The Irish on the Somme
by Michael MacDonagh · English · Gutenberg #34907 · 384,423 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Irish on the Somme
Author: Michael MacDonagh
Release date: January 10, 2011 [eBook #34907]
Language: English
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THE IRISH ON THE SOMME
THE IRISH
ON THE SOMME
_BEING THE SECOND SERIES OF
"THE IRISH AT THE FRONT"_
By MICHAEL MACDONAGH
_Author of "Irish Life and Character"_
_WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY_
JOHN REDMOND, M.P.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXVII
TO
THE MEMORY OF
MAJOR WILLIAM REDMOND, M.P.
ROYAL IRISH REGIMENT (IRISH BRIGADE)
WHO DIED OF WOUNDS RECEIVED IN ACTION
JUNE 7, 1917
LEADING HIS MEN IN THE ATTACK
ON WYTSCHAETE WOOD
INTRODUCTION
BY JOHN REDMOND, M.P.
THE RESPONSE OF THE IRISH RACE
This war is a war of liberation, and its battle-cry is the rights and
liberties of humanity. From the very beginning of the conflict my
colleagues of the Irish Party, and I myself, have availed of every
opportunity in Parliament, on the platform, and in the Press, to
present this view of it to the Irish race at home and abroad; and
despite the tragic mistakes made in regard to Ireland by the
successive Governments which have held office since war broke out, we
are still unshaken in our opinion that Ireland's highest interests lie
in the speedy and overwhelming victory of England and the Allies.
The response of the Irish race the world over to our appeal to rise in
defence of civilisation and freedom has been really wonderful. The
example was set by Ireland herself.
At the outbreak of the war I asked the Irish people, and especially
the young men of Ireland, to mark the profound change which has been
brought about in the relations of Ireland to the Empire by
wholeheartedly supporting the Allies in the field. I pointed out that
at long last, after centuries of misunderstanding, the democracy of
Great Britain had finally and irrevocably decided to trust Ireland
with self-government; and I called upon Ireland to prove that this
concession of liberty would have the same effect in our country as it
has had in every other portion of the Empire, and that henceforth
Ireland would be a strength instead of a weakness. I further pointed
out that the war was provoked by the intolerable military despotism of
Germany, that it was a war in defence of small nationalities, and that
Ireland would be false to her own history and traditions, as well as
to honour, good faith and self-interest, if she did not respond to my
appeal.
The answer to that appeal is one of the most astonishing facts in
history. At the moment, fraught with the most terrible consequences to
the whole Empire, this Kingdom found for the first time in the history
of the relations between Great Britain and Ireland that the Irish
Nationalist members, representing the overwhelming mass of the people
of Ireland, were enabled to declare themselves upon the side of
England. They did that with their eyes open. They knew the
difficulties in the way. They knew--none so well--the distrust and
suspicion of British good faith which had been, in the past, universal
almost in Ireland. They recognised that the boon of self-government
had not been finally granted to their country. They knew the
traditional hostility which existed in many parts of Ireland to
recruiting for the British Army. Facing all these things, and all the
risks that they entailed, they told Ireland and her sons abroad that
it was their duty to rally to the support of the Allies in a war which
was in defence of the principles of freedom and civilisation. We
succeeded far better than we had anticipated, or hoped at the
commencement. This is a notorious fact. There is genuine enthusiasm in
Ireland on the side of the Allies. Addressing great popular gatherings
in every province in Ireland in support of the Allies, I called for a
distinctively Irish army, composed of Irishmen, led by Irishmen and
trained at home in Ireland. With profound gratitude I acknowledge the
magnificent response the country has made. For the first time in the
history of the Wars of England there is a huge Irish army in the
field. The achievements of that Irish army have covered Ireland with
glory before the world, and have thrilled our hearts with pride. North
and South have vied with each other in springing to arms, and, please
God, the sacrifices they have made side by side on the field of battle
will form the surest bond of a united Irish nation in the future.
From Ireland, according to the latest official figures, 173,772
Irishmen are serving in the Navy and Army, representing all classes
and creeds amongst our people. Careful inquiries made through the
churches in the north of England and Scotland and from other sources,
show that, in addition, at least 150,000 sons of the Irish race, most
of them born in Ireland, have joined the Colours in Great Britain. It
is a pathetic circumstance that these Irishmen in non-Irish regiments
are almost forgotten, except when their names appear in the casualty
lists. Some of the Irish papers have, for a considerable time past,
been publishing special lists of killed and wounded under the heading,
"Irish Casualties in British Regiments." One of these daily lists,
taken quite haphazard, and published on November 1, 1916, contains 225
names, all distinctively Irish--O'Briens, O'Hanlons, Donovans, etc.
These men were scattered amongst the following non-Irish regiments--
Grenadier Guards.
Coldstream Guards.
Scots Guards.
Welsh Guards.
Royal Field Artillery.
Royal Engineers.
Royal Scots Fusiliers.
The Black Watch.
Northumberland Fusiliers.
Yorkshire Regiment.
East Yorks Regiment.
Dorsetshire Regiment.
Cheshire Regiment.
York and Lancaster Regiment.
Lancashire Fusiliers.
King's Royal Rifles.
London Regiment.
Manchester Regiment.
King's Liverpool Regiment.
Loyal North Lancashire Regiment.
Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
Highland Light Infantry.
Leicestershire Regiment.
Worcestershire Regiment.
Sherwood Foresters.
King's Own Yorks Light Infantry.
Border Regiment.
Durham Light Infantry.
Notts. & Derby Regiment.
Machine Gun Corps.
Army Service Corps.
Army Cyclist Corps.
As showing the extent to which Scottish regiments at the Front are
made up of Irishmen, one newspaper quotes four hundred names from the
casualty lists issued on four successive days one week. All the names
are Irish, all the addresses are Scotch, and in only about twenty
cases were the men enrolled in Irish regiments, all the others being
attached to Scottish regiments. These sad records show the many
thousands of Irishmen serving in non-Irish regiments who are never
taken into account to the credit of Ireland, in estimating the part
she is playing in this war, until they come to light in the casualty
lists.
In addition to these voluntary contributions of Ireland and her sons
in Great Britain to the British Army, I am informed on the highest
authority that from twenty to twenty-five per cent of all the troops
from the oversea Dominions are men of Irish blood. General Botha sent
me this cablegram from South Africa: "I entirely endorse your view
that this victory"--he is referring to his great defeat of the Germans
in their colonies--"is the fruit of the policy of liberty and the
recognition of national rights in this part of the Empire." General
Botha had enormous difficulties to face, serious racial animosity, and
bitter national memories. Does any fair-minded man think that General
Botha could have overcome those difficulties as he did if the war had
broken out just after the recognition of those national rights to
which he referred and before they had come into operation? The
national rights of Ireland are recognised, but they have not yet come
into operation. Yet it is true to say that the overwhelming sentiment
of the Irish people is with the Empire for the first time. That fact
is of incalculable value. Its influence has spread to every corner of
the Empire. If the sentiment of the Irish people at home had not been
with England in this war, the depressing and benumbing effect would
have been felt everywhere in the self-governing Dominions. Ireland
herself has made a splendid response, and the result has been that a
wave of enthusiasm has stirred the hearts of men of Irish blood
throughout the Empire. I received a New Year's card from the
commanding officer and the other officers of a regiment raised in
Vancouver, commanded by Irishmen and composed of Irishmen. They call
themselves "The Vancouver Irish Fusiliers." Then, not long since, in
Cape Town, green flags were presented by General Botha's wife--a
member of the historic Emmet family--to an Irish regiment raised
there. These facts constitute a striking result of the action we felt
it our duty to take to bring feeling in Ireland in regard to the war
into line with that of the rest of the Empire. Then there is that
remarkable Irish battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the
Irish Canadian Rangers, which is composed of Irish Catholics and Irish
Protestants in equal numbers, commanded by officers more than half of
whom are Catholics and having a Catholic chaplain and a Protestant
chaplain. This battalion, unique among the fighting units raised at
home or abroad during the war, and a magnificent body of men, made a
tour through the ancient motherland of their race in January 1917 (on
their way to the Front), and received in Dublin, Belfast, Cork and
Limerick the most enthusiastic popular welcomes.
Ireland is very proud of these sons of the Irish race who, in every
part of the Empire, have followed the lead which she herself has given
in rallying to the cause with which she has always sympathised and has
always supported--the cause of right against might. The Irish race is
represented in this war by at least half a million of men who have
voluntarily joined the Colours. How gallantly they have fought this
book, in part, relates. In his first series of _The Irish at the
Front_ Mr. MacDonagh deals with the achievements of the Irish Guards
and the Regular Irish regiments of the Line in Flanders and France in
the earlier years of the war; the landing of the Munsters and Dublins
of the immortal 29th Division at Beach V, Gallipoli; and the fighting
of the 10th (Irish) Division of the New Armies at Suvla Bay. The
story of these glorious deeds sent a wave of emotion through the land.
The King, addressing a battalion of the Irish Guards on St. Patrick's
Day, 1916, said--
"On St. Patrick's Day, when Irishmen the world over unite to
celebrate the memory of their Patron Saint, it gives me great
pleasure to inspect the reserve battalion of my Irish Guards,
and to testify my appreciation of the services rendered by the
regiment in this war.... I gratefully remember the heroic
endurance of the 1st Battalion in the arduous retreat from Mons,
again at Ypres on the critical November 1st, when, as Lord
Cavan, your Brigadier, wrote, those who were left showed the
enemy that Irish Guards must be reckoned with, however hard hit.
After twenty-eight days of incessant fighting against heavy
odds, the battalion came out of the line less than a company
strong, with only four officers--a glorious tribute to Irish
loyalty and endurance.... In conferring the Victoria Cross on
Lance-Corporal, now Lieutenant, Michael O'Leary, the first Irish
Guardsman to win this coveted distinction, I was proud to honour
a deed that, in its fearless contempt of death, illustrates the
spirit of my Irish Guards. At Loos the 2nd Battalion received
its baptism of fire and confirmed the high reputation already
won by the 1st Battalion."
_The Daily Telegraph_ (London), writing on March 18, 1916, said--
"There is one key to the soul of Ireland--the word 'freedom.' It
was realised instantly that this was no dynastic war on the part
of the Allies, no struggle for material ends, but a life and
death conflict for liberty of thought and action. Once the issue
was exposed, Irishmen, with all the white heat which injustice
inspires in their breasts, threw themselves into the battle. The
enemy has since felt Irish steel and fallen under Irish bullets.
Whatever the future may have in store, the British people will
never forget the generous blood of the sister nation, which has
been shed on so many hard-fought battlefields since the
world-war began."
In this, the second series of _The Irish at the Front_, the thrilling
story is continued. The Irish troops dealt with are all of the New
Armies--the Ulster Division, the Irish Division and the Tyneside Irish
Brigade. I am as proud of the Ulster regiments as I am of the
Nationalist regiments. I do not want to boast of their valour. We
Irishmen are inclined to take it as a matter of course. These Irish
regiments, Unionist and Nationalist, merely keep up the tradition of
our race. But I say that Lord Kitchener's words remain true--the words
that he wrote to the Viceregal Recruiting Conference in Dublin in
1915, when he said that in the matter of recruiting, "Ireland's
performance has been magnificent." Let me ask any fair-minded man this
question: If five years ago any one had predicted that in a great war
in which the Empire was engaged 173,772 men would have been raised
from Ireland, and that there would be more than half a million
Irishmen with the Colours, would he not have been looked upon as a
lunatic? It is the free offering of Ireland. Surely it must be
regarded as a proud and astonishing record!
J.E. REDMOND.
PREFACE
This narrative is concerned chiefly with the three distinctively Irish
units of the New Armies engaged on the Western Front--the Ulster
Division, the Irish Division (representative of the south and west),
and the "Tyneside Irish," in which Irishmen living in the north of
England enlisted. It also deals incidentally with the Irish Regular
regiments of the Line, and with that numerous body of Irishmen serving
in English, Scottish and Welsh battalions and in the Anzacs and
Canadians.
The first series of _The Irish at the Front_ covers, first, the
fighting of the Irish regiments of the Regular Army in France,
Flanders and the Dardanelles during the early stages of the war; and,
secondly, the operations of the 10th (Irish) Division--composed
entirely of "Kitchener's men"--against the Turks at Gallipoli. The
latter, an exceptionally fine body of young Irishmen, gallantly fought
and fell--as the story discloses--in that expedition, so ill-fated and
yet so romantic, though they had never handled a rifle or done a day's
drill before the war. In this series we see Irishmen of the same type
matched against the Germans in France. As we know, Germany confidently
expected that such levies, hastily raised and insufficiently trained,
would break in pieces at the first encounter with her seasoned
troops. But it was the formidable German lines that were broken, and
they were broken by these very raw levies at the bayonet's point.
For the telling of the Irish part in the story of the Somme I am much
indebted to the assistance given by officers and men of the Irish
battalions engaged in that mighty battle. But the Irish soldiers are
not only "splendid fighting material"--a rather non-human phrase now
much in vogue, as if the only thing that matters in warfare is the
physical capacity of man--they have souls and minds and hearts, as
well as strong right hands, and of these also something is said in
this book.
MICHAEL MACDONAGH.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY JOHN REDMOND, M.P.
PREFACE 7
CHAP.
I.--IN THE TRENCHES WITH THE CONNAUGHT RANGERS 11
Scenes Comic and Tragic
II.--EXPLOITS OF THE ULSTER DIVISION 24
Belfast's Tribute to the Dead
III.--ULSTERS' ATTACK ON THE SLOPES OF THIEPVAL. 32
"Not a man turned to come back, not one"
IV.--FOUR VICTORIA CROSSES TO THE ULSTER DIVISION 47
Brilliant Additions to the Record of Irish Valour
and Romance
V.--COMBATIVENESS OF THE IRISH SOLDIER 56
The British Blends of Courage
VI.--WITH THE TYNESIDE IRISH 67
Over the Heights of La Boiselle, through Bailiff's
Wood to Contalmaison
VII.--THE WEARING OF RELIGIOUS EMBLEMS AT THE FRONT 84
VIII.--THE IRISH SOLDIER'S HUMOUR AND SERIOUSNESS 104
Stories from the Front, Funny and Otherwise
IX.--THE IRISH BRIGADE 118
"Everywhere and Always Faithful"
X.--IRISH REPLIES TO GERMAN WILES AND POISON GAS 128
How the Munsters captured the Enemy's wheedling
Placards
XI.--STORMING OF GUILLAMONT BY THE IRISH BRIGADE 138
Raising the Green Flag in the Centre of the Village
XII.--THE BRIGADE'S POUNCE ON GUINCHY 146
Gallant Boy Officers of the Dublin Fusiliers
XIII.--HONOURS AND DISTINCTIONS FOR THE IRISH BRIGADE 152
How Lieut. Holland of the Leinsters won the V.C.
XIV.--THE WOODEN CROSS 158
Death of Lieut. T.M. Kettle of the Dublins
XV.--MORE IRISH HEROES OF THE VICTORIA CROSS 165
Deeds of the Highest Merit and Lustre
XVI.--RELATIONS BETWEEN ENEMY TRENCHES 182
Irish Kindliness and German Guile
CHAPTER I
IN THE TRENCHES WITH THE CONNAUGHT RANGERS
SCENES COMIC AND TRAGIC
"The men are as anxious for the road, sir, as if 'twere to Galway
races they were going, no less, or to Ballinasloe Fair," said the
company sergeant-major to the captain. Those referred to belonged to a
battalion of the Connaught Rangers ordered to the firing-trenches for
the first time. "The real thing at last;" "The genuine McCoy, and no
mistake," they said to one another as, in preparation for the march,
they hurriedly packed their things in the barns and cow-sheds that
served as billets, and, to provide further vent for their jubilation,
danced Irish jigs and reels and sang national songs.
These Irishmen had read a lot about the fighting, and had heard a
great deal more, but they felt that print and talk, however graphic
and copious, left many strange things to be disclosed by the actual
experience. Some of them would "get the beck"--the call from
Death--but what matter? Were not soldiers who died in action to be
envied, rather than pitied, by those who found themselves alive when
the war was over, and had not been to the mysterious Front at all? So
they thought and said, and now that they were on the road there was a
look of proud elation on their faces, as though they had been singled
out by special favour for a grand adventure. They did not regard
themselves in the least as heroes, these entirely unsophisticated men,
without a trace of self-consciousness. They had volunteered for
service in the belief that Ireland would be false to her historical
self if she did not take part in this war for freedom, democracy and
humanity. But now there was nothing in their minds about revenging the
wrongs of Belgium, or driving the invader from the soil of France, or
even of saving the British Empire. It was the fight that was the
thing. It was the chance of having a smack at "the Gerrys"--as the
enemy is called by the Irish soldiers--that they prized. More exalted
feelings would come again when the battle was over and won. Then, and
not till then, as they return with many gaps in their ranks, do Irish
troops see themselves as an army of redemption and deliverance; and
the only land they think of having saved is Ireland. To them Ireland
personifies all the great causes of the war, and a blow struck for
these causes, no matter where, is a blow struck for her.
By the light of many stars sparkling in the sky that dark October
night the men could see signs that battles had been fought in the
country they were traversing. It was a devastated bare expanse,
stretching for miles and miles, very muddy and broken up with shell
holes. Roads had been made across it, and along one of these the
battalion went in the wake of the guides with swinging lanterns. The
men were fully loaded. In addition to his fighting equipment, almost
every one carried something extra, such as a pick or shovel, a bag of
rations, or a bundle of fire-wood. The company officers also had heavy
packs strapped on their shoulders. Great good-humour prevailed.
Whenever, at awkward turns of the road, or at very dark points,
progress was interrupted, those in front would shout some preposterous
explanation of the delay to their comrades behind. "Begonnies, boys,
we're taking tickets here for Galway. Word has come down that the war
is over," cried one joker. Deep groans of pretended dismay and
disappointment rose from the rear ranks. "And poor me, without a
German helmet, or even a black eye, to show that I was in it," was one
of the responses.
When the open plain was quitted the battalion disappeared into a
trench like a narrow country lane winding between high banks. It was
much darker in these deeps than it had been outside. The gloom was
broken occasionally by the light of lanterns carried by sentinels, or
electric torches at junctions where several trenches crossed. Soon the
trench became narrower and more tortuous. It also became more soaked
with rain. Pools of water were frequently encountered. The battalion
was now a floundering, staggering, overloaded and perspiring closely
packed mass of men, walking in couples or in single file and treading
on each other's heels.
The mishaps arising from this crowded scramble in the dark through mud
and mire, between banks of unsupported crumbling earth, did not
exhaust the Irish cheerfulness of the battalion. There was laughter
when a man got a crack on the skull from a rifle which a comrade
carried swung across his shoulder. There was louder laughter still
when another, stooping to pick up something he had dropped, was bumped
into from behind and sent sprawling. So sucking and tenacious was the
mud that frequently each dragging footstep called for quite a physical
effort, and a man was thankful that he did not have to leave a boot
behind. "Ah, sure this is nothin' to the bog away in Connemara, where
I often sunk up to me neck when crossing it to cut turf," was the
comfort imparted in a soft brogue. "True for you, Tim," remarked
another. "It's an ould sayin' and a true one that there's nothin' so
bad but it could be worse."
The trench certainly proved the truth of the saying. Bad as it had
been, it sank to a still lower degree of slush. There were deep holes
filled with water into which the men went with an abrupt plunge and
passed through with much splashing. Just ahead of one of these
particularly treacherous points singing was heard. The chorus was
taken up by many voices, and its last line was rapped out with hearty
boisterousness--
"Out and make way for the bould Fenian Men."
This joyous noise heralded the appearance of a party of the Dublin
Fusiliers, belonging to the same Division, who were coming down the
trench. By the light of lanterns and lamps it was seen that they had
taken off their trousers and socks and, holding up their shirts, were
wading in their boots blithely through the pools, like girls in bare
legs and lifted petticoats paddling at the seaside.
