Gallipoli had become a place of shadows and phantoms to the 10th Irish Division. As they looked back upon it they could not but think of the maelstrom of thick and prickly scrub, yielding sand, rocky defiles, and steep hills of that roadless country; of strong Turkish entrenchments, the continuous roar of guns, bullets, shells, concealed snipers; of broiling heat, sweat, thirst, tormenting flies, lack of water, and dysentery, into which they were plunged on August 7th; of scrambling and bloody fighting; and of the want of foresight and imagination in their high commanders that followed. It was a soldiers' campaign, in which the bayonet and the man behind it counted for everything, and the brains of the Generals--if indeed there were any--for nothing. The whole network of memories made a horrid nightmare of confusion, agony, and sacrifice of life unparalleled in the history of the British Army, relieved only--but how magnificently relieved--by the endurance and gallantry of the troops, unequalled and unsurpassable. Yet the 10th Division were loth to leave that dread Peninsula, which, like a fearful monster, had devoured the young men of Ireland. They were sorry to go, because the purpose of the campaign was unachieved; still more sorry to part from their dead comrades. Because of those dead Gallipoli will ever be to the Irish race a place of glorious pride and sorrow. Well may that huddled heap of hills between Suvla Bay and Sari Bair be haunted by the wraith of Irish tragedy and grief; well may the wailing cry of the banshee be ever heard there. CHAPTER IX FOR CROSS AND CROWN DEATH IN ACTION OF FATHER FINN OF THE DUBLINS AND FATHER GWYNN OF THE IRISH GUARDS In which mood do soldiers generally go into battle--devotional or profane? An observer of authority, Mr. J.H. Morgan, professor of constitutional history at University College, London, who had a long stay at the Front, in France and Flanders on Government duty, commits himself to the curious statement that most men go into action, not ejaculating prayers, but swearing out aloud. However that may be as regards the non-religious soldier, it certainly is not true of the Catholic Irish soldier. By temperament and training the average Irish soldier, like most of his race, is profoundly religious at all times, and the experiences of the chaplains to the Catholic Irish regiments show that at no time is the Irish soldier more under a constant and reverent sense of the nearness of the unseen Powers, and his absolute dependence upon them, than at the awful moment when, in the plenitude of his youth and physical strength, he is confronted by the prospect of sudden death or bodily mutilation.