Hill 70 or Scimitar Hill. During this battle, on August 21, 1915, he leads a charge of 50 men to the hilltop but is killed.
O’Sullivan has no known grave and is remembered on the Helles Memorial to the Missing. His VC is delivered to his mother who lives in Dorchester, and his name also appears on the memorial there.
Nimy Bridge is being defended by a single company of the 4th Royal Fusiliers and a machine-gun section with Dease in command. The gunfire is intense and the casualties very heavy, but the lieutenant continues to fire in spite of his wounds, until he is hit for the fifth time and is carried away.
Dease wins the first Victoria Cross to be awarded in the Great War and he receives it on the first day of the first significant British encounter in that war.
When Lieutenant Dease has been mortally wounded, Private Sidney Godley offers to defend the Railway Bridge while the rest of the section retreats and is also awarded the Victoria Cross. He is taken prisoner of war.
Edward Martyn, Irish playwright and early republican political and cultural activist, is born in County Galway on January 30, 1859. He serves as the first president of Sinn Féin from 1905 to 1908.
Martyn is the elder son of John Martyn of Tullira Castle, Ardrahan and Annie Mary Josephine (née Smyth) of Masonbrook, Loughrea, both of County Galway. He is educated at Belvedere College, Dublin, and Wimbledon College, London, both Jesuit schools, after which he enters Christ Church, Oxford in 1877, but leaves without taking a degree in 1879. His only sibling, John, dies in 1883.
Martyn begins writing fiction and plays in the 1880s. While his own output is undistinguished, he acquires a well-earned reputation as a noted connoisseur of music, both European classical and Irish traditional. He is a fine musician in his own right, giving memorable performances for guests on an organ he has installed at Tullira. He uses his wealth to benefit Irish culture.
Martyn is reportedly pivotal in introducing William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory to each other in 1896. The three found the Irish Literary Theatre, for whom Martyn writes his best and most popular plays, The Heather Field and A Tale of a Town. He covers the costs of the company’s first three seasons, which proves crucial to establishing the company and the future of the Abbey Theatre. He later parts ways with Yeats and Gregory, something he later regrets, but remains on warm terms with Lady Gregory until the end of his life.
Martyn is a cousin and friend to George Moore (1852–1933). The two make frequent trips all over Europe, where Moore influences Martyn’s views on modern art, which result in the latter purchasing several works by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Kitagawa Utamaro, all later donated to the National Gallery of Ireland. Moore does not share Martyn’s fenian ideas nor espousal of violent means to achieve national sovereignty. Their different political opinions eventually drive their friendship apart.
Martyn is descended from Richard Óge Martyn, a leading Irish Confederate, and Oliver Óge Martyn, a Jacobite who fights in the Williamite War in Ireland. Yet by his lifetime, the family are unionists. Martyn’s outlook begins to change in the 1880s after studying Irish history, as well as living through the events of the Irish Land War. He comes out as an Irish republican when he famously refuses to allow “God Save The Queen” to be sung after a dinner party at Tullira. By this stage he is involved with the political work of Maude Gonne and Arthur Griffith and is a vocal opponent of the visit of Queen Victoria to Ireland in 1897. He also protests the visit by Edward VII in 1903, this time as chairman of the People’s Protection Committee. He is the first president of Sinn Féin from 1905 to 1908. In 1908 he resigns from the party and politics in general to concentrate on writing and his other activities.
Martyn dies at Tullira on December 5, 1923, after years of ill health. Friends and family are shocked at a provision in his will that directs that his body be donated for the use of medical science and, after dissection, be buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave. The Palestrina Choir sings at his graveside. He bequeaths his papers to the Carmelites of Clarendon Street in Dublin, who subsequently misplace and lose them. Portraits of Martyn exist by, among others, John Butler Yeats and Sarah Purser. On his death the senior line of the Martyn family dies out. His property is inherited by his cousins, the Smyths of Masonbrook and Lord Hemphill. Tullira is sold by the latter forty years later changing ownership several times since.
In 1934, Dugan is appointed Governor of South Australia. He is appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG), retires from the Army and moves to Adelaide with his wife. They become an extremely popular and glamorous vice-regal couple. Sir Winston and Lady Dugan are both excellent public speakers and travel widely in order to bring problems to the attention of the ministers of the day. Upon the expiration of his term, there is bipartisan parliamentary support for him to serve a second term, but he has already accepted an appointment to be Governor of Victoria.
Sir Winston and Lady Dugan arrive in Melbourne on July 17, 1939. They continue their active role in community affairs, promoting unemployment reduction and making the ballroom of Government House available for the Australian Red Cross.
Dugan has an active role stabilising state politics during the tumultuous 1940s. Upon the disintegration of Albert Dunstan‘s Country Party in 1943, he installs Australian Labor Party leader John Cain as Premier. Four days later, Dunstan forms a coalition with the United Australia Party. Following the collapse of that ministry in 1945, Dugan dissolves parliament and calls a general election for November, which results in the balance of power being held by independents. Dugan commissions Cain to form the ministry of a minority government.
Dugan’s term as Governor is extended five times. He returns to England in February 1949. On July 7, 1949, he is raised to the peerage as Baron Dugan of Victoria, of Lurgan in County Armagh.
Winston Dugan dies at Marylebone, London, on August 17, 1951, at the age of 74. As there are no children from his marriage, the barony becomes extinct.
seamus dubhghaill 