The Connaught men laughed hilariously. "Sure the Dublin jackeens have
never been beaten yet for cuteness," they cried. "They stripped to
their pelts so as they wouldn't get the 'fluensy by means of their wet
clothes. And, faix, 'twould be the greatest pity in the world anything
would ail stout and hearty boys like them." As they spoke, the men of
the west lay close against the embankments to let the men of the east
go by. But weren't the Dublins in the divil of a hurry back to
billets? the Rangers went on to remark. And why not? answered the
Dublins. Sure if they'd only sniff with their noses they would smell
the roast beef and the steaming punch that were being got ready for
them by special orders of Field-Marshal Haig for the great things they
did away up in the firing-line. "Lucky boys!" shouted the Rangers,
responding to the joke. "And tell us now, have ye left us a Gerry at
all alive to get a pelt at, and we new at the game?" A Dublin man gave
the reply as he went past. "To tell ye the truth, except there's a
raid, there isn't much divarshion in the way of fighting; but every
man of ye will have his full and plenty of mud and water before he's
much oulder." "Well, there's nothing in that to yowl about." "Maybe
not, if you can swim." The trench resounded with laughter at the
exchange of banter. But for fear any of the Rangers might take some of
the talk as half a joke and whole earnest, a kind-hearted sergeant of
the Dublins, wishful to say the cheery word, called out, "Don't mind
them playboys; there's no more water and mud in it than is natural in
such wet weather as we're getting."
The Rangers reached their destination just as the day was dawning in a
cold drizzle from a grey, lowering sky. They were all plastered with
yellowish mud. Mud was on their hands, on their faces, in their hair,
down their backs; and the barrels of their rifles were choked with
mud. For the next four days and nights of duty in the trenches they
were to be lapped about with mud. War was to be for them a mixture of
mud and high explosives. Of the two mud was the ugliest and most
hateful. Soon they would come to think that there was hardly anything
left in the world but mud; and from that they would advance to a state
of mind in which they doubted whether there ever had been a time in
their existence when they were free from mud. But through it all this
battalion, like the others in the Division, preserved their
good-humour. They are known, in fact, as "The Light-Hearted Brigade."
Every difficulty was met with a will to overcome it, tempered with a
joke and a laugh. No matter how encrusted with filth their bodies
might be, their souls were always above contamination.
Men off duty at night slept in shelter pits dug deep into the soil by
the side of the trenches. It was overcrowded in stark violation of all
the sanitary by-laws relating to ventilation in civil life. No time
was wasted in undressing. The men lay down fully clad in their
mud-crusted clothes, even to their boots, wrapped round in blankets.
During the night they were awakened by a loud explosion. "All right,
boys; don't stir," cried the sergeant. "It's only one of those chape
German alarum clocks going off at the wrong time. Get off to sleep
again, me heroes." In the morning more time was saved by getting up
fully dressed, and not having to wash or to shave, so as to spare the
water. A private, looking round the dug-out and noticing the absence
of windows, remarked, "Faix, those of us who are glaziers and
window-cleaners will find it hard to make a living in this country."
As the battalion was new to the trenches, another Irish battalion of
more experience shared with them the holding of this particular line.
To a group of lads gathered about a brazier of glowing coke in a
sheltered traverse an old sergeant that had seen service in the
Regular Army was giving what, no doubt, he thought was sound and
valuable advice, but which was at times of a quality calculated more
to disturb, perhaps, than to reassure.
"Bullets are nothin' at all," said he. "I wouldn't give you a snap of
me fingers for them. Listen to them now, flyin' about and whinin' and
whimperin' as if they wor lost, stolen or strayed, and wor lookin' for
a billet to rest in. They differ greatly, do these bullets; but sure
in time you'll larn them all by sound and be able to tell the humour
each one of them is in. There's only one kind of bullet, boys, that
you'll never hear; and that is the one which gives you such a pelt as
to send you home to Ireland or to kingdom come. But," he continued,
"what'll put the fear of God into your sowls, if it isn't there
already, is the heavy metal which the Gerrys pitch across to us in
exchange for ours. The first time I was up here I was beside a man
whose teeth went chatterin' in a way that put me in fear of me life.
Sure, didn't I think for a minute it was a Gerry machine-gun--may the
divil cripple them!--startin' its bloody work at me ear. Now, there
must be none of that in this trench. If you're afraid, don't show it;
remimber always that the Gerrys are in just as great a fright, if not
more so. Show your spunk. Stand fast or sit tight, and hope for the
best. Above all, clinch your teeth."
The bombardment of a trench by shells from guns in the rear of the
enemy's lines, or by bombs thrown from mortars close at hand, is
probably the greatest test of endurance that has ever been set to
humanity. The devastating effect is terrific. At each explosion men
may be blown to pieces or buried alive. Even the concussion often
kills. A man might escape being hit by the flying projectiles and yet
be blinded or made deaf or deprived of his speech by the shock. All
feel as if their insides had collapsed. The suspense of waiting for
the next shell or bomb, the uncertainty as to where it is going to
fall, followed by the shake which the detonation gives the nervous
system, are enough to wear out the most stout-hearted of soldiers. It
is then that companionship and discipline tell. The men catch from one
another the won't-appear-frightened determination, and the spirit of
won't-give-in.
Crash! A fierce gust of wind sweeps through the trench. Men are lifted
from their feet and flung violently to the ground amid showers of
earth and stones. There is a brief pause; and then is heard the most
unexpected of sounds--not the moaning of pain, but a burst of
laughter! Four men of the battalion were playing "Forty-five," a card
game beloved of Hibernians, seated under a piece of tarpaulin propped
up on poles, as much at their ease as if they lay under a hedge on a
Sunday evening in summer at home in Ireland, with only the priest to
fear, and he known to be on a sick call at the other side of the
parish. The bomb came at the most inopportune moment, just as the fall
of the trick was about to be decided. When the card party recovered
their senses, the man who held the winning card was found to be
wounded. "'Twas the Gerrys--sweet bad luck to them!--that jinked the
game that time, boys," he exclaimed. His companions, standing round
him, burst into laughter at the remark.
Merriment is not uncommon as the shells are bursting. The spectacle of
four or five men hurriedly tumbling for shelter into the same "funk
hole," a wild whirl of arms and legs, has its absurd side and never
fails to excite amusement. The way in which men disentangle themselves
from the ruins caused by the explosion is often also grotesque. Racy
oddities of character are revealed. One man was buried in the loose
earth. His comrades hastened to rescue him, and to cheer him up told
him he would be got out next to no time, for Tim Maloney, the biggest
as well as the fastest digger in the company was engaged on the job.
"I feel that right well," cried the victim, as he spluttered the mud
from his mouth. "But I've enough on top of me without him! Pull me out
of this from under his feet." There was an explosion close to a man at
work repairing the trench. The man was overheard saying to himself, as
he turned his back disdainfully to the shell, "Oh, go to blazes, with
yez."
But it is not all comedy and farce. How could it be with stern,
black-visaged Death always watching with wolfish eyes to see men die?
Fate plays unimaginable tricks with its victims. A bullet stops many a
casual conversation for ever. "Look at this!" cries a man, holding up
his cap for a comrade to see the bullet-hole that had just been made
through it. "A close shave," he adds; "but what matter? Isn't a miss
as good as a mile?" And, as he was putting the cap on again, he fell a
corpse to a surer bullet. There he lay, just a bundle of muddy khaki;
and a dozing comrade, upon whom he dropped, elbowed him aside, saying
impatiently, "Get out of that, with yer andrew-martins" (jokes and
tricks); "can't you let a poor divil get a wink of sleep?" Tragedy
takes on, at times, queer, fantastic shapes. A man has his right arm
blown off close to the shoulder. He picks the limb up with his left
hand, shouting, "My arm! my arm! Oh, holy mother of God, where's my
arm?" In raging agony he rushes shrieking down the trench carrying the
limb with him until he encounters his company officer. "Oh, captain,
darlin'," he cries. "Look what the Gerrys have done to me! May God's
curse light upon them and theirs for ever! An' now I'll never shoulder
a rifle for poor ould Ireland any more."
The night, and only the night, has terrors for the Irish soldiers,
especially those from the misty mountains and remote seaboard of the
west and south. In the daylight they are merry and prolific of jest.
Strongly gregarious by instinct, they delight in companionship. They
are sustained and upheld by the excitement of battle's uproar. They
will face any danger in the broad daylight. But they hate to be alone
in the dark anywhere, and are afraid to pass at night even a graveyard
in which their own beloved kith and kin lie peacefully at rest for
ever. They feel "lonesome and queer" as they would say themselves.
So it is that when by himself at a listening post in a shell hole in
No Man's Land, lapped about with intense blackness, peering and
hearkening, the superstitious soul of the Irish soldier seems to
conjure up all the departed spectral bogies and terrors of the Dark
Ages. He is ready to cry out like Ajax, the Greek warrior, in "Homer,"
"Give us but light, O Jove; and in the light, if thou seest fit,
destroy us."
Even a Cockney soldier, lacking as he is in any subtle sympathy with
the emotional and immaterial sides of life, confesses that it gives
him the creeps proper to be out there in the open jaws of darkness,
away from his mates and almost right under the nose of old Boche. An
Irish soldier will admit that on this duty he does have a genuine
feeling of terror. Crouching in the soft, yielding earth, he imagines
he is in the grave, watching and waiting he knows not for what.
Everything is indefinite and uncertain. There is a vague presentiment
that some unknown but awful evil is impending. Perhaps a thousand
hostile German eyes are staring at him through the darkness along
rifle barrels; or, more horrible still, perhaps a thousand invisible
devils are on the prowl to drag his soul to hell. The supernatural
powers are the only forces the Irish soldier fears.
The senses of the sentry are so abnormally alert that if grass were
growing near him he had only to put his ear to the ground to hear the
stirring of the sap. But though he listens intently, not a sound comes
out of the blackness. He regards the profound stillness as
confirmation of his worst fears. All is silence in the trench behind
him, where his comrades ought to be. He would welcome the relief of
voices and the sound of feet in the enemy's lines. But the Gerrys give
no sign of life. Is he alone in the whole wide world, the solitary
survivor of this terrible war? What would he not part with to be able
to get up and run! But he is fixed to his post by a sense of duty,
just as strong as if he were chained there by iron bands. To cry out
would afford immense relief to his overwrought feelings. But his
tongue seems paralysed in his mouth. Then he bethinks him of his
prayers. From his inside tunic pocket he takes out his beads--which
his mother gave him at parting and made him promise faithfully always
to carry about his person--and, making the sign of the cross, he is
soon absorbed in the saying of the Rosary. Resignation and fortitude
came to his aid. The invisible evil agencies by which he had really
been encompassed--loneliness, anxiety, melancholy--are dispelled.
Scouting is the night work that appeals most to the Irish soldiers.
There is in it the excitement of movement, the element of adventure
and the support of companionship, too, for four, five or six go out
together. Oh, the fearful joy of crawling on one's stomach across the
intervening ground, seeking for a passage through the enemy's wire
entanglements or wriggling under it, taking a peep over their
parapets, dropping down into a sparsely occupied part of the trench,
braining the sentry and returning with rifle and cap as trophies! This
is one of the most perilous forms of the harassing tactics of war, and
for its success uncommon pluck and resource are required. Yet, like
everything else at the Front, it often has an absurd side. A Connaught
Ranger, back from such an expedition, related that, hearing the Gerrys
talking, he called out, "How many of ye are there?" To his surprise he
got an answer in English: "Four." Then, throwing in a bomb, he said,
"Divide that between ye, an' be damned to ye." "Faix, 'twas the bomb
that divided them," he added, "for didn't they come out of the trench
after me in smithereens." Another party returned from a raid with
tears streaming down their cheeks. "Is it bad news ye bring, crying
in that way?" they were asked. No! they hadn't bad news; nor were they
crying. If it was crying they were, wouldn't they be roaring and
bawling? and there wasn't a sound out of them for any one to hear.
Only asses could say such a thing as that. 'Twas they that looked like
silly asses, they were told, with the tears pouring out of their eyes
like the Powerscourt waterfall. What the mischief was the matter with
them, anyway? Well, then, if any one cared to know, was the reply,
'twas the Gerrys that treated them to a whiff of lachrymose gas!
The fatigue, the disgust, and the danger of life in the trenches are,
at times, stronger than any other impulse, whether of the flesh or of
the soul. "'Tis enough to drive one to the drink: a grand complaint
when there's plenty of porter about," said a private; "but a terrible
fate when there's only the water we're wading in, and that same full
up--the Lord save us!--of creeping and wriggling things." "True for
you; it's the quare life, and no mistake," remarked another. "You do
things and get praise for them, such as smashing a fellow's skull, or
putting a bullet through him, which if you were to do at home you'd be
soon on the run, with a hue and cry and all the police of the country
at your heels."
Back in billets again, for a wash and a shave and a brush up, and
lying in their straw beds in the barns, the Rangers would thus
philosophise on their life. The bestial side of it--the terrible
overcrowding of the men, the muck, the vermin, the gobbling of food
with filthy hands, the stench of corrupting bodies lying in the open,
or insufficiently buried, and, along with all that, its terror, agony
and tragedy are, indeed, utterly repellent to human nature. Still,
there was general agreement that they had never spent a week of such
strange and exquisite experiences. Fear there was at times, but it
seemed rather to keep up a state of pleasurable emotion than to
generate anguish and distress. Certainly most Connaught Rangers will
swear that life in the trenches has at least three thrilling and
exalting moments. One is when the tot of rum is served round. Another
is the first faint appearance of light in the sky behind the enemy's
lines, proclaiming that the night is far spent and the day is at hand.
The third is the call to "stand to," telling that a visit from the
Gerrys is expected, when the men cease to be navvies and become
soldiers again--throwing aside the hateful pick and shovel and taking
up the beloved rifle and bayonet.
CHAPTER II
EXPLOITS OF THE ULSTER DIVISION
BELFAST'S TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD
"I am not an Ulsterman, but as I followed the amazing
attack of the Ulster Division on July 1, I felt that I
would rather be an Ulsterman than anything else in the
world. With shouts of 'Remember the Boyne' and 'No
Surrender, boys,' they threw themselves at the Germans,
and before they could be restrained had penetrated to the
enemy fifth line. The attack was one of the greatest
revelations of human courage and endurance known in
history."--A British officer on the exploits of the
Ulster Division, July 1, 1916.
One of the most striking and impressive tributes ever paid to the
heroic dead was that of Belfast on the 12th of July, 1916, in memory
of the men of the Ulster Division who fell on the opening day of that
month in the great British offensive on the Somme. For five minutes
following the hour of noon all work and movement, business and
household, were entirely suspended. In the flax mills, the linen
factories, the ship yards, the munition workshops, men and women
paused in their labours. All machinery was stopped, and the huge
hammers became silent. In shop and office business ceased; at home the
housewife interrupted her round of duties; in the streets traffic was
brought to a halt, on the local railways the running trains pulled up.
The whole population stood still, and in deep silence, with bowed
heads but with uplifted hearts, turned their thoughts to the valleys
and slopes of Picardy, where on July 1 the young men of Ulster, the
pride and flower of the province, gave their lives for the
preservation of the British Empire, the existence of separate and
independent States, and the rule of law and justice in their
international relations.
"The Twelfth" is the great festival of Belfast. On that day is
celebrated the Williamite victories of the Boyne, July 1, and Aughrim,
July 12, 1690, in which the cause of the Stuarts went down for ever.
It is kept as a general holiday of rejoicing and merrymaking. The
members of the Orange lodges turn out with their dazzling banners and
their no less gorgeous yellow, crimson and blue regalia; and the
streets resound with the lilt of fifes, the piercing notes of cornets,
the boom and rattle of many drums, the tramp of marching feet and the
cheers of innumerable spectators. There was no such demonstration on
July 12, 1916. For the first time in the history of the Orange
Institution the observance of the anniversary was voluntarily
abandoned, so that there might be no stoppage of war work in the ship
yards and munition factories. But at the happy suggestion of the Lord
Mayor (Sir Crawford McCullagh), five minutes of the day were given
reverently to lofty sorrow for the dead, who, by adding "The Ancre,"
"Beaumont Hamel" and "Thiepval Wood" to "Derry," "Enniskillen," "The
Boyne" and "Aughrim" on the banners of Ulster, have given a new
meaning and glory to the celebration of "The Twelfth" in which all
Ireland can share. Major-General O.S.W. Nugent, D.S.O., commanding the
Ulster Division, in a special Order of the Day, issued after the
advance, wrote--
"Nothing finer has been done in the War.
"The Division has been highly tried and has emerged from the
ordeal with unstained honour, having fulfilled in every part the
great expectations formed of it.
"None but troops of the best quality could have faced the fire
which was brought to bear on them, and the losses suffered
during the advance.
"A magnificent example of sublime courage and discipline."
This glory was gained at a heavy cost. There was cause for bitter
grief as well as the thrill of pride in Ulster. Nothing has brought
home more poignantly to the inhabitants of a small area of the kingdom
the grim sacrifices and the unutterable pathos of the war than the
many pages of names and addresses of the dead and wounded--relatives,
friends and acquaintances--which appeared in the Belfast newspapers
for days before "The Twelfth" and after. So blinds were drawn in
business and private houses; flags were flown at half-mast; and bells
were mournfully tolling for Ulster's irremediable losses when, at the
stroke of twelve o'clock, traffic came instantaneously to a
standstill, and for five minutes the citizens solemnly stood with
bared heads in the teeming rain thinking of the gallant dead, the
darkened homes and the inconsolable mothers and wives.
The Ulster Division possesses an individuality all its own. It has no
like or equal among the units of the British Army on account of its
family character; the close and intimate blood relationship of its
members; its singleness of purpose; the common appeal of racial,
political and religious ideals that binds it together by stronger
links than steel. The United Kingdom, as a whole, may be said to have
been totally unready when war broke out. But it happened that one
small section of this industrial and peace-loving community was
prepared, to some extent, for the mighty emergency. That was Ulster.
It was immersed in business at the time, just as much as Manchester or
Sheffield, and in making money out of its flourishing prosperity. But,
unlike those English industrial centres, Ulster had in its history and
traditions an influence which bred a combative disposition, and ever
kept burning a martial flame, even in its marts and workshops. The
community was convinced that in defence of all they hold dearest in
religious beliefs and political principles they might have some day,
not, as in England when opinions are at stake, to flock to the polling
stations at a General Election, but take to the field and fight. The
very pick of the manhood of the province joined the Ulster Volunteer
Force, and armed and trained themselves as soldiers. So it was that in
the years immediately preceding the war it seemed almost certain they
would have to follow the example of their forefathers centuries before
and raise the Orange flag at Enniskillen and Derry. Then came the
challenge of Germany to British ideals. The aim and purpose of the
Ulster Volunteer Force remained the same, as the members conceived it,
but it was turned into a wholly unexpected channel. By an astounding
transformation of events they were to bleed and give their lives for
all they revere and cherish, not in Ulster but on the hills and in the
woods of Picardy.
The Ulster Division is entirely Protestant and Unionist; or was, until
it was decimated on the Somme. It was formed out of the men who had
previously bound themselves together by a solemn covenant, signed on
"Ulster Day," Saturday, September 28, 1912, to stand by one another in
defending, for themselves and their children, their cherished civil
and religious heritage, should Home Rule be established. Thus the
Division is unparalleled for its kind since Cromwell's "Ironsides" in
enlisting stern religious fervour and political enthusiasm in a
fighting phalanx. It consists of twelve battalions forming three
brigades. It is wholly Irish. Nine of the battalions have the
regimental title of Royal Irish Rifles. The other battalions have the
titles of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Royal Irish
Fusiliers, the two other regiments of the Line associated with
Ulster. The battalions have also territorial classifications denoting
their origin from the Ulster Volunteer Force, such as "North Belfast
Volunteers"; "East Belfast Volunteers"; "Young Citizen Volunteers";
"South Belfast Volunteers"; "West Belfast Volunteers"; "South Antrim
Volunteers"; "Down Volunteers"; "County Armagh Volunteers"; "Central
Antrim Volunteers"; "Tyrone Volunteers"; "Donegal and Fermanagh
Volunteers"; "Derry Volunteers." It has its own Engineers, Army
Service Corps, Army Medical Corps and a complete Ambulance equipment.
There are also reserve battalions. In the pleasant surroundings of the
Botanic Gardens, Belfast, a splendid hospital was established for the
care of the wounded, and the provision of artificial limbs to those
who might need them; and as evidence of the characteristic
thoroughness with which everything was attended to, a fund has been
raised to assist members of the Division who may be left maimed and
broken in health, and to support the dependents of the fallen, outside
any aid that may be derived from the State. The Commander,
Major-General Nugent, is a county Cavan man, a Deputy Lieutenant for
the county, and a kinsman of the Earl of Westmeath. He served in the
King's Royal Rifles for seventeen years, and was wounded in both the
Chitral and South African campaigns.
