page_title: Ireland and World War I
section_title: Irish Divisions
hierarchical_section_title: Ireland and World War I / Irish Divisions
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of paired stained-glass windows in the Guildhall in Derry, Ireland, commemorating the national involvement of three Irish (Service) Divisions in the Great War 1914-18. Window left displays the Coat of Arms of the 36th (Ulster) Division, the window right, above, the Arms of the 10th (Irish) Division and below those of the 16th (Irish) Division. On all sides are the names of their many important battle engagements. The windows were completed in the early nineteen-twenties.
context_page_description: During World War I, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which entered the war in August 1914 as one of the Entente Powers, along with France and Russia. In part as an effect of chain ganging, the UK decided due to geopolitical power issues to declare war on the Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.
  Occurring during Ireland's revolutionary period, the Irish people's experience of the war was complex and its memory of it divisive. At the outbreak of the war, most Irish people, regardless of political affiliation, supported the war in much the same way as their British counterparts, and both nationalist and unionist leaders initially backed the British war effort. Irishmen, both Catholic and Protestant, served extensively in the British forces, many in three specially raised divisions, while others served in the armies of the British dominions and the United States, John T. Prout being an example of an Irishman serving in the latter. Over 200,000 men from Ireland fought in the war, in several theatres.
context_section_description: Of the Irish men who enlisted in the first year of the War, half were from what is now the Republic of Ireland; the other half were from what is now Northern Ireland. They joined new battalions of the eight regiments existing in Ireland.
  These battalions were assigned to brigades of the 8th Infantry Division, 10th (Irish) Division, the 16th (Irish) Division and the 36th (Ulster) Division of Kitchener's New Service Army, as well as to brigades of other United Kingdom Divisions during the course of the war.
  A proportion of the Irish National Volunteers (INV) enlisted with regiments of both the 10th and 16th Divisions, but were predominantly in the 16th division, members of the Ulster Volunteers (UVF), joined regiments of the 36th Division. Military historian Timothy Bowman states that 'While Kitchener saw the UVF as an efficient military force and was prepared to offer concessions to secure the services of UVF personnel in the British army his view of the INV was very different. The INV were, even in comparison to the UVF, an inefficient military force in 1914, lacked trained officers, finances and equipment. Kitchener was certainly not inclined to, as he saw it, waste valuable officers and equipment on such a force which, at best, would relieve Territorial units from garrison duties and, at worst, would provide Irish Nationalists with the ability [by training them in the means of War] to enforce Home Rule [when they returned] on their own terms'.
  In spite of these criticisms, the 16th division gained a reputation as first-class shock troops during engagements in 1916.
  The Irish regiments of the three divisions and the BEF as a whole appear to have suffered from few serious disciplinary or morale problems during March to November 1918.
caption: The Derry Guildhall stained-glass window which commemorates the Three Irish Divisions, left the 36th, right the 10th and 16th.
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