Someone was asking recently where Suvla and Sud-al-Bar - mentioned in Down the Glen - were.

A letter in today's Irish Times might help to clear up the matter: they were the sites of two 1915 battles in which Irish troops fighting in the British Army had been slaughtered:

"The assault on Gallipoli was spearheaded by the 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers and 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers of the 29th Division, and they were annihilated at Cape Helles on V Beach, on the collier the River Clyde and in the village and castle of Sedd-el-Bahr on Ap[ril 25th and 26th 1915," writes Gerald Morgan, FTCD.

(The spelling in English of Arab names varies, as witness the modern example of Gadaffi/Ghadafi/Quadafi, etc.)

"The Times History of the War (London, 1915) records that 'the glorious annals of the British Army present no example of a position carried against more dreadful odds'," writes Morgan.

"Even more disastrous from Ireland's point of view was the destruction of the Tenth (Irish) Division of Kitchener's First New Army at Suvla Bay in August and September 1915.

"With this tragic and monumental sacrifice of Irish young men (mostly well educated), the cause of Irish Home Rule and peace in Ireland was doomed."