The Division completed its training at Seaford, in Sussex. On visiting
the district I was amused to find that the advent of "the wild Irish"
had been anticipated by the inhabitants with much misgiving. They were
apprehensive of their ancient peace being disturbed by the hilarity
and commotion that spring from high and undisciplined spirits. What
did happen agreeably surprised the Sussex folk. The Ulstermen quickly
earned the esteem of every one for their affable qualities and
good-humour. What was particularly remarkable was that they were found
to be most pliant and tractable--qualities which, by common tradition,
are supposed not to be looked for in any body of Irishmen; and as for
their moral behaviour, what was more astonishing still was that the
church or the chapel was to them infinitely more attractive than the
inn.
So the Division prepared themselves for taking the field against the
enemy. They were reviewed by the King shortly before leaving for the
Front. "Your prompt patriotic answer to the nation's call to arms will
never be forgotten," said his Majesty. "The keen exertions of all
ranks during the period of training have brought you to a state of
efficiency not unworthy of any Regular Army. I am confident that in
the field you will nobly uphold the traditions of the fine regiments
whose names you bear. Ever since your enrolment I have closely watched
the growth and steady progress of all units. I shall continue to
follow with interest the fortunes of your Division. In bidding you
farewell I pray God may bless you in all your undertakings." In the
autumn of 1915 they went to France, determined to uphold the highest
traditions of the fighting qualities of the Irish race, and burning
for a chance of distinction.
During the winter months of 1915-16 the Division took its turns in the
firing-line. Every battalion experienced the hardships and dangers of
the front trenches, when the weather was at its worst for chills,
bronchitis, pneumonia and frost-bite, and when the Germans were most
active at sniping and bombarding. Names of men in the Division began
to appear in the lists of casualties within ten days of the landing in
France. The battalions passed through these preliminary stages with
courage, endurance and splendid determination. They quickly earned a
fine reputation among the highest military commanders for such
soldierly qualities as willingness and cheerfulness in doing any sort
of work, however unpleasant, that fell to them in the trenches, and
their coolness and alertness on such dangerous missions as going out
at night to the listening posts in No Man's Land and repairing the
wire entanglements. Eager to snatch their share of peril and glory,
they were also among the foremost in volunteering for such wild
adventures as bombing raids on the German trenches under cover of
darkness. One such daring exploit by the Tyrone Volunteers was the
subject of a special order of the day issued by Major-General Nugent,
commanding the Division. It was as follows--
"A raid on the German trenches was carried out at midnight on
---- by the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The raiding party
consisted of Major W.J. Peacocke, Captain J. Weir, Lieutenant
W.S. Furness, Second-lieutenant L.W.H. Stevenson,
Second-Lieutenant R.W. M'Kinley, Second-Lieutenant J. Taylor,
and eighty-four other ranks. The raid was completely successful,
and was carried out exactly as planned. Six German dugouts, in
which it is certain there were a considerable number of men,
were thoroughly bombed, and a machine-gun was blown up, while a
lively bombing fight took place between the blocking detachments
of the raiding party and the Germans. Having accomplished the
purpose of the raid, the party was withdrawn, with the loss of
one man killed and two wounded. The raid was ably organised by
Major Peacocke, and was carried out by the officers and men of
the party exactly in accordance with the plan, and the
discipline and determination of the party was all that could be
desired. The Divisional Commander desires that his
congratulations should be extended to all who took part in it.
"Brigadier-General Hickman, in a special brigade order, says the
arrangements and plans reflect the greatest credit on Colonel A.
St. Q. Ricardo, D.S.O., commanding the battalion, Major
Peacocke, and the other officers concerned. The whole scheme was
executed with great dash and determination, cool judgment and
nerve."
Such was the fame of the raid and its success that the
Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, visited the battalion and
personally congratulated them.
Dr. Crozier, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, visited
the Division in January 1916; and after a week spent with the
battalions, brought home a deep impression of their spirit and
devotion. "A more capable, energetic and cheerful body of men I have
never come across," he writes. "I have seen them at rifle practice,
bomb-throwing, route marching, road-mending, and in the trenches, and
everywhere my experience was the same--officers and men working in
splendid harmony, and taking the keenest interest in any and every job
they were given to do. One night I met a couple of hundred men coming
back from eight days' weary work in water-logged trenches, and they
were singing so lustily that I really thought at first they were
coming from a concert. And yet the war is to them a terrible reality,
and they have already experienced some of its horror. I could not help
noticing that this has produced a deep sense of responsibility, and
has intensified their belief in the reality of duty; and whether at
Sunday services or at weekday informal addresses, there were no
restless or inattentive men, but they seemed to welcome every word
that spoke of God's presence and guidance in all life's difficulties
and dangers."
CHAPTER III
ULSTERS' ATTACK ON THE SLOPES OF THIEPVAL
"NOT A MAN TURNED TO COME BACK, NOT ONE"
The Division was put to the great test on July 1, 1916, the memorable
day of the opening of the Battle of the Somme and the British attack
in force to break through the German trenches in Picardy. It was a
formidable task. The strength of the enemy positions was that they
stood on high ground. That, also, was the reason of their importance.
The table-land must be taken and held to permit of an advance in the
stretch of open country spreading on the other side to the north. It
was to be uphill work. So the battle became the greatest the world has
ever known, so far, for its dimensions, the numbers engaged and the
duration. The Ulstermen were in the left wing of the British lines,
and the scene of their operations was, roughly, three miles of broken
country, dips and swells, on each side of the river Ancre, between the
village of Beaumont Hamel, nestling in a nook of the hill above the
river, eastwards to the slopes of Thiepval, perched on a height about
500 feet, below the river, all within the German lines. The main body
of the Division assembled in the shelter of a Thiepval wood.
"Porcupine Wood" it was called by the men. The trees were so stripped
of foliage and lopped into distorted shapes by enemy gun-fire that
their bare limbs stood up like quills of the fretful porcupine. At
half-past seven in the morning the advance commenced. For ten days the
British batteries had been continuously bombarding the whole German
front. There was no sudden hush of the cannonade at the moment of the
attack. For a minute there was a dramatic pause while the guns were
being lifted a point higher so that they might drop their shells
behind the enemy's first lines. Then the British infantry emerged from
their trenches and advanced behind this furious and devastating
curtain of fire and projectiles.
The morning was glorious and the prospect fine. The sun shone brightly
in the most beautiful of skies, clear blue flecked with pure white
clouds; and as the Ulstermen came out of the wood and ranged up in
lines for the push forward, they saw, in the distant view, a sweet and
pleasant upland country, the capture of which was the object of the
attack. In the hollows the meadows were lush with grass, thick and
glossy. There was tillage even, green crops of beetroot growing close
to the ground, and tall yellowing corn, far behind the main German
trenches. It was like a haunt of husbandry and peace. The only sound
one would expect to hear from those harvest fields was that of the
soothing reaping-machine garnering the wheat to make bread for the
family board of a mother and a brood of young children. But no tiller
of the soil was to be seen, near or far. The countryside to the
horizon ridge was tenantless, until these tens of thousands of British
soldiers suddenly came up out of the ground. Even in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870 the agriculturists of northern
France--then, as now, the zone of conflict--remained in the homes and
pursued their avocations. During the battle of Sedan, which sealed the
fate of France, an extraordinary incident occurred--a peasant was
observed in one of the valleys within the area of the fight calmly
guiding the plough drawn by a big white horse. "Why should the man
lose a day?" says Zola in _The Downfall_. "Corn would not cease
growing, the human race would not cease living, because a few thousand
men happened to be fighting." But war is waged differently now. It is
spread along fronts hundreds of miles in extent and depth. Millions of
men are engaged. They burrow underground and are armed with terrific
engines of destruction. So it was that behind that green and pleasant
land, bathed in sunshine, ferocity and death are skulking underground.
Those elaborately interlacing white chalky lines over the face of the
landscape mark the run of the German trenches. Each dip is a
death-trap. The copses are barricaded with fallen timber and wired;
the villages are citadels, the farmsteads are forts, the ridges of the
two plateaux are each one succession of batteries. Swallows were
darting to and fro hawking for flies for their young, and in the clear
air soaring larks were singing to their mates brooding on their eggs
in the grass, showing that Nature was still carrying on her eternal
processes, but the husbandman had fled the deceiving scene, and the
after-crops from his old sowings of corn and mustard were mixed with
weeds in No Man's Land.
Things befell the Ulstermen, when they appeared in the open, which
were things indeed. The fortunes of war varied along the British
advance. A group of war correspondents on a height near the town of
Albert, about midway in the line, noticed that while some of the
British battalions were comparatively unmolested, the resistance of
the enemy to the left or west was of the fiercest and most desperate
character. The Germans seem to have expected the main assault at this
part of the field of operations. Their guns and men were here most
heavily massed. On the left of the valley made by a curve of the
river Ancre is a crest, in a crease of which lay on that July morning
the village of Beaumont Hamel, or rather its site, for it had been
blown almost out of existence by the British artillery fire. Under the
village--as shown by explorations made after it fell--were a vast
system of passages and cellars, in which whole battalions of Germans
found shelter from the bombardment. On the right of the valley is the
plateau of Thiepval. It was as strong a position as the consummate
skill of German engineers and gunners could make it. On the sky line
at the top of a ridge of the plateau were the ruins of the village of
Thiepval--heaps of bricks and slates and timber that once were walls
and roofs of houses--encircled by blackened stumps of trees that once
in the spring were all pink and white of the apple blossom. The ground
sloping down to the valley, and the valley itself was a network of
German trenches--mostly turned into a maze of upheaved earth-mounds by
shell-fire--studded with many machine-gun posts. The main part of the
Ulster Division advanced across the valley that rose gently, with many
undulations upwards, to the slopes on the western or left side of
Thiepval. They had to take what were called the A, B and C lines of
trenches. As will be seen, they pushed far beyond their objective.
Clouds of smoke had been liberated from the British lines to form a
screen for the attackers. Into it the men disappeared as they marched,
line after line, in extended order, over the intervening stretch of
ground. But almost immediately they were all scourged--especially the
Ulster battalions on the extreme left moving towards Beaumont
Hamel--with machine-gun fire poured at them from various points, to
the continuous accompaniment of short, sharp, annihilating knocks. The
bullets literally came like water from an immense hose with a
perforated top. The streams of lead crossed and re-crossed, sweeping
the ranks about the ankles, at the waist; breast high, around their
heads. Comrades were to be seen falling on all sides, right, left,
front and rear. So searching was the fire that it was useless to seek
cover, and advance in short rushes in between. So the lines kept
undauntedly on their way, apparently not minding the bullets any more
than if they were a driving and splashing shower of hail.
"Let her rip, ye divils!" shouted some of the Ulstermen in jocular
defiance at the enemy and his machine-gun; "and," said an officer
relating the story, "the Bosche let her rip all right." One of the
wounded rank and file told me that in the advance he lost entire
perception of the roar of the British guns which was so impressive as
he lay with his comrades in the wood, though they still continued
their thundering. Their terrible diapason of sound seemed to be lulled
into absolute silence, so far as he was concerned, by the hollow,
crepitating "tap-t-t-tap" of the German machine-guns; and the swish,
swish, swish of the bullets, of all the noises of battle the most
unnerving to soldiers assailing a position. But the Ulstermen were in
a mood of the highest exaltation, a mood in which troops may be
destroyed but will not easily be subjugated. The day had thrilling
historic memories for them.
"July the First on the banks of the Boyne,
There was a famous battle."
The opening lines of their song, "The Boyne Water," recounting the
deeds of their forefathers, came inevitably to their minds. "Just as
we were about to attack," writes Rifleman Edward Taylor of the West
Belfast Volunteers, "Captain Gaffikin took out an orange handkerchief
and, waving it around his head, shouted, 'Come on, boys, this is the
first of July!'" "No surrender!" roared the men. It was the answer
given by the gallant defenders of Derry from their walls to King James
and the besieging Jacobites. On the fields of Picardy new and noble
meanings were put into these old, out-worn Irish battle-cries. One
sergeant of the Inniskillings went into the fray with his Orange sash
on him. Some of the men provided themselves with orange lilies before
they went up to the assembly trenches, and these they now wore in
their breasts. But, indeed, their colours were growing in profusion at
their feet when they came out of the trenches--yellow charlock,
crimson poppies and blue cornflowers, and many put bunches of these
wild flowers in their tunics. So the Ulstermen were keen to prove
their metal. They divided their forces and advanced to German
positions on the right and left. Through it all their battle-shout was
"No surrender." But there was one surrender which they were prepared
to make, and did make--the surrender, for the cause, of their young
lives and all the bright hopes of youth.
When the battalions on the right reached the first German line they
found shapeless mounds and cavities of soil and stones and timber,
shattered strands and coils of barbed wire, where the trenches had
been, and the dead bodies of the men who were in occupation of them at
the bombardment. The Ulstermen then pushed on to the second line,
which still held living men of courage and tenacity who had to be
disposed of by bayonet and bomb. On to the third line the Ulstermen
went at a steady pace. They were still being whipped by machine-gun
fire. Their ranks were getting woefully thinner. In their tracks they
left dead and wounded. At the sight of a familiar face among the
curiously awkward attitudes and shapes of those instantaneously killed
there was many a cold tug at the heart-strings of the advancing men,
and many a groan of sorrow was suppressed on their lips.
The moaning of the wounded was also terrible to hear, but their spirit
was magnificent. "Lying on the ground there under fire, they had no
thought of their own danger, but only of the comrades who were going
forward, and they kept shouting words of encouragement after the
attacking column until it was well out of sight," said an Inniskilling
Fusilier. "One company, recruited mainly from the notorious Shankill
road district of Belfast, was going forward, when a wounded man
recognised some of his chums in it. 'Give them it hot for the Shankill
road,' he cried, and his comrades answered with a cheer." The same
man, giving a general account of the fiercely contested attack on the
enemy positions, said, "It was a case of playing leapfrog with death,
but all obstacles were overcome, and the Fusiliers carried the enemy
trenches with a magnificent rush. The Huns turned on them like baffled
tigers and tried to hurl the Irishmen out again, but they might as
well have tried to batter down the walls of Derry with toothpicks. The
Inniskillings held their ground, and gradually forced the enemy still
further back."
The German trenches, with their first, second, third, fourth and fifth
lines, formed a system of defences of considerable depth, into which
the Ulstermen had now penetrated for distances varying from two to
three miles in depth. It was a land of horrible desolation. The ground
at this point was almost bare of vegetation. It was torn and lacerated
with shell holes. The few trees that remained standing were reduced to
splintered and jagged stumps. All was smoke, flashes, uproar and
nauseating smells. In this stricken battle area the defence was as
stubborn and desperate as the attack. It seemed impossible for men
with a nervous system and imagination to retain their reason and
resolution in the terrific, intensive and searching preliminary
bombardment. Nevertheless, the Germans did it. The British guns had,
indeed, wrought widespread havoc. Not only lines of trenches were
pounded to bits, but spots outside, affording concealment for guns and
troops, were discovered and blown to atoms. There were, however, deep
dug-outs going as many as thirty feet below ground, and in some cases,
even at that depth, there were trapdoors and stairs leading to still
lower chambers, and up from these underground fortifications the
Germans came when the cannonade lifted. There were also hidden
machine-gun shelters in the hollows and on the slopes which the
British artillery failed to find. The resistance offered to the
advance of the Ulstermen was accordingly of the most obstinate and
persistent nature. The hand-to-hand fight with bayonet and bomb at the
third line of trenches was described by a man of the Irish Rifles as
"a Belfast riot on the top of Mount Vesuvius." No more need be said.
The phrase conveys a picture of men madly struggling and yelling amid
fire and smoke and the abominable stench of battle. Yet the enemy's
fourth line fell before these men who would not be stopped. There
remained the fifth line, and the Ulstermen were preparing to move
forward to it when the order came to fall back. The state of affairs
at this time of the evening is well explained by one of the men--
"We had been so eager that we had pressed too far forward, and
were well in advance of our supporting troops, thus laying
ourselves open to flank attacks. The position became more
serious as the day advanced, and the supporting troops were
unable to make further progress, while the Huns kept hurrying up
fresh men. We kept shouting the watchword of 'No Surrender,'
with which our fathers had cheered themselves in the siege of
Derry, and every time the Huns attacked we sent them reeling
back with something to remind them that they were fighting
Irishmen. We couldn't help taunting them a lot. 'Would you like
some Irish rebellion?' we called out to them, and they didn't
like it. They kept throwing in fresh reinforcements all day,
and gradually the pressure became almost unbearable. Still we
held our ground, and would have continued to hold it if
necessary."
"Retirement," he adds, "is never a pleasant task, especially after you
have fought your corner as we fought ours. We felt that the ground won
was part of ourselves, but orders had to be obeyed, and so we went
back." The retirement was to the third line of trenches, at the point
known as "the Crucifix," just north-west of Thiepval. It was carried
out at nightfall, after fourteen hours' continuous fighting. This
section of the Division, in the words of Major-General Nugent,
"captured nearly 600 prisoners, and carried its advance triumphantly
to the limits of the objective laid down."
The battalions, two in number, operating on the left at Beaumont
Hamel, were not so fortunate. They were broken to pieces by the
devastating machine-gun fire. The remnants, by a magnificent effort,
succeeded in getting into the German trenches. They were held up there
by an utterly impassable curtain of shells and bullets. It was not
their fault that they could not advance any further. They had to face
a more terrific ordeal than any body of men have had to encounter in
battle before. "They did all that men could do," says Major Nugent,
"and, in common with every battalion in the Division, showed the most
conspicuous courage and devotion."
Lieut.-Colonel Ambrose Ricardo, D.S.O., of Lion House, Strahane,
commander of the Tyrone battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers,
gives an account of the experience of the Ulster Division which is of
the greatest value for the reasons it supplies why the Division lost
so heavily and thus were unable to hold the advanced positions they
had taken. He first describes how his men set out for their plunge
into the terrible unknown. "Every gun on both sides fired as fast as
it could, and during the din our dear boys just walked out of the wood
and up rumps we had cut through our parapet and out through lanes in
our wire," he says. "I shall never forget for one minute the
extraordinary sight. The Derrys on our left were so eager they started
a few minutes before the ordered time, and the Tyrones were not going
to be left behind, and they got going without delay. No fuss, no
shouting, no running; everything orderly, solid and thorough, just
like the men themselves. Here and there a boy would wave his hand to
me as I shouted good luck to them through my megaphone, and all had a
happy face. Most were carrying loads. Fancy advancing against heavy
fire carrying a heavy roll of barbed wire on your shoulder!"
Then dealing with the Division generally, Colonel Ricardo states that
the leading battalions suffered comparatively little until they almost
reached the German front line, when they came under appalling
machine-gun fire which obliterated whole platoons. "And, alas for us,"
he cries, "the Division on our right could not get on, and the same
happened to the Division on our left, so we came in for the
concentrated fire of what would have been spread over three Divisions.
But every man who remained standing pressed on, and, without officers
or non-commissioned officers, they carried on, faithful to their job.
Not a man turned to come back, not one."
Eventually small parties of all the battalions of the Division--except
the two operating towards Beaumont Hamel--gathered together in the
section of the German third line, which was their part in the general
British advance. They had captured, in fact, a portion of the famous
Schwabon Redoubt on the summit of the ridge facing them, and set to
work to consolidate it. "The situation after the first two hours was
indeed a cruel one for the Ulster Division," continues Colonel
Ricardo. "There they were, a wedge driven into the German lines, only
a few hundred yards wide, and for fourteen hours they bore the brunt
of the German machine-gun fire and shell-fire from three sides, and
even from behind they were not safe. The parties told off to deal with
the German first and second lines had in many cases been wiped out,
and the Germans sent parties from the flanks in behind our boys. Yet
the Division took 800 prisoners, and could have taken hundreds more,
had they been able to handle them."
Major John Peacocke, "a most gallant and dashing officer" (as Colonel
Ricardo describes him), was sent forward to see how matters stood. He
crossed "No Man's Land" at a time when the fire sweeping it was most
intense. Taking charge of the defence of the captured position, he
gave to each unit a certain task to do in furtherance of the common
aim. Then he sent runners back with messages asking for
reinforcements, for water and for bombs. "But," says Colonel Ricardo,
"no one had any men in reserve, and no men were left to send across.
We were told reinforcements were at hand, and to hold on, but it was
difficult, I suppose, to get fresh troops up in time. At any rate the
help did not come. In the end, at 10.30 p.m. (they had got to the
third line at 8.30 a.m.), the glorious band in front had to come back.
They fought to the last and threw their last bomb, and were so
exhausted that most of them could not speak. Shortly after they came
back help came, and the line they had taken and held was reoccupied
without opposition, the Germans, I suppose, being as exhausted as we
were. Our side eventually lost the wedge-like bit after some days. It
was valueless, and could only be held at very heavy cost. We were
withdrawn late on Sunday evening, very tired and weary."
A private in one of the battalions sent to his parents in Ulster a
very vivid account of the advance. As he was crossing "No Man's Land"
two aspects of it, in striking contrast, arose in his mind. "How often
had I, while on sentry duty in our own trenches, looked out over that
same piece of ground," he says. "How calm and peaceful it looked then;
how fresh, green, and invitingly cool looked that long, blowing grass!
Now, what a ghastly change! Not a level or green spot remained. Great,
jagged, gaping craters covered the blackish, smoking ground, furrowed
and ploughed by every description of projectile and explosive. In the
blue sky above white, puffy clouds of shrapnel burst, bespattering the
earth below with a rain of bullets and jagged shrapnel missiles."
Tripping and stumbling went the men over the broken and ragged ground.
"Fellows in front, beside, and behind me would fall; some, with a
lurch forward, wounded; others, with a sudden, abrupt halt, a sickly
wheel, would drop, give one eerie twist, and lie still--dead!" They
find the first line in the possession of comrades; and moving on to
the second, came to blows there with the enemy. "An Inniskilling,
scarcely more than a boy, standing on the parapet, yells madly 'No
surrender,' and fires several shots into the German mob. From every
part of the trench we closed forward, bayonet poised, on the crowd of
grey figures. A short scuffle; then we swayed back again, leaving a
heap of blood-stained greyishness on the ground. 'Come on, boys!'
yells the lieutenant, springing up on to the parapet. 'Come on, the
Ulsters.' Up we scramble after him and rush ahead towards the far-off
third line. Vaguely I recollect that mad charge. A few swirlings here
and there of grey-clad figures with upraised hands yelling 'Kamerad.'
Heaps of wounded and dead. Showers of dust and earth and lead.
Deafening explosions and blinding smoke. But what concerned me most
and what I saw clearest were the few jagged stumps of the remnants of
the wire entanglements and the ragged parapet of the third line--our
goal!"
From this enemy trench the Ulsterman looked back over the ground he
had covered, and this is what he saw: "Through the dense smoke pour
hundreds and hundreds of Tommies, with flashing bayonets and distorted
visages, apparently cheering and yelling. You couldn't hear them for
the noise of the guns and the exploding shells. Everywhere among those
fearless Ulstermen burst high-explosive shells, hurling dozens of them
up in the air, while above them and among them shrapnel bursts with
sharp, ear-splitting explosions. But worst of all these was the silent
swish, swish, swishing of the machine-gun bullets, claiming their
victims by the score, cutting down living sheaves, and leaving bunches
of writhing, tortured flesh on the ground." He, too, noticed that
their co-operating Divisions had failed, for some reason, to advance.
"Look there, something _must_ be wrong!" he called out to his
comrades. "Why, they're not advancing on _that_ side at all," pointing
towards the left flank. "Not a sign of life could be seen," he says.
"The Ulster Division were out to the Huns' first, second, third,
fourth, and even fifth lines, with all the German guns pelting us from
every side and at every angle."
Many a brave and self-sacrificing deed was done in these affrighting
scenes. Here are a few instances taken haphazard from the records of
one battalion alone, the 9th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. They were
repeated a hundredfold throughout the Division.
Corporal Thomas M'Clay, Laghey, county Donegal, assisted
Second-Lieutenant Lawrence to take twenty prisoners. He conveyed them
single-handed over "No Man's Land," and then returned to the German
third line, all the time having been under very heavy fire. When he
got back he had been fighting hard for ten hours. Private Thomas
Gibson, of Coalisland, saw three Germans working a machine-gun. He
attacked them alone, and killed them all with his clubbed rifle.
Corporal John Conn, Caledon, came across two of our machine-guns out
of action. He repaired them under fire, and with them destroyed a
German flanking party. He carried both guns himself part of the way
back, but had to abandon one, he was so utterly exhausted.
Lance-Corporal Daniel Lyttle, Leckpatrick, Strabane, was trying to
save two machine-guns from the enemy when he found himself cut off. He
fired one gun until the ammunition was spent, then destroyed both guns
and bombed his way back to the rest of his party at the Crucifix line.
Sergeant Samuel Kelly, Belfast, volunteered to take a patrol from the
Crucifix line to ascertain how things were going on our right.
Corporal Daniel Griffiths, Dublin; Lance-Corporal Lewis Pratt, Cavan;
and Private William Abraham, Ballinamallard, went with him. The latter
was killed, but the remainder got back with valuable information.
Sergeant Kelly did great work to the last in organising and
encouraging his men when all the officers of his company had fallen.
Corporal Daniel Griffith, Lance-Corporal Lewis Pratt, with Private
Fred Carter, Kingstown, bombed and shot nine Germans who were trying
to mount a machine-gun. Private Samuel Turner, Dundrun, and Private
Clarence Rooney, Clogher, forced a barricaded dug-out, captured
fifteen Germans and destroyed an elaborate signalling apparatus,
thereby preventing information getting back. Lance-Corporal William
Neely, Clogher; Private Samuel Spence, Randalstown; Private James
Sproule, Castlederg; and Private William R. Reid, Aughnacloy, were
members of a party blocking the return of Germans along a captured
trench. Their officer and more than half their comrades were killed,
but they held on and covered the retirement of the main party,
eventually getting back in good order themselves and fighting every
inch of the way. Private Fred Gibson, Caledon, pushed forward alone
with his machine-gun, and fought until all his ammunition was used.
Private James Mahaffy, Caledon, was badly wounded in the leg early in
the day, and was ordered back. He refused to go, and continued to
carry ammunition for his machine-gun. Lance-Corporal John Hunter,
Coleraine, succeeded in picking off several German gunners. His cool
and accurate shooting at such a time was remarkable. Private Robert
Monteith, Lislap, Omagh, had his leg taken off above the knee. He used
his rifle and bayonet as a crutch, and continued to advance. Private
Wallie Scott, Belfast, met five Germans. He captured them
single-handed, and marched them back to the enemy second line, where a
sergeant had a larger party of prisoners gathered.
CHAPTER IV
FOUR VICTORIA CROSSES TO THE ULSTER DIVISION
BRILLIANT ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD OF IRISH
VALOUR AND ROMANCE
The most signal proof of the exceptional gallantry of the Ulstermen is
afforded by the awarding of four Victoria Crosses to two officers and
two privates of the Division. There is many a Division that has not
won a single V.C. They must not be belittled on that score; their
ill-fortune and not their service is to blame. But the rarity of the
distinction, and the exceptional deed of bravery and self-sacrifice
needed to win it, reflects all the more glory on the achievements of
the Ulstermen. By the winning of four Victoria Crosses the Ulster
Division have made a name which will shine gloriously for all time in
the imperishable record of British gallantry on the battlefield.
Private William Frederick McFadzean of the Royal Irish Rifles was
posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for sacrificing himself
deliberately to save his comrades. The men of the battalion were
packed together in a concentration trench on the morning of July 1.
Just prior to the advance bombs were being distributed for use when
the German lines were reached. One of the boxes of these missiles
slipped down the trench and emptied its contents on the floor. Two of
the safety pins fell out. Shouts of alarm were raised. Men who would
face the German bombs undaunted shrank with a purely physical reaction
from the peril which thus accidentally threatened them. They knew that
in a moment these bombs would explode with a terrific detonation and
scatter death and mutilation among them. In that instant McFadzean
flung himself bodily on the top of the bombs. He was a bomber himself,
and he well knew the danger, but he did not hesitate. The bombs
exploded. All their tremendous powers of destruction were concentrated
upon the body which enveloped them in an embrace. McFadzean was blown
literally to bits. One only of his comrades was injured.
McFadzean was only twenty-one years of age. He was born at Lurgan,
County Armagh, and was a Presbyterian. A member of the Ulster
Volunteer Force, he joined the Young Citizens' Battalion (Belfast) of
the Royal Irish Rifles in September 1914.
The other private who won the Victoria Cross is Robert Quigg, also of
the Royal Irish Rifles. On the morning after the advance he went out
seven times, alone and in the face of danger, to try to find his
wounded officer, Sir Harry Macnaghten of Dundaraye, Antrim, and
returned on each occasion with a disabled man. Private Quigg is
thirty-one, the son of Robert Quigg, a guide and boatman at the
Giant's Causeway, Antrim. He was a member of the Ulster Volunteer
Force, and enlisted in the Royal Irish Rifles (Central Antrim
Volunteers) in September, 1914. He is an Episcopalian, an Orangeman
and a member of the flute band of his lodge.
The official account of Private Quigg's exploit is as follows--
"For most conspicuous bravery. He advanced to the assault with
his platoon three times. Early next morning, hearing a rumour
that his platoon officer was lying out wounded, he went out
seven times to look for him under heavy shell and machine-gun
fire, each time bringing back a wounded man. The last man he
dragged in on a waterproof sheet from within a few yards of the
enemy's wire. He was seven hours engaged in this most gallant
work, and finally was so exhausted that he had to give it up."
It was also "for most conspicuous bravery" in searching for wounded
men under continuous and heavy fire that Lieutenant Geoffrey
Shillington Cather of the Royal Irish Fusiliers got the Victoria
Cross. He lost his life in thus trying to succour others on the night
and morning after the advance of the Ulster Division. "From 7 p.m.
till midnight he searched 'No Man's Land,' and brought in three
wounded men," says the official account. "Next morning, at 8 a.m., he
continued his search, brought in another wounded man, and gave water
to others, arranging for their rescue later. Finally, at 10.30 a.m.,
he took out water to another man, and was proceeding further on when
he was himself killed. All this was carried out in full view of the
enemy, and under direct machine-gun fire, and intermittent artillery
fire. He set a splendid example of courage and self-sacrifice."
Lieutenant Cather was twenty-five years of age, a son of Mrs. Cather,
Priory Road, West Hampstead, London. His father, who was dead, had
been a tea merchant in the City. On his mother's side, Lieutenant
Cather was a grandson of the late Mr. Thomas Shillington, of Tavanagh
House, Portadown; and on his father's side, of the late Rev. Robert
Cather, a distinguished minister of the Irish Methodist Church. He was
a nephew of Captain D. Graham Shillington, of Ardeevin, Portadown,
who, with his son, Lieutenant T.G. Shillington, was serving in the
same battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. Lieutenant Cather was
educated at Rugby. He first joined the Public Schools' Battalion of
the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), and obtained his
commission in the County Armagh Volunteers in May, 1915.
The second officer of the Ulster Division to win the Victoria Cross
was Captain Eric N.F. Bell of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, whose
gallantry on July 1 also cost him his life. He was about twenty-two
years old, one of three soldier sons of Captain E.H. Bell, formerly of
the Inniskillings (serving in Egypt in a garrison battalion of the
Royal Irish Regiment), and Mrs. Bell, an Enniskillen lady living in
Bootle. The two brothers of the late Captain Bell hold commissions in
the Ulster Division. The deeds for which he was awarded the Victoria
Cross are thus set out in the official account--
"For most conspicuous bravery. He was in command of a trench
mortar battery, and advanced with the infantry in the attack.
When our front line was hung up by enfilading machine-gun fire
Captain Bell crept forward and shot the machine gunner. Later,
on no less than three occasions, when our bombing parties, which
were clearing the enemy's trenches, were unable to advance, he
went forward and threw trench mortar bombs among the enemy. When
he had no more bombs available he stood on the parapet, under
intense fire, and used a rifle with great coolness and effect on
the enemy advancing to counter-attack. Finally he was killed
rallying and reorganising infantry parties which had lost their
officers. All this was outside the scope of his normal duties
with his battery. He gave his life in his supreme devotion to
duty."
Colonel Ricardo, in a very fine and sympathetic letter to the bereaved
mother, gives additional particulars of Captain Bell's gallantry--
"The General, hearing that his parents were old friends of mine,
has asked me to write on his behalf, sending his sympathy and
telling of the gallantry of Eric, which was outstanding on a day
when supreme courage and gallantry was the order of the day.
Eric was in command on July 1 of his trench mortar battery,
which had very important duties to perform, and which very
materially helped the advance. We know from his servant,
Private Stevenson, a great deal of Eric's share in the day's
work. He went forward with the advance, and, coming under heavy
machine-gun fire, and seeing where it came from, he took a rifle
and crawled towards the machine-gun and then shot the gunner in
charge, thus enabling a party on his flank to capture the gun.
This gallant action saved many lives.
"When in the German lines Eric worked splendidly, collecting
scattered units and helping to organise the defence. He was most
energetic, and never ceased to encourage the men and set all a
very fine example. Having exhausted all his mortar ammunition,
he organised a carrying party and started back to fetch up more
shells; it was whilst crossing back to our own line that Eric
was hit. He was shot through the body, and died in a few moments
without suffering. His servant stayed with him to the end and
arrived back quite exhausted, and has now been admitted into
hospital. Nothing could have exceeded the courage and resource
displayed by Eric. The Brigade are proud that he belonged to it.
It is only what I should have expected from him. It must be a
solace to his father and mother that he died such a gallant
death. He was a born soldier and a credit to his regiment. May I
add my heartfelt sympathy to my dear old friends."
Among the many other distinctions gained by the Division were Military
Crosses to two of the chaplains: Captain Rev. J. Jackson Wright and
Captain Rev. Joseph Henry McKew. Captain Wright was the Presbyterian
minister of Ballyshannon, County Donegal. He gave up that position
temporarily to accept an Army chaplaincy, and was posted to the Ulster
Division in November, 1914, being attached to the Inniskilling
Brigade. He was ordained in 1893. Captain McKew was curate of the
parish of Clones prior to being appointed Church of Ireland chaplain
to the troops in August, 1915. He is a Trinity man, and during his
university career won a moderatorship in history. Ordained in 1914, he
has spent his entire ministry under Canon Ruddell in Clones. Before
going to the Front he was a chaplain at the Curragh.
The company officers led their men with conspicuous gallantry and
steadfastness. "Come on, Ulsters;" "Remember July the First," they
cried. They were severely thinned out before the day was far advanced.
It was the same with the non-commissioned ranks. At the end several
parties of men desperately fighting had not an officer or a
non-commissioned officer left. Among the officers lost were two
brothers, Lieutenant Holt Montgomery Hewitt, Machine-gun Corps (Ulster
Division), and Second-Lieutenant William Arthur Hewitt, Royal
Inniskilling Fusiliers (Tyrone Volunteers). They were the sons of Mr.
J.H. Hewitt, manager of the workshops for the blind, Royal Avenue,
Belfast. A third son, Lieutenant Ernest Henry Hewitt, Royal Lancaster
Regiment, was killed in action on June 15, 1915. The three brothers
were members of the Ulster Volunteer Force before the War. They were
prominent athletes, and played Rugby football for the North of Ireland
club. In that respect they were typical of the officers of the Ulster
Division. They were also typical of them for high-mindedness and
cheerful devotion to duty. "Poor Holt, the most genial and lovable of
souls!" exclaims Lieutenant E.W. Crawford, the adjutant of his
battalion of the Inniskillings. "Willie led his platoon fearlessly
over the top." The commanding officer of the battalion, Colonel
Ricardo, in a letter to Mr. Hewitt, pays a remarkable tribute to
Second-Lieutenant William Holt. He says: "It was a sad day for us, and
I feel quite stunned and heartbroken. Your Willie was one of the
nicest-minded boys I ever knew. My wife saw a letter he wrote to the
widow of a man in his company, and she told me it was the most
beautiful letter of sympathy she had ever read. No one but a
spiritually-minded boy could have written such a letter. I made him my
assistant-adjutant, and of all my young lads I could spare him the
least. No words can express the sympathy we all feel for yourself and
Mrs. Hewitt and your family in this grievous double blow."
Captain C.C. Craig, Royal Irish Rifles (South Antrim Volunteers), M.P.
for South Antrim and brother of Colonel James Craig, M.P. for East
Down, was taken prisoner. When last seen he was lying wounded in a
shell hole at the most advanced point of the narrow and dangerous
salient carved by the Ulstermen in the enemy lines, shouting
encouragement to his company. In a letter to his wife, written from a
hospital at Gutersloh, Westphalia, Germany, and dated July 13, Captain
Craig states it was while he was directing his men to convert the C
line of trenches into defences against the Germans by making them face
the opposite way, that he was hit by a piece of shrapnel in the back
of the leg below the knee. "This put me out of action," he says. "I
was bandaged up, and, as I could not get about, I sent a message to R.
Neill to take command, and I crawled to a shell-hole, where I lay for
six hours. This was at about 10 a.m. on the 1st July. During this six
hours the shelling and machine-gun fire was very heavy, but my
shell-hole protected me so well that I was not hit again, except for a
very small piece of shrapnel on the arm, which only made a small cut."
At about four o'clock in the afternoon the enemy made a counter
attack, during which Captain Craig was found and taken prisoner.
Describing his treatment as a prisoner, Captain Craig says--
"I had to hobble into a trench close at hand, where I stayed
till ten o'clock, till two Germans took me to another line of
trenches about 400 or 500 yards further back. This was the worst
experience I had, as my leg was stiff and painful. The space
between the lines was being heavily shelled by our guns, and my
two supporters were naturally anxious to get over the ground as
quickly as possible, and did not give me much rest, so I was
very glad when, after what seemed an age, though it was not more
than fifteen minutes or so, we got to the trench. I was put in a
deep dug-out, where there were a lot of officers and men, and
they were all very kind to me and gave me food and water, and
here I spent the night. My leg was by now much swollen, but not
painful except when I tried to walk. There were no stretchers,
so in the morning I had to hobble as best I could out of the
trenches till we came to a wood. Soon after I passed a dug-out
where some artillery officers lived, and the captain seeing my
condition refused to allow me to go any further on foot, and
took me in and gave me food and wine, and set his men to make a
kind of sling to carry me in. This proved a failure; as I was so
heavy, I nearly broke the men's shoulders. He then got a
wheelbarrow, and in this I was wheeled a mile or more to a
dressing station, where my wound was dressed, and I was
inoculated for tetanus. That night I was taken to a village, and
had a comfortable bed and a good sleep."
Another officer of the Division who was "pipped," as he calls it,
tells in an interesting story how he worked himself along the ground
towards the British lines, and his experiences on the way. "By and
by," he says, "a Boche corporal came crawling along after me. He
shouted some gibberish, and I waved him on towards our lines with my
revolver. He wasn't wounded, but he was devilish anxious to make sure
of being a prisoner--begad, you don't get our chaps paying them the
same compliment. They'll take any risks sooner than let the Boche get
them as prisoners. So this chap lay down close beside me. I told him
to be off out o' that, but he lay close, and I'd no breath to spare.
That crawling is tiresome work. Presently I saw a man of ours coming
along, poking round with his rifle and bayonet. He'd been detailed to
shepherd in prisoners. He was surprised to see me. Then he saw my
Boche. 'Hell to yer sowl!' says he; 'what the divil are ye doin' there
beside my officer? Get up,' says he, 'an' be off with ye out a' that!'
And he poked at him with his bayonet; so the fellow squealed and
plucked up enough courage to get up on his feet and run for our lines.
Our own man wanted to help me back--a good fellow, you know--but I'd
time enough before me, so told him to carry on. I wriggled all the way
back to our line, and a stretcher-bearer got me there, so I was all
right."
When they were relieved, the survivors of the Division came back very
tired and bedraggled, their faces black with battle smoke and their
uniforms white from the chalky soil. But they were in a joyous mood;
and well they might be, for they had battered in one of the doors of
the supposed impregnable German trenches and left it ajar. Their
exploits add a brilliant chapter to the record of Irish valour and
romance. Grief for the dead will soon subside into a sad memory, but
the glory of what they accomplished will endure for ever. Because of
it, the First of July is certain to be as great a day for Ulster in
the future as the Twelfth has been in the past.
CHAPTER V
COMBATIVENESS OF THE IRISH SOLDIER
THE BRITISH BLENDS OF COURAGE
There is a story of Wellington and his army in the Peninsular campaign
which embodies, in a humorous fashion, the still popular idea of the
chief national characteristics of the races within the United Kingdom.
It says that if Wellington wanted a body of troops to get to a
particular place quickly by forced marches he gave an assurance that
on their arrival Scottish regiments would be given their arrears of
pay; English regiments would have a good dinner of roast beef, and the
bait held out to Irish regiments to give speed to their feet, however
weary, was an all-round tot of grog. The Welsh, it will be noticed,
are not in the story. This cannot be explained by saying they had yet
to achieve separate national distinction on the field of battle. The
23rd Regiment of Foot (Royal Welsh Fusiliers) served under Wellington
and contributed more than their fair share to the martial renown of
the British Army. It is solely due, I think, to the fact that they had
not yet emerged from their absorption in the English generally. But,
to round off the story, what motive of a material kind would impel the
Welsh Regiments to greater military exertions? Shall we say any one of
the three inducements mentioned--pay, grub or grog, or, better still,
all of them together?
The present war has provided the most searching tests of the qualities
of the races involved in it. They have all been profoundly moved to
the uttermost deeps of their being, both in the mass and as
individuals. The superficial trappings of society and even of
civilisation have fallen from them, and they appear as they really
are--brave or cowardly, noble or base, unselfish or egotistical. We
see our own soldiers, English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, not perhaps
quite as each came from the hands of Nature, but certainly as the
original minting of each has been modified only by the influence of
racial environment. All the races within the United Kingdom are alike
in this, that each is a medley of many kinds of dissimilar individuals
with very varied faculties and attributes. But there are certain
broad, main characteristics which distinguish in the mass each racial
aggregate of dissimilar units; and it is these instincts, ideas,
habits, customs, held in common, that fundamentally separate each
nationality from the other. That is what I mean by racial environment.
The soldiers of the United Kingdom possess in general certain fine
qualities of character and conduct which may be ascribed to the
traditions and training of the British Army. But when we come to
consider them racially we find that their points of difference are
more striking even than their points of similarity. Each nationality
evolves its own type of soldier, and every type has its distinctly
marked attributes. As troops, taken in the mass, are the counterpart
of the nations from which they spring, and, indeed, cannot be anything
else, so they must, for one thing, reveal in fighting the particular
sort of martial spirit possessed by their race. Though I am an
Irishman, I would not be so boastful as to say that the Irish soldiers
have a superior kind of courage to which neither the English, the
Scottish nor the Welsh can lay claim. They are all equally brave, but
the manifestation of their bravery is undoubtedly different--that is,
different not so much in degree as in kind. In a word, courage, like
humour, is not racial or geographical, but, like humour also, it takes
on a racial or geographical flavour.
General Sir Ian Hamilton has written: "When, once upon a time, a Queen
of Spain saw the Grenadier Guards she remarked they were strapping
fellows; as the 92nd Highlanders went by she said, 'The battalion
marches well'; but, at the aspect of the Royal Irish, the words
'Bloody War!' were wrung from her reluctant lips." After a good deal
of reading on the subject, and some thought, I venture to suggest the
following generalisations as to the qualities which distinguish the
English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, in valour, one from another.
English--the courage of an exalted sense of honour and devotion
to duty, and of the national standard of conduct which requires
them to show, at all costs, that they are better men than their
opponents, whoever they may be.
Scottish--the courage of mental as well as physical tenacity,
coolly set upon achieving the purpose in view.
Welsh--the courage of perfervid emotion, religious in its
intensity.
Irish--the courage of dare-devilry, and the rapture of battle.
All these varieties of courage are to be found, to some extent, in
each distinct national unit, and thus they cross and recross the
racial boundary lines within our Army. Still, I think they represent
broadly the dominant distinguishing characteristics of the English,
Scottish, Welsh and Irish as fighting men. The qualities lacking in
one race are supplied by the others; and the harmonious whole into
which all are fused provide that fire and dash, cool discipline,
doggedness and high spirits for which our troops have always been
noted. The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, is said to have made
a most interesting estimate of the qualities of the soldiers of the
three home races under his command. The Irish are best for brilliant
and rapid attack, and the English are best for holding a position
against heavy onslaughts. The Scottish, he thinks, are not quite so
fiery and dashing in assault as the Irish, but they are more so than
the English, and not quite so tenacious in holding on under tremendous
fire as the English, but they are more so than the Irish.
It is this combination of attributes which enables the British Army,
more perhaps than any other army, to get out of a desperate situation
with superb serenity and honour. There is an old saying that it never
knows when it is beaten. Soult, Marshal of France, whose brilliant
tactics in the Peninsular War so often countered the consummate
strategy of Wellington and the furious dash of the Irish infantry,
bore testimony in a novel and vivid way to this trait of the British.
"They could not be persuaded they were beaten," he said. "I always
thought them bad soldiers," he also said. "I turned their right,
pierced their centre, they were everywhere broken; the day was mine;
and yet they did not know it and would not run."
Any other troops, in a hopeless pass, would retreat or surrender, and
would do so without disgrace. There are numberless instances in
British military history where our troops, faced with fearful odds,
stood, magnificently stubborn, with their backs to the wall, as it
were, willing to be fired at and annihilated rather than give in. Mr.
John Redmond tells a story of a reply given by an English General when
asked his opinion of the Irish troops. "Oh," he said, "they are
magnificent fighters, but rotten soldiers. When they receive an order
to retire their answer is, 'Be damned if we will.'" I may add, in
confirmation of this story, that one of the incidents of the retreat
from Mons, which was the subject afterwards of an inquiry by the
military authorities, was the refusal of a few hundred men of a famous
Irish regiment to retire from what appeared to be an untenable
position, much less to surrender, one or other of which courses was
suggested by their superior officer. The answer of the men was as
stunning as a blow of a shillelagh, or as sharp as a bayonet thrust.
"If we had thrown down our arms," one of them said to me, "we could
never have shown our faces in Ireland again."
Racial distinctions are to be seen on the weak side as well as on the
strong side of character. Each nationality, regarded as fighters, has
therefore its own particular failing. The Irish are disposed to be
foolhardy, or heedless of consequences. It is the fault of their
special kind of courage. "The British soldier's indifference to
danger, while it is one of his finest qualities, is often the despair
of his officers," says Mr. Valentine Williams, one of the most
brilliant and experienced of war correspondents, in his book, _With
our Army in Flanders_, and he adds, "The Irish regiments are the
worst. Their recklessness is proverbial." They are either insensible
to the perils they run, or, what is more likely, contemptuous of them.
I have been given several examples of the ways they will needlessly
expose themselves. Though they can get to the rear through the safe,
if wayward, windings of the communication trenches, it is a common
thing for them to climb the parapets and go straight across the open
fields under fire so as to save half an hour. To go by the trenches,
they will argue, doubles the time taken in getting back without
halving the risk. In like manner, they prefer to go down a road swept
by the enemy's artillery, which leads direct to their destination,
rather than waste time by following a secure but circuitous way round.
There is an Irish proverb against foolhardy risks which says it is
better to be late for five minutes than dead all your lifetime, but
evidently it is disregarded by Irish soldiers at the Front.
An English officer in the Royal Irish Regiment writes: "Really the
courage and cheerfulness of our grand Irish boys are wonderful. They
make light of their wounds, and, owing to their stamina, make rapid
recoveries. The worst of them is they get very careless of the German
bullets after a while and go wandering about as if they were at home."
Another English officer begins an amusing story of an Irish orderly in
an English regiment with the comment: "I shall never now believe that
there is on this earth any man to beat the Irish for coolness and
pluck." The officer was in his dug-out, and first noticed the Irishman
chopping wood to make a fire for cooking purposes on a road which was
made dangerous during the day by German snipers. He remarked to
another officer, "By Jove! that man will get shot if he isn't
careful." "No sooner had I said the word," he writes, "when a bullet
splattered near his head. Then another between his legs. I saw the mud
fly where the bullet struck. The man, who is the Captain's servant,
turned round in the direction of the sniper and roared, 'Good shot,
Kaiser. Only you might have hit me, though, for then I could have gone
home.' After this the orderly proceeded to roast a fowl, singing quite
unconcernedly, 'I often sigh for the silvery moon.' Another bullet
came and hit him in the arm. He roared with delight; and, as he basted
the fowl, exclaimed, 'Oh, I'm not going to lave you, me poor bird.'
The officer shouted to him to come into the dug-out. He did so, but
when he had licked the wound in his arm, and bound it up, he said he
must get the fowl, or it would be overdone; and before the officer
could utter a word of protest, he ran across the road to the fire,
started singing again, though the bullets, once more, came whistling
past his ear. When he returned to the dug-out with the fowl nicely
roasted he remarked cheerily, 'People may say what they like, but them
Germans are some marksmen, after all.'"
The whimsical side of Irish daring is further illustrated by a story
of some men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers. To while away the time in
the trenches one night they made bets on doing this or that. One
fellow wagered a day's pay that he would go over to the German lines
and come back with a maxim gun, which was known to be stationed at a
particular point. In the darkness he wriggled across the intervening
space on his stomach, and, coming stealthily upon the guard, stabbed
him with a dagger. Then slinging the maxim across his shoulder, he
crawled safely back to the trenches. "Double pay to-day!" he cried to
the comrade he made the bet with. "But you haven't won," said the
other. "Where's the machine's belt and ammunition?" The next night he
sallied forth on his belly again, and returned with the complete
outfit. The spirit of the anecdote is true to the Irish temperament,
though the episode it records may be fanciful. There is no doubt that
things of the kind are done very frequently by Irish soldiers. They
call it "gallivanting"; and the mood takes on an air of, say,
recklessness which, at times, seems very incongruous against the
frightful background of the war.
The very root of courage is forgetfulness of self. Self-consciousness
is, in no great degree, an Irish failing, or virtue, either, if it is
to be regarded as such. Especially when he is absorbed in a martial
adventure, the Irishman has no room in his mind left for a thought of
being afraid, or even nervous. He likes the thrill of movement, the
fierce excitement of advancing under fire for a frontal attack on the
enemy, the ferocity of a contest at close grips. This is the
temperament that responds blithely to the whistle--"Over the
parapets!" His blood is stirred when the actual fighting begins, and
as it progresses he is carried more and more out of himself. The part
of warfare repugnant to him, most trying to his temper, is that of
long watching and waiting. For the work of lining the trenches a
different kind of courage is required. The slush, the miseries, the
herding together, the cramped movements, are enough to drive all the
heat out of the blood. The qualities needed for the severe and
incessant strain of this duty are an immovable calm, a tireless
patience, an endurance which no hardships can break down. Here the
English and the Scottish shine, for by nature they are more
disciplined, more submissive to authority, and they hold on to the end
with an admirable blend of good-humour and doggedness. On the other
hand, I am told, on the authority of an officer of the Welsh Guards,
that when the Irish Guards are in the trenches they find the long
dreary vigil and the boredom of inaction so insupportable that it is a
common thing for parties of them to go to the officer in command and
say, "Please, sir, may we go out and bomb the Germans?"
As Lord Wolseley had "the Irish drop in him," perhaps it is not to be
wondered at that he discounts the old proverb that the better part of
valour is discretion. "There are a great many men," he writes, "who
pride themselves upon simply doing their duty and restricting
themselves exclusively to its simple performance. If such a spirit
took possession of an army no great deeds can ever be expected from
it." What more can one do, it may be asked, than one's duty? Evidently
Lord Wolseley would have duty on the battlefield spiced or gingered
with audacity. The way the Irish look at it is well illustrated, I
think, in a letter which I have seen from a private in a Devon
regiment. He states that while he and some comrades were at an
observation post in a trench near the enemy's line six Germans
advanced close to them, and though they kept firing at them they could
not drive them back. "Two fellows of the Royal Irish Rifles came up,"
continues the Devon man, "and asked us what was on. We told them. Then
one turned round to the other and said, 'Come on, Jim, sure we'll
shift them.' Then the two of them fixed their bayonets and rushed at
the Germans. You would have laughed to see the six Germans running
away from the two Irishmen." We have here an exhibition of the spirit
of the born fighter who does not stop to count the odds or risks too
cautiously. The incident recalls, in a sense, the scene depicted by
Shakespeare in _King Henry V_ at the camp before Harfleur, France,
when Fluellen the Welshman--all shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying in
enterprise--wants to argue with Captain Macmorris, the Irishman,
concerning the disciplines of war. But the Irishman wants not words
but work. Away with procrastination! So he bursts out, in
Shakespeare's most uncouth imitation of the brogue--
"It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me: the day is hot,
and the weather, and the wars and the King, and the dukes: it is
no time to discourse. The town is beseeched, and the trumpet
call us to the breach, and we talk, and, be Chrish, do nothing;
'tis shame for us all: so God sa' me 'tis shame to stand still;
it is shame by my hand; and there is throats to be cut, and
works to be done; and there isn't nothing done, so Chrish sa'
me, la!"
Lord Wolseley also lays greater store on the spontaneous courage of
the blood, the intuitive or unconscious form of courage, which is
peculiarly Irish, than on moral courage, the courage of the mind, the
courage of the man who by sheer will-power masters his nervous system
and the shrinking from danger which it usually excites. In Lord
Wolseley's opinion the man who is physically brave--the man of whom it
may often be said that he has no sense of fear because he has no
perception of danger--is the true military leader who draws his men
after him to the achievement of deeds at which the world wonders.
That is the kind of courage which of old led the mailed knight, bent
on a deed of derring-do, to cleave his way with sword or battle-axe to
the very heart of the enemy's phalanx for the purpose of bringing
their banner to the ground, or dealing them a more vital blow by
slaying their commander. There may be little opportunity in trench
warfare and in duels between heavy guns, both sides concealed behind
the veils of distance, for such a show of spectacular bravery. War is
no longer an adventure, a game or a sport. It is a state of existence,
and what is needed most for its successful prosecution, so far as the
individual fighter is concerned, is a devotion to duty which, however
undramatic, never quails before any task to which it is set.
But the Irish soldier still longs for the struggle to the death
between man and man, or, better still, of one man against a host of
men. At dawn one day a young Irish soldier, inexperienced and of a
romantic disposition, took his first turn in the trenches. He had come
up filled with an uplifting resolve to do great things. The Germans
immediately began a bombardment. The lad at first was filled with
vague wonderments. He was puzzled especially by the emptiness of the
battlefield. He had in mind the opposing armies moving in sight of
each other, as he had seen them in manoeuvres. Where was the enemy?
Whence came these shells? Then the invisibility of the foe, and this
mechanical, impersonal form of fighting appalled him. One of his
comrades was blown to pieces by his side. A dozen others disappeared
from view in an upheaval of the ground. This was a dastardly massacre
and not manly warfare, thought the youth.
He could stand the ordeal no longer. He ran, bewildered, up the
trench, shouting "Police! police!" "Hello, there; what are you up to?"
said an officer, barring the way. "Oh, sir," cried the young soldier,
"there's bloody murder going on down there below, and I am looking for
the police to put an end to it."
CHAPTER VI
WITH THE TYNESIDE IRISH
OVER THE HEIGHTS OF LA BOISELLE, THROUGH
BAILIFF'S WOOD TO CONTALMAISON
The men of the Tyneside Irish battalions stood to arms in the assembly
trenches by the Somme on the morning of July 1, 1916. Suddenly the
face of the country was altered, in their sight, as if by a frightful
convulsion of Nature. Their ears were stunned by shattering
explosions, and looking ahead, they saw the earth in two places
upheaving, hundreds of feet high, in black masses of smoke. The ground
rumbled under their feet, so that many feared it would break apart and
bring the parapets down on top of them. Two mines had been sprung
beneath the first line of the German trenches to the south-west and
north-east of the heap of masonry and timber that once had been the
pretty little hamlet of La Boiselle. It was the signal to the
Division, which included the Tyneside Irish, that the hour of battle
had come.
The part in the general British advance allotted to the Division was
first to seize the heights on which La Boiselle stood. This was a few
miles beyond the town of Albert, held by the Allies, on the main road
to the town of Bapaume, in the possession of the Germans. Thence they
were to move forward to Bailiff's Wood, to the north-west of
Contalmaison, and to a position on the cross-roads to the north-east
of that village. Contalmaison lay about four miles distant, almost in
ruins amid its devastated orchards, and with the broken towers of its
chateau standing out conspicuously at the back. One brigade had to
take the first line of German trenches, other battalions of the
Division had to take the second and third lines, after which the
Tyneside Irish were to push on over all these lines to the farthest
point of the Brigade's objective, the second ridge on which
Contalmaison stood, where they were to dig themselves in and remain.
The Tyneside Irish had already had their baptism of fire, and had
proved themselves not unworthy of the race from which they have
sprung. Captain Davey--formerly editor of the _Ulster Guardian_ (a
Radical and Home Rule journal)--records a stirring incident of St.
Patrick's Day, 1916. On the night of March 15-16 a German patrol
planted a German flag in front of the Tyneside Irish, half-way across
"No Man's Land." It was determined to wipe out the insult. During the
day snipers were allowed to amuse themselves firing at the flag, and
it was not long before a lucky shot smashed the staff in two, and left
the German ensign trailing in the dust. But the real work was reserved
for the night. There were abundance of volunteers, but Captain Davey,
with pride in his own province, selected an Ulsterman for the
adventure. The man chosen was Second-Lieutenant C.J. Ervine, of
Belfast. Mr. Ervine, supported by two Tyneside Irishmen, set out on
the eve of St. Patrick's Day, and entered the gloomy depths of "No
Man's Land." An hour passed and they returned--but without the flag.
The enemy was too keenly on the alert. But in the early hours of St.
Patrick's Day Lieutenant Ervine set off again--this time by himself.
What happened is thus described by Captain Davey--
"For an hour and a half we waited for his return, expecting each
minute to hear the confounded patrol and machine-gun making the
familiar declaration that 'We will not have it.' So keen were
the sentries that even when relieved they would not leave their
posts. After an hour had passed, Mr. Ervine's sergeant, getting
impatient, went over the parapet and crawled to our wire so as
to see better. Punctually at a quarter to three a German
star-light went up, and by it we could see a dark form making in
our direction. In five minutes it reached our wire, and in ten
it was over the parapet. The Germans had been caught napping. In
less than half an hour, while the spoiler of the Huns stood by
in the crude garb of a Highlander in trench boots--for he had
fallen into a ditch full of water on the way and we bring no
change of clothing to the trenches--another officer and myself
had erected a flagstaff in a firing-bay and nailed to it was the
German ensign, while ABOVE it floated a green flag with the harp
which had been presented to our company before we left home. And
so we ushered in St. Patrick's Day!"
Captain Davey proceeds--
"Proudly the green banner floated out, while, of course, we
flattered ourselves that the black, white and red of Prussia
hung its head in shame below. It was not long before the Germans
showed that they were wide awake at last, and the bullets began
to sing about our newly-erected monument to Ireland and
Ireland's patron saint. But it was a stout flagstaff, and though
dozens of bullets struck it, nothing short of a shell could have
shifted it. And there it stood all day with the Green above the
Black, White and Red. It was no longer a case of 'Deutschland'
but of 'Ireland Uber Alles.' I don't know if any similar sight
has been seen in a British trench. I know the green flag has led
Irish troops to victory in this war, but I think this is the
first time the spectacle has been seen of the Irish ensign
hoisted above a captured German flag. At any rate the spectacle
was sufficiently novel to cause us to have admiring visitors all
day long from other parts of the line."
Unfortunately there is a sad pendant to this story of St. Patrick's
Day at the Front. Lieutenant Ervine, the gallant hero of the exploit,
died from wounds.
The country which faced the Tyneside Irish on July 1, 1916, had been
an agricultural country, inhabited by peasant cultivators before the
war. The ravages of war had turned it into a barren waste. The
productive soil was completely swept away. Nothing remained but the
raw, elemental chalk. It was bare of vegetation, save where, in
isolated spots, the hemlock, the thistle, and other gross weeds,
proclaimed the rankness of the ground, and also that the processes of
Nature ever go on unchecked, even in a world convulsed by human hate.
Not only were the villages pounded into rubbish by gun-fire, but the
woods--also numerous in these parts--appeared, as seen from a
distance, to be but mere clusters of gaunt and splintered tree stumps
devoid of foliage. Not a human being was to be seen. Yet that
apparently empty waste was infested with men--men turned into
burrowing animals like the badger, or, still more, like the weasel, so
noted for its ferocious and bloodthirsty disposition. In every
shattered wood, in every battered hamlet, in all the slopes and dips
by which the face of the country was diversified, they lie concealed,
tens of thousands of them, in an elaborately and cunningly contrived
system of underground defences, armed with rifles, bombs,
machine-guns, trench-mortars, and ready to spring out, with all their
claws and teeth displayed, on the approach of their prey, the man in
khaki. But, as things turned out, the man in khaki pared the nails of
Fritz, and broke his jawbone.
"Before starting, and when our guns were at their heaviest, there was
a good deal of movement, up and down, and talking in the trenches. A
running fire of chaff was kept up, and there was many a smart reply,
for Irish wit will out even in the face of death," said Lieutenant
James Hately, who was wounded in that battle. "Some of the fellows
were very quiet, but none the less determined. Most of us were
laughing. At the same time I felt sorry, for the thought would
obtrude itself on my mind that many of the poor chaps I saw around me
would never see home again. As for myself, curiously enough, it never
occurred to me that I would even be hit. Perhaps that was because I am
of a sanguine or optimistic disposition. I started off, like many
another officer, with a cigarette well alight. Many of the men were
puffing at their pipes. Officers and men exchanged 'good-lucks,'
'cheer-ohs' and other expressions of comradeship and encouragement."
Many were, naturally, in a serious mood. They felt too near to death
for the chaff of the billets or trenches to be seemly. They thought of
home, of dear ones, of life in the workshops and offices of Newcastle
and Sunderland, and the gay companions of favourite sports and
amusements, and, more poignant still, some recalled the last sight of
the cabin in Donegal, before turning down the lane to the valley and
the distant station, on their way to try their fortune in England.
Thus there was some restlessness and anxiety, but the company officers
in closest touch with the men agree that the general mood was
eagerness to get into grips with the enemy, and relish for the
adventure, without any great concern as to its results to themselves
individually. When the command was given, "up and over," the Brigade,
in fact, was like a huge electric battery fresh from a generating
station, for its immense driving force and not less for the lively
agitation of its varied emotions. Up and over the battalions went, and
moved forward in successive waves, the men in single file abreast, the
lines about fifty yards apart. For about two hundred yards or so
nothing of moment happened. Then they came under heavy fire. Shells
burst about them, shrapnel fell from above, bullets from rifle and
machine-gun tore through the air, or caused hundreds of little spurts
of earth to leap and dance about their feet. One of the men told me
that the shrieking and hissing of these deadly missiles reminded him
of banshees and serpents, a confused and grotesque association
appropriate to a battlefield as to a nightmare.
It must not be supposed that everything was carried with a rush and a
shout, at point of the bayonet. An impetuous advance is what the men
would have liked best. It would be most in tune with the ardour of
their feelings, and less a strain on their nerves. But there were many
reasons why that was impossible. The country, in its natural
formation, was upward sloping, and all dips and swells. It was broken
up into enormous shell-holes and mine-craters, seamed with zigzag
lines of white chalky rubble marking the German trenches, and strewn
with the wire of demolished entanglements, fallen trees and the
wreckage of houses. The men were heavily equipped in what is called
fighting order. They carried haversacks, water-bottles, gas-helmets,
bandoliers filled with cartridges, as well as rifles and bayonets.
Some were additionally burdened with bombs and hand grenades. Behind
them came the working parties with entrenching tools, such as picks
and shovels. Accordingly, the physical labour of the advance alone was
tremendous. It would have been stiff and toilsome work for the
strongest and most active, even if there had been no storm of shot and
shell to face besides. There was, furthermore, the danger in a too
hasty progress of plunging headlong into the curtain of high
explosives which the artillery, firing from miles behind, hung along
the front of the infantry, lifting it and moving it forward as the
lines were seen to advance.
Nevertheless the men went on steadily, undaunted by the fire and
tumult; and the shuddering earth; undaunted even by the spectacle of
the dead and dying of the battalions which preceded them in the
attack; shaken only by one horror--a horror unspeakable--that of
seeing fond comrades of their own falling bereft of life, as in a
flash, by a bullet through the brain or heart; or, worse still, just
as suddenly disappearing into bloody fragments amid the roar and smoke
of a bursting shell. Now and then men stopped awhile, trembling at the
sight and aghast; and, under the sway of impulses that were
irresistible, put their right hands over their faces as a protection
to their eyes--an appeal, expressed in action rather than in words,
that they might be mercifully spared their sight--or else made a
sweeping gesture of the arm, as if to brush aside the bullets which
buzzed about them like venomous insects.
The pace, therefore, was necessarily slow. It was rather a succession
of short rushes, a few yards at a time, with intervening pauses behind
such shelter as was available in order to recover breath. The right
soldierly quality is not to be over rash, but to adapt oneself to the
nature of the fighting and its scene; the circumstances of the moment,
the ever-varying requirements of the action. Such an advance, whatever
precautions be taken, entails great sacrifices. Every life that is
lost should be made to go as far as possible in the gaining of the
victory. Foolhardy movements, due to unreflecting bravery, were
accordingly discouraged. Advantage was to be taken of any cover
afforded by the natural features of the country or the state into
which it had been transformed by the pounding of high explosives. The
influence of the officers, so cool and alert were they, so suggestive
of capability in direction, was most reassuring and stimulating to the
men. On the other hand, the officers were relieved by the
intelligence, the amenable character of the men and their fine
discipline, from the worry and annoyance which company commanders have
so often to endure in the course of an action by the casual doings,
and the lack of initiative on the part of those under their charge.
Simple, biddable, gallant and faithful unto death, it was the wish of
the Tyneside Irish that, if they were to fall, their bodies might be
found, not in the line of the advance, but at the German positions to
the north-west of Contalmaison, out of both of which they had helped
to drive the enemy.
But now the lines or waves of men which had left the trenches in
extended formation were broken up into separate little bodies, all
independently engaged in various grim tasks. They had mounted La
Boiselle hill, and moved down into the valley which still intervened
between them and Bailiff's Wood and Contalmaison. Thus they were in
the very centre of the labyrinth of the enemy's system of defences. An
air of intolerable mystery and sinister hidden danger hung over it.
Was it not possible that those brutes, those dirty fighters, the
inventors of poisonous gas, liquid fire and flame jets, who had
established themselves in the very vitals of the place, might not have
other devilish inventions prepared for the wholesale massacre of their
adversaries? The thought arose in the minds of many, and caused a
vague sense of apprehension. The Germans, however, had no further
hellish surprises. Even so, the place was baneful and noxious enough.
The Germans had suffered terrible losses and were morally shaken by
the artillery bombardment--gigantic, devastating, thunderous--which
preceded the British advance. It is the fact, nevertheless, that most
of the survivors had enough courage and tenacity left doggedly to
contest every inch of the way. They lay concealed in all sorts of
cunning traps and contrivances, apart from their demolished trenches.
Machinery on the side of the British--in the form of big guns--had
done its part. The time had come for the play of human qualities, the
pluck, the endurance and the stout arm of the British infantry man.
Snipers had to be dislodged from their burrows; hidden machine-gun
posts had likewise to be found out and silenced. So the men of the
Tyneside Irish were rushing about in small parties, shooting,
bayoneting, clubbing, bombing; and the triumphant yells which arose
here and there proclaimed the discovery of yet another lair of the
foe.
Many a stirring story of personal adventure could be told. Sergeant
Knapp of Sunderland, who won his stripes in the advance, gives this
account of his experiences--
"I had just taken the machine-gun off my mate to give him a rest
when 'Fritz' opened fire on us from the left with a machine-gun,
which played havoc with the Irish. Then I heard my mate shout,
'Bill, I've been hit,' and when I looked round I saw I was by
myself; he, poor chap, had fallen like the rest. Now I had to do
the best I could, so I picked up a bag of ammunition for the gun
and started across 'No Man's Land.' Once I had to drop into a
shell-hole to take cover from machine-gun fire.
"After a short rest I pushed on again and got into the German
second line. By this time I was exhausted, for I was carrying a
machine-gun and 300 rounds of ammunition, besides a rifle and
120 rounds in my pouches, equipment, haversack and waterproof
cape, so I had a fair load. I stopped there for a few minutes
picking off stray Boches that were kicking about. Then along
came a chap, whom I asked to give me a help with the gun, which
he did. We had scarcely gone ten yards when a shell burst on top
of us. I stood still, I don't think I could have moved had I
wanted to. Then I looked around for my chum, but alas! man and
gun were missing. Where he went to I don't know, for I have not
seen him or my precious weapon since."
Who that has talked with many wounded soldiers has not found that
often they are unable to give any coherent account of their own
actions and feelings during a battle. In some cases it is due to an
unwillingness to revive haunting memories, a wish to banish out of
mind for ever the morbid, terrible and grotesque, the ugly aspects in
which many experiences in battle present themselves, surpassing the
nightmares of any opium eater. In other cases there is an obvious
distaste for posing. All one gallant Irish Tynesider would say to me
was, "Sure I only went on because I had to. Didn't the officers tell
us before we left the trenches that there was to be no going back?" He
brushed aside everything he had done that terrible day which got him
the Distinguished Conduct Medal, with the jocose assumption that he
was but the most unheroic of mortals, that he went to a place where he
would not have gone if he had had any choice in the matter. The
incommunicativeness of the soldier is also due to the fact that he
cannot recall his sensations. During an engagement his mind is in a
whirl. He has no disposition to note his thoughts and feelings in the
midst of the fighting. In fact, few men can analyse the processes of
their emotions in such a situation, either at the time or afterwards.
As a rule, an overmastering passion possesses the soldier to stab,
hack and annihilate the foe who want to take that life which he so
greatly desires to preserve. All else is confused and blurred--a vague
sense of desperate happenings shrouded in fire and smoke, out of which
there emerges, now and then, with sharp distinctness, some specially
horrible incident, such as the shattering of a comrade into bits.
But I have met with cases still more strange, where the mind was a
blank during the advance through the showering bullets and shrapnel
and the exploding shells. Even the simplest process of the
brain--memory, or self-consciousness--was dormant. The soldiers in
this mental condition appear to have been like the somnambulist who
does things mechanically as he walks in his sleep, and when aroused
has an impression of having passed through some unusual experience,
but what he cannot tell, so vague and formless is it all. Suddenly
all the senses of these hypnotised soldiers became wide awake and
alert. This happened when they caught sight of figures in skirted grey
tunics and flat grey caps with narrow red bands, emerging from
cavernous depths into the light of day, or unexpectedly came upon them
crouching in holes or behind mounds of earth away from the trenches.
Germans! Face to face with the Bosche at last! The effect was like
that of a sudden and peremptory blast of a bugle in a deep stillness.
Each Irish Tynesider braced up his nerves for bloody deeds. "My life,
or theirs," was the thought that sprang to his mind. Thus it was a
scene of appalling violence. It resounded with the clash of bayonets;
the crackle of musketry; the explosion of bombs; the rattle of
machine-guns; and in that confusion of hideous mechanical noises were
also heard the shriek of human anguish and the cry of victory.
It was in a wood not far off Contalmaison that the fighting was most
desperate and sanguinary of all. The place was full of Germans. The
paths and glades were blocked or barricaded with fallen trees. Beneath
the splintered and blackened trunks that were still standing, the
undergrowth, freed from the attentions of the woodman in the two years
of the war, was dense and tangled. Right through the wood were
trenches with barbed wire obstructions. At its upper end were
peculiarly strong outposts, which poured machine-gun fire through the
trees and bushes. It was commanded by batteries on two sides--from
Contalmaison on the right and Oviliers on the left. The attackers had
to penetrate this dreadful wood, scrambling, tearing, jumping,
creeping in the sultry and stifling heat of the day. There were
ferocious personal encounters. The form of fighting was one of the
most terrible to which this most hideous of wars has given rise.
Probably there has been nothing like it since early man fought those
horrid and extinct mammoth animals, the skeletons of which are now to
be seen in museums, what time they were alive and savage and ruthless
in their haunts in the primeval forest.
The battle was marked by ever-varying vicissitudes of advance and
repulse. "The German Guardsmen fought like tigers to hold it," is a
phrase in one letter of an Irish Tynesider. Our own official
despatches relating to the Somme battle also show that this part of
the German front--Oviliers, La Boiselle, Bailiff's Wood, Contalmaison,
Mametz Wood--was held by battalions of the Guards, composed of the
flower of the youth of Prussia, and standing highest in the mightiest
army in the world. These were not the kind of men to put up their
hands and cry "Kamerad, mercy!" at the sight even of that pitiless and
unnerving thing--a bayonet at the end of a rifle in the hands of a
brawny Irishman, with the fury of battle flaming in his eyes. They
held on tenaciously, and gave blow for blow. A long bombardment, night
and day, by modern heavy guns, is a frightful ordeal. Its objects are,
first, to kill wholesale; and, next, to paralyse the survivors with
the fear of death, so that they could but offer only a feeble
resistance to the advancing troops. Shaken and despairing men were,
therefore, encountered--filthy, unshaven, vile-looking, and so
mentally dazed as to act and talk like idiots. But they were not all
like that. So well-designed and powerful were their subterranean
defences that large numbers were unaffected by the visitations of the
high explosives, and through it preserved their courage and their
rage. Conspicuous among these were the Prussian Guards. They made
furious efforts to stop the advancing lines of the Tyneside Irish, and
that they were overpowered is a splendid testimony to the martial
qualities of our men. Think of it! Two years ago, or so, these young
lads of various industrial callings--farm hands, railway porters,
clerks, drapers' assistants, policemen, carters, messenger boys,
miners--would have regarded as preposterous the idea that at any time
of what seemed to them to be their predestined humdrum existence, or
in any period even of a conceivably mad and topsy-turvy world, they
would not only be soldiers but would encounter the Germans on the
fields of France; and--most incredible phantasy of all--defeat the
renowned Prussian Guards--men whose hearts from their earliest years
throbbed high at the thought that they were to be soldiers; men highly
disciplined and trained, belonging to the proudest regiments in the
German Army, and always ready and eager for the call of battle.
Bailiff's Wood and Contalmaison appear to have been the furthest
points reached on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. If they
did not then fall, the superb action of the Tyneside Irish made
breaches in these strongholds which, when widened and deepened by
subsequent assaults, led to their complete capture on July 10. As
Captain Downey, an officer of the Tyneside Irish says: "Our men paved
the way for various other British regiments who swept through some
days later." A few companies of one of these battalions which got into
Contalmaison on July 7, and were driven out, brought back some
Tyneside Irish and Scottish that were imprisoned in a German dug-out
in the village. They also found outside the village the bodies of
several Tyneside Irish, gallant fellows who died in the attempt to
push on to the point they had orders to reach.
The effectiveness of the attack by the Brigade on July 1 depended a
good deal upon the progress made by troops of other Divisions who were
co-operating on both sides. "On our left flank the parallel Division
was held up; on our right the Division moved slowly," says an officer
of the Irish Brigade. The difficulties of the advance would probably
have held up indefinitely any other troops in the world. But there is
never any danger of the momentum of an attack by Irish troops being
weakened through excessive caution against what is called "over
running." Indeed, it is a fault of their courage that they are
sometimes prone to act with too much precipitation, and, in fact, on
this occasion it was not so much that the Divisions to the right and
left were behind time as that the Irish Brigade were somewhat ahead of
it. The result, however, was that the Irish Tynesiders were exposed on
their right to a deadly enfilading fire that swept across from
Oviliers, which was not yet in British possession. Nevertheless, they
did not stop. "No matter who cannot get on, we must." That was the
order of the officers in command, and so dauntless was the response to
it that by one o'clock the men got to a point in front of
Contalmaison. Here what remained of the Brigade held on for some days
and nights, until the reserves came to their relief on July 4.
The casualties among all ranks were heavy. The officers, sharing every
hardship and being foremost in every danger, suffered most grievously.
"Our Brigadier, our colonels, our company commanders, were badly
wounded. Every officer, with the exception of two subalterns, was hit.
Some were hit in no less than three places. Yet they carried on. Those
too weak to walk crawled until they eventually gave up through loss of
blood. The losses among the N.C.O.s were just as large." This is the
testimony of Captain Downey. Lieut.-Colonel L. Meredith Howard of the
Tyneside Irish was severely wounded, and died two days afterwards.
Among the officers of the Brigade who fell in action was
Second-Lieutenant Gerald FitzGerald. A brother officer says, "He died
shouting to his men: 'Come on.'" His father was Lord Mayor of
Newcastle the year in which the Brigade was raised. Other officers
killed were Captain Kenneth Mackenzie of Kinsale, co. Cork, whose
father was formerly an Irish Land Commissioner; Lieutenant Louis
Francis Byrne of Newcastle, who was serving his articles as a
solicitor when war broke out; and Lieutenant J.R.C. Burlureaux, a
journalist.
The disappearance of so many of the officers was enough to have
dispirited and confused any body of men. Would it be possible for them
to extricate themselves from the fearful labyrinth in which they were
involved? Would there be any of them left for the final dash at their
objective? The non-commissioned officers rose splendidly to the
emergency. One battalion had not far advanced when all the officers
were shot down. Quartermaster-Sergeant Joseph Coleman took command and
continued onward. Soon he found himself with only three men left.
Everything seemed lost in his part of that scene of tumult and death
but for his coolness and gallantry. He went back, gathered up the
remnants of other scattered companies, and led a willing and eager
band to the capture of the position put down to the battalion in the
scheme of operations. For this Coleman got the Distinguished Conduct
Medal, and had it pinned on his breast by General Munro, the
Brigadier.
When the Brigade was relieved, their return to the haven behind the
lines was attended with almost as much danger as their advance to the
hell beyond the ridge had been. As the men ascended the slope of La
Boiselle, down which they had charged a few days before, the German
machine-guns were still rattling from the opposite hill, and snipers
were picking off the stragglers. The hideousness of the field of
action had also increased. The devastated ground, with its
shell-holes, its great gaping craters and its trenches, was now strewn
with the unsavoury litter of the wake of battle--discarded rifles,
helmets, packs, burst and unburst shells; boots, rags, meat-tins,
bottles and newspapers. Such of the wounded as could walk at all
limped along on the arms of comrades. Every one was inconceivably
dirty. Down their blackened faces were white furrows made by their
sweat. Thus they came back, the Irish Tynesiders, with bloody but
unbowed heads. "I saw our battalions file out from their bivouac under
cover of night, and, though each man knew of the deadly work before
him, the ready jest and witty retort were as abundant as ever," writes
Lieutenant F. Treanor, Quartermaster of one of the battalions of the
Tyneside Irish, and a native of Monaghan. "In the dressing-stations
afterwards I saw many of them, and there were still the same heroic
fortitude and the exchange of comments, many grimly humorous, as that
of one poor fellow who remarked, when asked if he had any souvenirs.
'Be danged, 'twas no place for picking up jewellery.'"
The Brigade received the highest praises from the Commander of the
Army Corps and the Commander of the Division, as well as from their
own General. The corps commander wrote: "The gallantry, steadiness and
resource of the Brigade were such as to uphold the very highest and
best traditions of the British Army." Major-General Ingouville-Williams,
who commanded the Division, wrote to the Tyneside committee--
"It is with the greatest pride and deepest regret that I wish to
inform you that the Division which included the Tyneside Irish covered
itself with glory on July 1, but its losses were very heavy. Every one
testifies to the magnificent work they did that day, and it is the
admiration of all. I, their commander, will never forget their
splendid advance through the German curtain of fire. It was simply
wonderful, and they behaved like veterans. Tyneside can well be proud
of them; and although they will sorrow for all my brave and faithful
comrades, it is some consolation to know they died not in vain, and
that their attack was of the greatest service to the Army on that
day."
Writing to his wife on July 3, 1916, Major-General Ingouville-Williams
said: "My Division did glorious deeds. Never have I seen men go
through such a hell of a barrage of artillery. They advanced as on
parade and never flinched. I cannot speak too highly of them. The
Division earned a great record, but, alas! at a great cost." On July
20 he also wrote to his wife: "Never shall I cease singing the praises
of my old Division, and I never shall have the same grand men to deal
with again." A few days later Major-General Ingouville-Williams died
for his country.
Seventy-three officers and men of the Tyneside Irish received
decorations. Four Distinguished Service Orders and twenty Military
Crosses went to the officers, eight Distinguished Conduct Medals and
forty Military Medals were received by the men, and a sergeant was
awarded the high Russian decoration of the Order of St. George. Among
the officers who received the Military Cross was Lieutenant T.M.
Scanlan, whose father, Mr. John E. Scanlan, Newcastle-on-Tyne, took a
prominent part in the raising of the Brigade. Lieutenant Scanlan
states that only eight men were left out of his platoon after July 1,
and six of them were awarded honours. All honour to the Brigade! Those
who helped to raise the battalions--Mr. Peter Bradley and Mr. N.
Grattan Doyle, the chairmen of the committee; Mr. Gerald Stoney and
Mr. John Mulcahy, the joint secretaries--have reason to be proud of
the magnificent quality of the men who responded to their call. Let it
stand as the last word of the story of their achievement that they
overthrew and trampled down the proud Prussian Guards, and relaxed the
grip which Germany had held for two years on a part of France.
CHAPTER VII
THE WEARING OF RELIGIOUS EMBLEMS AT THE FRONT
SPREAD OF THE EXAMPLE SET BY IRISH SOLDIERS
"Nearly every man out here is wearing some sort of
Catholic medallion or a rosary that has been given him,
and he would rather part with his day's rations or his
last cigarette than part with his sacred
talisman."--Extract from a letter written from the Front
by a non-Catholic private in the Hussars.
The wearing of religious emblems by soldiers of the British Army is
much talked of by doctors and nurses in military hospitals in France
and at home. When wounded soldiers are undressed--be they non-Catholic
or Catholic--the discovery is frequently made of medals or scapulars
worn around their necks, or sacred badges stitched inside their
tunics. It is a psychological phenomenon of much interest for the
light it throws upon human nature in the ordeal of war. It shows, too,
how war is a time when supernatural signs and wonders are multiplied.
Testimony to the value of these religious favours as safeguards
against danger and stimulants to endurance and heroism was given in a
most dramatic manner by Corporal Holmes, V.C., of the King's Own
Yorkshire Light Infantry, who also holds the highest French
decoration, the Medaille Militaire. He visited the Catholic schools at
Leeds. All the girls and boys were assembled to see him. One of the
nuns told the children how Corporal Holmes won his honours during the
retreat from Mons. He carried a disabled comrade out of danger,
struggling on with his helpless human burden for three miles under
heavy fire. Then taking the place of the driver, who was wounded, he
brought a big gun, with terror-stricken horses, out of action, through
lines of German infantry and barbed wire entanglements. At the
crossing of the Aisne a machine-gun was left behind, as the bridge
over which it was hoped to carry it was shelled by the enemy. Corporal
Holmes plunged into the river with it, some distance below the bridge,
and, amid shot and shell, brought it safely to the other bank. When
the nun had finished recounting his deeds, Corporal Holmes
unexpectedly turned back his tunic, and saying, "This is what saved
me," pointed to his rosary and medal of the Blessed Virgin.
There is the equally frank and positive declaration made by
Lance-Corporal Cuddy of the Liverpool Irish (the King's Liverpool
Regiment), who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for
gallantry in saving life after the great battle of Festubert. He was
in the trenches with his regiment. Cries for help came from some
wounded British soldiers lying about fifteen yards from the German
trenches. The appeal smote the pitying heart of Cuddy. He climbed the
parapet of his trench, and, crawling forward on his stomach,
discovered two disabled men of the Scottish Rifles. One of them had a
broken thigh. Cuddy coolly bound up the limb, under incessant fire
from the German trenches, and crawled back to his trench, dragging the
man with him. Then, setting out to bring in the second man, he was
followed by Corporal Dodd of the same battalion, who volunteered to
assist him. On the way a bullet struck Dodd on the shoulder and passed
out through his leg. Cuddy bandaged him and carried him safely back.
Once more he crawled over the fire-swept ground between the trenches
to the second Scottish rifleman. This time he took an oil-sheet with
him. He wrapped it round the wounded man and brought him in also. All
this was the work of hours. Not for a moment did this brave and simple
soul flinch or pause in his humane endeavours. He seemed to be
indifferent, or absolutely assured, as to his own fate. And he had the
amazing good luck of going through the ordeal scathless, save for a
slight wound in the leg. As is the way with soldiers, the comrades of
Cuddy joked with him on his success in dodging the bullets of the
bloody German snipers. "They were powerless to hit me. I carry the
Pope's prayer about me, and I put my faith in that," he answered, in
accordance with his simple theology. This prayer of Pope Benedict XV
is one "to obtain from the mercy of Almighty God the blessings of
Peace."
Both soldiers were convinced, as Catholics, that, being under the
special protection of the Heavenly Powers whose symbols they wore,
they were safe and invincible until their good work was done. Psalm
civ. speaks of God, "who maketh the sweeping winds his angels, and a
flaming sword His ministers." Why should He not work also through the
agency of the religious emblems of His angels and saints? With this
belief strong within them, Holmes and Cuddy leaped at the chance of
bringing comfort to comrades in anguish, and help to those sorely
pressed by the enemy.
There is another aspect of this question of the psychology of war. It
is a boast of the age that we have freed ourselves from what is called
the deadening influence of superstition. Nevertheless, since the
outbreak of the war there has been an extraordinary revival of the
secular belief in omens, witchcraft, incantations and all that they
imply--the direct influence of supernatural powers, of some sort or
other, on the fortunes of individuals in certain events. One amiable
form of it is the enormously increased demand for those jewellers'
trinkets called charms and amulets, consisting of figures or symbols
in stone and metal which are popularly supposed to possess powers of
bringing good fortune or averting evil, and which formerly lovers used
to present to each other, and wear attached to bracelets and chains,
to ensure mutual constancy, prosperity and happiness. Even the
eighteenth-century veneration of a child's caul--the membrane
occasionally found round the head of an infant at birth--as a sure
preservative against drowning is again rife among those who go down to
the sea in ships. The menace of the German submarine has revivified
the ancient desire of seafaring folk to possess a caul, which was laid
dormant by the sense of security bred by years of freedom from piracy,
and the article has gone up greatly in price in shops that sell
sailors' requirements at the chief ports. Fortune-tellers,
crystal-gazers, and other twentieth-century witches and dealers in
incantations, who pretend to be able to look into the future and
provide safeguards against misfortune, are being consulted by mothers,
wives and sweethearts, anxiously seeking for some safe guidance for
their nearest and dearest through the perils of the war.
So far as the Army is concerned, the belief that certain things bring
good luck or misfortune has always been widely held by the rank and
file. Formerly there were two talismans which were regarded as
especially efficacious in warding off evil, and particularly death and
disablement in battle. These were, in the infantry, a button off the
tunic of a man, and, in the cavalry, the tooth of a horse, in cases
where the man and the horse had come scathless through a campaign. A
good many years ago the old words "charm," "talisman," "amulet,"
dropped out of use in the Army. The French slang word "mascot," which
originated with gamblers and is applied to any person, animal or thing
which is supposed to be lucky, came into fashion; and some animal or
bird--monkey, parrot, or goat, or even the domestic dog or cat--was
appointed "the mascot of the regiment." But since the outbreak of the
war the Army has returned to its old faith in the old talisman. A
special charm designed for soldiers, called "Touchwood," and described
as "the wonderful Eastern charm," has had an enormous sale. It was
suggested by the custom, when hopes are expressed, of touching wood,
so as to placate the fates and avert disappointment, a custom which is
supposed to have arisen from the ancient Catholic veneration of the
true Cross.
"Touchwood" is a tiny imp, mainly head, made of oak, surmounted by a
khaki service cap, and with odd, sparkling eyes, as if always on the
alert to see and avert danger. The legs, either in silver or gold, are
crossed, and the arms, of the same metal, are lifted to touch the
head. The designer, Mr. H. Brandon, states that he has sold 1,250,000
of this charm since the war broke out. Not long ago there was a
curious scene in Regent's Park. This was the presentation of
"Touchwood" to each of the 1200 officers and men of a battalion of the
City of London Regiments (known as "The Cast-Irons") by Mdlle.
Delysia, a French music-hall dancer, before they went off for the
Front. Never has there been such a public exhibition--uncontrolled and
unashamed--of the belief in charms. Mr. Brandon has received numerous
letters from soldiers on active service, ascribing their escape from
perilous situations to the wearing of the charm. One letter, which has
five signatures, says--
"We have been out here for five months fighting in the trenches,
and have not had a scratch. We put our great good fortune down
to your lucky charm, which we treasure highly."
Thus we see that mankind has not outgrown old superstitions, as so
many of us thought, but, on the contrary, is still ready to fly to
them for comfort and protection in danger. The truth is that the human
mind remains at bottom essentially the same amid all the changes made
by time in the superficial crust of things. Man is still the heir of
all the ages. Some taint of "the old Popish idolatries" survives in
the blood of most of us, no matter how Protestant and rationalistic we
may suppose ourselves to be. And now that the foundations of
civilisation are disrupted, and humanity is involved in the coils of
the most awful calamity that has ever befallen it, is it to be
wondered at that hands should be piteously stretched out on all sides,
and in all sorts of ways--unorthodox as well as orthodox--groping in
the dark for protective touch with the unseen Powers who rule our
destinies.
It is in these circumstances that non-Catholic soldiers of the new
Armies are turning from materialistic charms to holy emblems. It may
be thought that this new cult is but a manifestation, in a slightly
different form, of the same primal superstitious instinct of mankind
as inspired the old, but as it has a religious origin and sanction and
is really touched by spiritual emotion, it seems to me to be far
removed from the other in spirit and intention. Non-Catholic soldiers
appear to have been led into the new practice by the example of
Catholic soldiers. These religious objects, commemorative of the
Blessed Virgin and other saints, have always been carried about their
persons by Irish Catholic soldiers, to some extent, as well as by
Catholics generally in civil life. The custom is now almost universal
among Catholic officers and men at the Front. It resembles, in a way,
the still more popular practice of carrying photographs of mother,
wife and child. Will it be denied that the soldier, as he looks upon
the likenesses of those who cherish him, and hold him ever in their
thoughts, does not derive hope and consolation from his consciousness
of their watchful and prayerful love?
There are several little breastplates thus worn by Catholics to shield
them from spiritual evil and bodily calamity. The chaplet of beads,
known as the rosary, is well known. The brown scapular of St. Mary of
Mount Carmel is made of small pieces of cloth connected by long
strings, and is worn over the shoulders in imitation of the brown
habit of the Carmelite friars. Then there are the Medal of Our Lady of
Perpetual Succour, a reproduction of the wonderful picture discovered
by the Redemptorist Order in Rome; and the Miraculous Medal of Our
Lady, revealed by the Immaculate Virgin to Catherine Laboure, Sister
of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, in Paris. Another is the "Agnus
Dei" ("Lamb of God"), a small disc of wax, impressed with the figure
of a lamb supporting a cross, and blessed by the Pope, which is the
most ancient of the sacramentals, or holy objects worn, used or
preserved by Catholics for devotional purposes. But what is now
perhaps the most esteemed of all is the Badge of the Sacred Heart. On
an oval piece of red cloth is printed a picture of Jesus, standing
before a cross, with His bleeding heart, encircled by thorns and
flames, exposed on His breast. The badge is emblematical of the
sufferings of Jesus for the love of and redemption of mankind. It is
the cognisance of a world-wide league, known as the Apostleship of
Prayer, conducted by the Society of Jesus, and having, it is said, a
membership of 25,000,000 of all nations. The promotion of these
special devotions in the Catholic Church has been assigned to
different Orders: such as the rosary to the Dominicans; the scapular
to the Carmelites; the Way of the Cross to the Franciscans. So the
spread of the devotion of the Sacred Heart is the work of the Jesuits.
The headquarters of the Apostleship of Prayer in this country is the
house of the Jesuits in Dublin, who publish as its organ a little
monthly magazine called _The Messenger_. There has been so enormous a
demand for the badge since the war broke out that the Jesuits have
circulated a statement emphasising that it is not to be regarded as "a
charm or talisman to preserve the wearer from bullets and shrapnel."
To wear it in this spirit would, they say, be "mere superstition."
"What it stands for and signifies is something far nobler and
greater," they also say. "It is, in a sense, the exterior livery or
uniform of the soldiers and clients of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, King
of heaven and earth, just as the brown scapular is the livery of the
servants and soldiers of Mary, heaven's glorious Queen. As such it
procures for those who wear it in the proper spirit the grace and
protection of God; and the scapulars the special protection of Mary,
much more than the livery or uniform of a country procures for those
who fight under its flag the help and protection of the nation to
which they belong."
What is the attitude of the Irish Catholic soldier towards this
religious movement as a means of preservation and grace in the trials
and perils of war? I have read many letters from Irish Catholics on
service in France, Flanders and the East in which the matter is
referred to, and have discussed it with some of those who have been
invalided home. All this testimony establishes beyond question that
the mystical sense of the Irish nature, which has been developed to a
high degree by the two tremendous influences of race and religion,
leads the Irish Catholic soldier profoundly to believe that there is
a supernatural interference often with the chances and fortunes of the
battlefield in answer to prayers. Michael O'Leary, V.C., a splendid
type of the Irish soldier in body and mind, gave a brief but pointed
statement of his views on the matter. "A shell has grazed my cheek and
blown a comrade by my side to pieces," he said, "though there was no
reason, so far as I could see, but the act of God, why the shell
should not have knocked my head off and grazed my comrade's cheek."
The average Irish soldier probably knows nothing of the materialistic
theory that Nature is a closed system; that the laws of the universe
are fixed and immutable; that no wearing of holy objects, and no
amount of praying even, will ever disturb their uniform mechanical
working; and that the sole reason why any soldier on the battlefield
escapes being hit by a bullet or piece of explosive shell is that he
was not directly in its line of flight. Such a doctrine would be
regarded, at least by the simple and instinctive natures in the Irish
ranks, as the limit of blasphemy. Their belief in the reality and
power of God is most profound. God is to them still the lord and
master of all the forces of Nature; and the turning aside of a bullet
or piece of explosive shell would be but the slightest manifestation
of His almighty omnipotence. Mystery surrounds the Irish Catholic
soldier at all times. His realisation of the unseen is very vivid. The
saints and angels are his companions, not the less real and potent
because they are not visible to his eyes. But it is on the field of
battle that he is most closely enveloped by these spiritual presences.
He is convinced that he has but to call upon them, and that, if he be
in a state of grace, they will come to his aid as the ministers of
God. So he prays that God may protect and save him, and he wears next
his heart the emblems of God's angels and saints. Thus he feels
invincible against the powers of darkness in both the spiritual and
material worlds. For these devotions have also the effect of putting
him in train to receive submissively whatever fate God may will him.
He knows that God can safeguard him in the fight if He chooses; and he
believes that if God does not choose so to do it is because in His
wisdom He does not deem it right. "Blessed be the holy will of God!"
The old, familiar Irish ejaculation springs to his lips, that variant
of Job's unshakable trust in the Almighty: "Though He slay me, yet
will I trust Him." Thus it is that the sight of his comrades lying
around him, dead and wounded, who prayed like him and, like him,
carried rosary beads or wore the badge of the Sacred Heart, has no
effect in shaking his belief in his devotions and his holy emblems. So
when the hour of direst peril is at hand he is found not unnerved and
incapable of standing the awful test. There is an ancient Gaelic
proverb which says: "What is there that seems worse to a man than his
death? and yet he does not know but it may be the height of his good
luck." Even if death should come, what is it but the shadowy gate
which opens into life everlasting and blissful?
There are on record numerous cases of protection and deliverance
ascribed by non-Catholics as well as Catholics to the wearing of
religious emblems. The Sisters of Mercy, Dungarvon, Waterford, tell
the story of the marvellous escape from death of Private Thomas Kelly,
Royal Munster Fusiliers, at the first landing on the Gallipoli
peninsula on April 25, 1915. Kelly had emerged with his comrades from
the _River Clyde_--the steamer which had brought his regiment to the
landing-place, Beach V--and was in the water wading towards the shore
when this happened to him--
"A bullet struck him, passing through his left hand, which at
the moment was placed over his heart. The bullet hit and
shattered a shield badge of the Sacred Heart, which was sewn
inside his tunic, then glanced aside and passed over his chest,
tearing the skin. The mark of its passage across the chest can
still be plainly seen. The bullet then passed through the pocket
of his tunic at the right-hand side, completely destroying his
pay-book. When wounded he fell into the water, where he lay for
about two hours under a perfect hurricane of bullets and
shrapnel. In all that time, while his companions were falling on
every side, he received only one slight flesh wound. He is now
in Ireland, loudly proclaiming, to all whom he comes in contact
with, his profound gratitude to the Sacred Heart. He is quite
recovered from his wounds, and expects soon to be sent to the
Front. His trust in the Sacred Heart is unbounded, and he is
fully convinced that the Sacred Heart will even work miracles
for him, if they are necessary, to bring him safely home again."
Private Edward Sheeran, Royal Irish Rifles, relating his experiences
in France, says--
"We were waiting in reserve, and were shelled heavily before the
advance. Four of us were lying low in the traverse of a trench.
Every time I heard a shell approaching I said, 'O Sacred Heart
of Jesus, have mercy on us!' Just as I was reciting this
ejaculation a shell burst in our midst. For a minute I was
dazed, and when I surveyed the damage, imagine my surprise to
find the man next to me blown to pieces, parts of him over me.
Another never moved again to my knowledge, while the remaining
one had his arms shattered. As regards myself, my pack was blown
off my back, but all the injury I received was a very slight
wound in the left shoulder. Thanks to the mercy of the Sacred
Heart I was able to rejoin my battalion two days afterwards."
"A very grateful sister," writing to the _Irish Messenger_, in
thanksgiving for "a great favour obtained through Our Blessed Lady of
Perpetual Succour," states--
"My brother was ordered out to the war and was in the fighting
line from the first. I sent him a miraculous medal of Our
Blessed Lady and promised publication if he came back safe. He
has been in twelve battles and got nine wounds, none dangerous,
only on his hands and one leg badly broken. He was being carried
off the field by his comrades and the shells were falling so
fast that they had to leave him and fly for their lives. He lay
there three hours, bleeding and faint, until he was picked up
again, and, thanks to Our Blessed Lady's protection, he is now
safe in a London hospital and making a speedy recovery."
The brother of an Irish Catholic nurse in a British military hospital
in France writes to the _Irish Messenger_--
"I was speaking lately to my sister, the nurse to whom you sent
the parcel of badges, beads, etc. She says if every parcel of
badges did as much good as hers has done and is doing, you will
have a big reward in eternity. The poor Irish and English
Catholic lads in their torments find the greatest comfort in
their beads and badges, and put more trust in the Sacred Heart
than in surgeons and nurses. One poor man said: 'I know I am
dying, but, nurse, write to my poor wife and tell her that my
beads and a sip of Holy Water was my consolation. Tell her I put
my trust in the Sacred Heart and die confident. Send her this
old badge which I wore all through the war.'"
In Ireland there are tens of thousands of Catholic mothers, wives and
sisters, ever praying for the safe return of their men from the Front,
or else that they be given the grace of a happy death, and there is
nothing that tends more to prevent them brooding when the day, the
hour, the moment may come with a dread announcement from the War
Office, than the consoling thought that these dear ones are faithful
in all the dangers and emergencies of their life to the practices of
their religion. That is why Private Michael O'Reilly, of the Connaught
Rangers in France, writes to his mother: "I have the Sacred Heart
badge on my coat and three medals, a pair of rosary beads and father's
Agnus Dei around my neck, so you see I am well guarded, and you have
nothing at all to fear so far as I am concerned." Even for the
mother, death loses its sting when she gets news of her son which
leaves her in no doubt as to his soul's eternal welfare. Here is a
characteristic specimen of many letters from bereaved but comforted
mothers which have been printed in _The Messenger_--
"DEAR REV. FATHER,--I beg to appeal to you for my dear good son
who was killed in action on the 25th of March, and who died a
most holy death. I have heard from Father Gleeson that he died
with his rosary beads round his neck and reciting his rosary. He
got a gunshot wound in the head and lived several hours after
receiving the wound. I know perfectly well that it was owing to
his having St. Joseph's Cord about him that he got such a happy
death, and had the happiness of receiving his Easter duty on
Sunday the 21st. He also had the Sacred Heart Badge, a crucifix,
and his Blue and Brown Scapulars on him, so that I am content
about the way he died. He is buried in Bethune cemetery. I am a
subscriber to _The Messenger_, and my son was in the Apostleship
of Prayer and used to get the leaflets in his young days at the
school he was going to, taught by the Christian Brothers. He was
twenty-one years and seven months the day of his sad death. He
belonged to the Royal Munster Fusiliers."
Some people, no doubt, will smile indulgently or mockingly--according
to their natures--at what appears to them to be curious instances of
human credulity. Others will cry out in angry protest against "Popish
trumperies"; "idolatrous practices"; "fetishism." No religion can be
truly understood from the outside. It must be lived in, within, to be
apprehended. But surely those who are not altogether cursed with
imperfect sympathies--those, at least, who take pleasure in the happy
state of others, will shout aloud in joy to know that there is
something left--no matter what--to sustain and console in this most
terrible time of youth's agony and motherhood's lacerated heart.
It must not be supposed that the religious practices of the Irish
Catholic troops are confined to the wearing of scapulars, medals and
Agnus Deis. There are among them, of course, many who attribute all
kinds of phenomena to natural rather than to miraculous causes. By
them, also, beads, medals and scapulars are venerated, and proudly
displayed over their tunics--often, too, rosary beads are to be seen
twisted round rifle barrels--as outward symbols of the spirit of their
religion, as aids to worship, as bringing more vividly before them the
God they adore and the saints whose aid they invoke. But their faith
gives, in addition, to the Catholic troops the Mass, which is
celebrated by the Army chaplains up at the Front in wrecked houses or
on the open, desolate fields, and attended by many hundreds of men in
silent and intent worship, the sacraments of Confession and Communion,
and makes possible that solemn spectacle of the priest administering
the General Absolution, or forgiveness of sin, to a whole battalion,
standing before him with bared and bowed heads, before going into
action. All these religious scenes have greatly impressed non-Catholic
soldiers. They wonder at the consolation and inspiration which
Catholic comrades derive from their services and their symbols. They
feel the loneliness and the dread of things. They are impressed by the
number of wayside shrines, with Crucifixes and Madonnas, which have
survived the ravages of war. In their hearts they crave for spiritual
companionship and help which the guns thundering behind them cannot
give any more than the guns thundering in front; and they, too, put
out their hands to grasp the supernatural presences, unseen but so
acutely felt in the shadowy arena of war. If there was scoffing at a
praying soldier in barracks, there is respect for him in the trenches.
Non-Catholics join in the prayers that are said by Catholics. "Plenty
of shells were fired at our trenches, but, thank God, no harm was
done," writes an Irish soldier. "When the shells came near us we used
to pray. Prayers are like a double parapet to them, I think. Yesterday
we were reciting the Litany of the Sacred Heart while the shells were
annoying us. I was reading the beautiful praises and titles of the
Litany, and both my Protestant and Catholic mates were answering me
with great fervour. I was just saying 'Heart of Jesus, delight of all
the Saints, succour us,' when one shell hit our trench and never
burst, and, furthermore, no shell came near us after that, for our
opponents directed their attention elsewhere for the rest of the day."
He adds that every night in the trenches the Rosary of the Blessed
Virgin was recited; and the responses were given by non-Catholics as
well as by Catholics.
In like manner, non-Catholic soldiers are being weaned from the use of
pagan charms and talismans, and are taking instead to the Catholic
substitutes which have been blessed by the priest making over them the
sign of the cross. Father Plater stated at a meeting of the
Westminster Catholic Federation that, travelling in the south of
England, he met in the train some soldiers of the Ulster Division, all
Orangemen, and instead of consigning the holy father to other realms,
as they probably would have done in other times and other
circumstances, they actually asked him to bless their miraculous
medals. There is an ever-increasing desire among them for medals,
rosaries, and for holy pictures, such as the little prints of saints
and angels which Catholics carry in their prayer-books. At the
convents in London where the Badge of the Sacred Heart is to be had,
Protestant soldiers are constantly calling to get it, and they tell
stories which they had heard of wonderful escapes by those who wore
it. One nun told me they cannot keep the supply abreast of the demand.
For instance, she said that on the day I saw her a private of the
Royal Welsh Fusiliers got fifty badges for distribution in the
regiment.
Religious emblems have a warmth and intimacy about them which secular
charms lack. They are regarded as representing real spiritual beings,
saints and angels. Secular charms, on the other hand, are devoid of
association with any potentate or power known or believed to exist in
the other world, and seem still to possess something of the mingled
simplicity and grossness of the first dawning of superstition on the
mind of the savage. The curiosity and interest of the non-Catholic
soldier in these religious symbols being thus excited, the moment he
handles one and examines its design, he feels a pleasant sensation of
help and comfort, and a consequent increase in his vitality. He highly
treasures his holy talisman. Should he pass unscathed through the
constant yet capricious menace of an engagement, he ascribes his luck
to supernatural protection. As the English troops were passing through
Hornu, near Mons, a young Belgian lady took a rosary from her neck and
gave it to Private Eves of the West Riding Regiment, telling him to
wear it as a protection against the bullets of the Germans. Eves, a
non-Catholic Northumbrian, wore the rosary during the battle of Mons.
"The air was thick with shells and machine-gun bullets," he says, "and
how I escaped I don't know. A shell burst close to me. A piece of it
struck my ammunition band and bent five cartridges out of shape; but I
escaped with only a bruise on the chest. I always say this rosary had
something to do with it."
Many stories of the like might be told. A driver of the Royal Field
Artillery says: "I think I owe all my luck to a mascot which I carry
in my knapsack. It is a beautiful crucifix, given me by a Frenchwoman
for helping her out of danger. It is silver, enamel and marble, and
she made me take it." Private David Bulmer of the Royal Engineers, an
Ulster Presbyterian, returned home on furlough to his parents at
Killeshandra, wearing a rosary. He declared it was the beads that
saved his life on the battlefield, as he was the only man left in his
company. Sapper Clifford Perry has written to a Cardiff friend:
"Rosaries are very popular here. I think I can safely say that four
out of every ten men one meets wear them around their necks. Strange
to say, they are not all Catholics. Those who are not Catholics do not
wear them as curios or ornaments either, as upon cases of inquiry they
attach some religious value to them even though they cannot explain
what it is. Still, no one could convince them to part with them."
Often the emblems and badges worn by non-Catholic soldiers are gifts
from Catholic wives and children concerned for their spiritual and
temporal well-being. "An Irish mother who trusts in the Sacred Heart"
writes from Kensington in acknowledgment of the "wonderful escape" of
her husband. "He had only gone out from a stable when a German shell
knocked the roof in, killing his two horses, and also killing one man
and wounding five others. My husband, who is a Protestant, is wearing
a Sacred Heart Badge and the Cross belonging to my rosary. He has been
saved during many battles from the most awful dangers, having been
fighting regularly since September 1914." Father Peal, S.J., of the
Connaught Rangers serving in France, relating some of his experiences
as a chaplain after a battle, says: "It was very solemn, creeping in
and out among the wounded, finding who were Catholics. Some could not
speak, others just able to whisper. One poor man lay on his face, with
a hole in his back. He was actually breathing through this hole. I
felt round his neck for his identification disc and found he had a
medal and Agnus Dei. I naturally thought he was a Catholic, but he
whispered to me, 'Missus and the children did that.' We repeated an
act of contrition, and I gave him conditional absolution." So it has
come to pass that rosaries, which were formerly a monopoly of the
religious repositories in French towns and villages, may now be seen
displayed in every shop window, so great is the demand for them, and
that "The League of the Standard of the Cross"--an Anglican
society--has, up to the end of 1916, sent out over 10,000 crucifixes
to Protestant soldiers.
The wearing of Catholic emblems by the rank and file is encouraged by
many officers who understand human nature, and make allowance for what
some of them, no doubt, would call its inherent weaknesses. The
practice has been proved to have on conduct a profound influence for
good. It seems to incite and fortify the soldiers' courage. Man's will
and resolution often prove to be weak and fickle things, especially on
the field of battle, where they are put to the sternest and most
searching of tests. Fear of death, which, after all, is but a
manifestation of the primal instinct of self-preservation, often
militates against the efficiency of the soldier. It disorganises his
understanding; it paralyses his power to carry out orders. The
elimination of fear, or its control, is therefore part of the training
of the soldier. How fortunate, then, is the soldier who can find such
tranquillity in battle that he has passed beyond the fear of death.
Psychologists tell us, such is the influence of the body upon the
mind, that whether a man shall act the hero or the coward in an
emergency depends largely on his physical condition at the time. The
body of the soldier must, as far as possible, be made subordinate to
his mind. Religious sensibility and emotion, in whatever form it may
manifest itself, tends to the exaltation of the mental mood; and as
good officers know they cannot afford to neglect any means which
promises to steady their men, calm them and give them confidence in
action or under fire, they have enlisted this tremendous force on
their side by favouring and promoting the Catholic custom of wearing
holy objects.
A nun writing from a convent in South London says: "The colonel at
---- sent twenty-two medals to Father X---- to be blessed. The Father
took the medals to the barracks himself, where the colonel informed
him that he wanted them for Protestant officers who were going to
France." The girls of the Notre Dame Convent School, Glasgow, sent a
parcel of 1200 medals to a Scottish regiment. They received a letter
of thanks from one of the officers, in which he says: "You will be
glad to know that most, if not all the men, Protestants though they
be, have put your medals on the cord to which their identity discs are
tied, so that Our Lady may help them."
Thus is the wearing of scapulars and medals in the Army welcomed as an
aid to our arms, a reinforcement of our military power. In it may be
found the secret of much of the dash and gallantry of the Irish
troops. Up to the end of 1916, 221 Victoria Crosses have been awarded
for great deeds done in the war. As many as twenty-four have been won
by Catholics, of whom eighteen are Irish, a share out of all
proportion to their numbers, but not--may I say?--to their valour. In
order to appreciate adequately the significance of these figures it is
necessary to remember the nature of the deed for which the Victoria
Cross is given. It must be exceptionally daring, involving the
greatest risk to life. It must be of special military value, or must
lead to the saving of comrades otherwise hopelessly doomed. Above all,
it must be done not under orders but as a spontaneous act on the
soldier's own motion. It is largely due to their religion and the
emblems of their religion, and their views of fate and destiny, that
Irish Catholic soldiers are so pre-eminently distinguished in the
record of the highest and most noble acts of valour and self-sacrifice
in war. There is the significant saying of Sergeant Dwyer, V.C., an
Irishman and a Catholic, at a recruiting meeting in Trafalgar Square.
"I don't know what the young men are afraid of," said he. "If your
name is not on a bullet or a bit of shrapnel it won't reach you, any
more than a letter that isn't addressed to you." He, poor fellow, got
a bullet addressed to him on the Somme. "'Twas the will of God," was
the lesson taught him by his creed.
CHAPTER VIII
THE IRISH SOLDIER'S HUMOUR AND SERIOUSNESS
STORIES FROM THE FRONT, FUNNY AND OTHERWISE
The memorable words of an Irish member, speaking in the House of
Commons during the South African War, on the gallantry of the Irish
regiments, come to my mind. "This war has shown," said he, "that as
brave a heart beats under the tunic of a Dublin Fusilier as under the
kilt of a Gordon Highlander."
The saying may be curiously astray as to the anatomy of the Scotch,
but the truth of it in regard to Irish courage has been emphasised by
the victories and disasters alike of the great world war. On all the
fields of conflict east and west the Irish soldiers have earned the
highest repute for valour. "They are magnificent fighters," says
Lieutenant Denis Oliver Barnett, an English officer of a battalion of
the Leinster Regiment, in letters which he wrote home to his own
people. A public school boy, with a high reputation for scholarship,
he became a soldier at the outbreak of war instead of going to Oxford.
Courageous and high-minded himself--as his death on the parapet of the
trenches, directing and heartening his men in bombing the enemy,
testifies--his gay and sympathetic letters show that he was a good
judge of character. He also says of his men, "They are cheerier than
the English Tommies, and will stand anything." Cheeriness in this
awful war is indeed a most precious possession. It enhances the
fighting capacity of the men. Where it does not exist spontaneously
the officers take measures to cultivate it. As far as possible they
try to remove all depressing influences, and make things bright and
cheerful. I have got many such glimpses of the Irish soldier at the
Front, and their total effect is the impersonation or bodying forth of
an individual who provides his own gaiety, and has some over to give
to others--whimsical, wayward, with a childlike petulance and
simplicity; and yet very fierce withal.
I met at a London military hospital an Irish Catholic chaplain and an
Irish officer of the Army Medical Corps back from French Flanders.
They told Irish stories, to the great enjoyment and comfort of the
wounded soldiers in the ward. "Be careful to boil that water before
drinking it," said the doctor to men of an Irish battalion whom he
found drawing supplies from a canal near Ypres. "Why so, sir?" asked
one of the men. "Because it's full of microbes and boiling will kill
them," answered the doctor. "And where's the good, sir?" said the
soldier. "I'd as soon swallow a menagerie as a graveyard any day."
Another example of a quick-witted Hibernian reply was given by the
chaplain. He came upon a man of the transport service of his battalion
belabouring a donkey which was slowly dragging a heavy load. "Why do
you beat the poor animal so much?" remonstrated the priest; and he
recalled a legend popular in Ireland by saying, "Don't you know from
the cross on the ass's back that it was on an ass Our Lord went into
Jerusalem?" "But, Father," said the soldier, "if Our Lord had this
lazy ould ass He wouldn't be there yet." One of the inmates of the
ward kept the laughter going by giving an example of Irish traditional
blundering humour from the trenches--a humour due to an excited and
over-active mind. "Don't let the Germans know we're short of powder
and shot," cried an Irish sergeant to his men, awaiting the bringing
up of ammunition; "keep on firing away like blazes."
Some of the flowers of speech that have blossomed from the Irish
regiments at the Front are also worth culling. Speaking of the
Catholic chaplain of his battalion, a soldier said, "He'd lead us to
heaven; an' we'd follow him to hell." As a loaf of bread stuck on a
bayonet was passed on to him in the trenches another exclaimed, "Here
comes the staff of life on the point of death." The irregularity of
the food supply in the trenches was thus described: "It's either a
feast or a famine. Sometimes you drink out of the overflowing cup of
fulness, and other times you ate off the empty plate." "What have you
there?" asked a nurse of an Irish private of the Army Medical Corps,
at a base hospital, as he was rummaging among the contents of a
packing-case. Taking out a wooden leg, he answered: "A stump speech
agin the war."
Good-humour at the Front is by no means an exclusively Irish
possession. Happily the soldiers of all the nationalities within the
United Kingdom are so light-hearted as to find even in the most dismal
situation cause for raillery, pleasantry and laughter, and to derive
from their mirth a more enduring patience of discomfort and trouble.
The Irish form of humour, however, differs entirely from the English,
Scottish or Welsh variety not only in quality but in the type of mind
and character it expresses. In most things that the Irish soldier says
or does there is something racially individual. Perhaps its chief
peculiarity, apart from its quaintness, is that usually there is an
absence of any conscious aim or end behind it. The English soldier,
and the Cockney especially, is a wag and a jester. He is very prone to
satire and irony, deliberate and purposeful. Even his "grousing"--a
word, by the way, unheard in the Irish regiments, unless it is
somewhat incomprehensibly used by an English non-commissioned
officer--is a form of caustic wit. Irish humour has neither subtlety
nor seriousness. It is just the light and spontaneous whim, caprice or
fancy of the moment. It is humour in the original sense of the word,
that is the expression of character, habit and disposition.
The Munstermen have contributed to the vocabulary at the Front the
expressive phrase, "Gone west," for death; the bourne whence no
traveller returns. In Kerry and Cork the word "west" or "wesht," as it
is locally pronounced, expresses not only the mysterious and unknown,
but is used colloquially for "behind," "at the back," or "out of the
way." So it is also at the Front. A lost article is gone west as well
as a dead comrade. "When I tould the Colonel," said an Irish orderly,
"that the bottle of brandy was gone wesht, he was that mad that I
thought he would have me ate." As food and drink are sent west,
perhaps the Colonel had his suspicions. The saying, "Put it wesht,
Larry, an' come along on with you," may be heard in French estaminets
as well as in Kerry public-houses.
At parade a subaltern noticed that one of his men had anything but a
clean shave on the left side of his jaw. "'Twas too far wesht for me
to get at, sir," was the excuse. "Well," said the dentist to a Munster
Fusilier, "where's this bad tooth that's troubling you?" "'Tis here,
sir," said the soldier, "in the wesht of me jaw." Another Irish
soldier told his Quartermaster that he was in a very unpleasant
predicament for want of a new pair of trousers. "The one I've on me is
all broken wesht," said he. It is fairly obvious what part of the
trousers the west of it was.
It would seem from the stories I have heard that odd escapes from
death are an unfailing source of playfulness and laughter. A shell
exploded in a trench held by an Irish battalion. One man was hurled
quite twelve feet in the air, and, turning two somersaults in his
descent, alighted on his back, and but little hurt, just outside the
trench. He quickly picked himself up and rejoined his astonished
comrades. "He came down with that force," said an invalided Irish
soldier who told me of the incident, "that it was the greatest wonder
in the world he didn't knock a groan out of the ground." No groan came
from the man himself. "That was a toss and a half, and no mistake," he
remarked cheerily when he got back to the trench; and in answer to an
inquiry whether he was much hurt he said, "I only feel a bit moidhered
in me head." More comical still in its unexpectedness was the reply of
another Irishman who met with a different misadventure from the same
cause. A German 17-in. shell exploded on the parapet of a trench, and
this Irishman was buried in the ruins. However, he was dug out alive,
and his rescuers jokingly asked him what all the trouble was about.
"Just those blessed snipers again," he spluttered through his mouth
full of mud, "and may the divil fly away with the one that fired that
bullet."
It is readily acknowledged at the Front that the Irish soldiers have a
rich gift of natural humour. But, what is more--as some of my stories
may show--they are never so exceedingly comic as when they do not
intend to be comic at all. Is it not better to be funny without
knowing it than to suffer the rather common lot of attempting to be
funny and fail? It arises from an odd and unexpected way of putting
things. How infinitely better it is than to be of so humdrum a quality
as to be incapable of being comical even unconsciously in saying or in
deed! Yet in this essentially Irish form of fun there is often a
snare for the unwary. How can you tell that these laughable things are
said and done by Irish soldiers without any perception of humour or
absurdity? If you could look behind the face of that apparently
simple-minded Irish soldier you might find that in reality he was
"pulling your leg"--or "humbugging," as he would say himself--in a way
that you would regard as most uncalled for and aggravating.
For instance, an Irish sentry in a camp in France was asked by a
colonel of the Army Service Corps whether he had seen any of his
officers about that morning. "Indeed, and I did, sir," was the reply.
"'Twas only a while ago that two of the gintlemen came out of the
office down there below, and passed by this way." "And how did you
know they were Army Service officers?" "Aisy enough, sir. Didn't I see
their swords stuck behind their ears?" And in which category must be
placed the equally amusing retort of another Irish sentry to his
officer--the naively simple, or the slyly jocular? The sentry looked
so shy and inexperienced that the officer put to him the question,
"What are you here for?" and got the stereotyped answer, "To look out
for anything unusual." "What would you call unusual?" asked the
officer. "I don't know exactly, sir, until I saw it," was the reply.
The officer became sarcastically facetious. "What would you do if you
saw five battleships steaming across the field?" he said. "Take the
pledge, sir," was the sentry's answer.
These officers are, by all accounts, but two of many who have got
unlooked-for but diverting answers from Irish soldiers. A sergeant who
was sent out with a party to make observations felt into an ambuscade
and returned with only a couple of men. "Tell me what happened," said
the commanding officer, when the sergeant came to make his report;
"were you surprised?" "Surprised isn't the word for it, sir,"
exclaimed the sergeant. "It was flabbergasted entirely I was when,
creeping round the end of a thick hedge, we came plump into the divil
of a lot of Germans lying on their stomachs." Then, seeing the officer
smiling, as if in doubt, as he thought, he hastened thus to emphasise
his wonder and astonishment at this sudden encounter. "I declare to
you, sir, it nearly jumped the heart up out of me throat with the
start it gave me." Of a like kind for ingenuousness was the report
made by another Irish non-com. who found himself all alone in a
trench, with only a barrier of sandbags between him and the Germans.
"I had nayther men, machine-gun or grenade," he wrote, expressing not
only his temporal but his spiritual condition, for he added, "nothing,
save the help of the Mother of God."
In Ireland domestic servants are noted for their forward manners and
liberty of speech with the family, and the same trait is rather
general in the relations between different social grades. An
illustration of what it leads to in the Army was afforded at a camp
concert attended by a large assembly of officers and men of a certain
Division, into which, at a solemn moment, an unsophisticated Irish
soldier made a wild incursion. Lord Kitchener had been there that day
and had inspected the Division, and the General in command announced
from the platform how greatly pleased the Secretary for War was with
the soldierly fitness of the men. "I told Lord Kitchener," continued
the General, speaking in grave and impressive tones, "that the
Division would see the thing through to the bitter end." In the midst
of a loud burst of cheering an Irish private rushed
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