Jessie Louisa Moore Rickard

“ The Regiment moved on, and darkness fell as the skirl of the Irish pipes broke out, playing a marching tune. The Munsters were wild with enthusiasm, they were strong with the invincible strength of faith and high hope, for they had with them the vital conviction of success, the inspiration that scorns danger—which is the lasting heritage of the Irish; theirs still and theirs to remain when great armaments and armies and empires shall be swept away, because it is immovable as the eternal stars.
[37]
On the morning of May the 9th, 1915, the Third Infantry Brigade were ordered to attack. ”

“ The enemy’s search-lights were feeling after the mutilated and wounded, showing up the stretcher bearers and Red Cross dressers, and as each slow beam swung in its deadly course, a hail of lead followed it, bearing death on its coming.
In a big yawning gap of bog and dyke and mud the Munsters held on, unassisted, supports having failed. The Companies were lying out under fire, pinned to the ground, and with nearly all their officers killed or wounded, they still held on. ”

“ Took temporary command of the 2nd Battalion, May 10th.
In the grey light of the morning of September 25th the British guns opened a furious fire, joined by the rattle of rifle and machine guns. Without fuss or disorder the Munsters awaited the moment when they should face a pouring stream of bullets and charge into the teeth of the storm.
Led by Major Considine, the Munsters pushed up the winding trenches to the front line, exchanging a word or two as they went, and relying, as all men do in time of crisis, upon those unexplained resources that stand for all that is best in a soldier. ”

“ There was no sign anywhere of any promise of day in the sky; it might have been the commencement of eternal night and of eternal dark [21] ness when the Munsters stood to arms. The men were heavy with their four hours’ sleep, heavy, too, with their load of ammunition and equipment. They left the factory behind them and took the sodden road, and at last the ashen grey dawn broke, and the landscape slowly cleared from the shadow of night, but the rain never ceased nor lessened; and the sound of the heavy guns told that the “business as usual” of the war had begun again. ”

“ With his unwavering cheerfulness and energy, Colonel Bent worked against the conditions of the weather and the hardships his men were undergoing, affecting everyone with his own courage and dispelling the despondency of weariness, [22] which is one of the hardest things a man can face. A battle itself calls up the human characteristics of dash and fight, but weariness and rain and mud are cruel adversaries, fought at a disadvantage. It is in those hours that most of all the magnetism of personality is of superb value. ”

“ In ordinary times, when trenches, deeper than any grave, [4] and wire entanglements, and all the devastation of war is not, a country cut up into small fields has an intimate and friendly look. It suggests little things, and is small and near and has none of the sudden desolation of open space, stretching empty to the sky line. But what is beautiful in times of peace may in one moment become terrible in time of war, and the little hedgerows cost Ireland dear on the morning of the 27th of August, 1914. ”

“ Life and death come much closer in the night than they do in the day time, and the whole almost intolerable mystery of war is intensified a thousandfold. Very slowly the sullen dawn broke, as if unwilling to reveal the sights that night clothed over, and the sodden fields and the barns and farmsteads stood out blackly against the grey. ”

“ The German attack was expected in the course of the morning, and B Company was the first company of the Battalion to receive its baptism of fire.
For men whose record shows them proud, fiery, and dashing soldiers, the task allotted to B Company was no easy one. It was necessary that their position should be kept secret, and when at last the crackle and rattle of German musketry broke the tension of this waiting, the Company holding the outpost did not reply. ”

“ Captain Dick, gifted, as has been said of another very brave officer, “with a certain devilry of spirit” and “a ceaseless militancy in life and death,” was [40] well known to be a man of unshaken nerve and flame-like attributes; as he reached the second line of the German trenches he stood on the enemy’s breast-works, quite indifferent to the danger which lay on every side, and standing as he often stood cheering a winner in the old days in Ireland, he waved his cap and shouted to his men, “Come on, the Munsters!” ”

“ It is told that the German officers said that men had never fought more bravely; it is also said that they sent back to their headquarters for a chaplain to bury the Irish dead.
Major Charrier and eight officers of [16] the Munsters were buried near the trench where the men were laid to rest, under the shadow of the trees where they had fought their great fight. But though we call them dead, we know that the spirit that is strong and cheerful, and that has added to the page of a nation’s history, outlives all so-called untimely endings. ”

“ There are many journeys and many stopping-places in the strange pilgrimage we call life, but there is no other such journey in the world as the journey up a road on the eve of battle, and no stopping-place more holy than a wayside shrine.
The men who prayed there were, very few of them, the men of the [36] original Battalion. Gaps had been filled again and again, and most of the Munsters who fought next day were newly come from Ireland and new to the life. Lads from Kerry and Cork, who, a year before, had never dreamed of marching in the ranks of the British Army. ”

“ I am keeping fit and well, having what I want, responsibility and command, and have just got to do my best to get officers and men through, now that the best of our officers are gone. Night and day are the same, the indoor part spent in the most utterly be-shelled and ruined village you can imagine, and every other mark a shell or bullet hole. ”

“ It is impossible to realise that we’ll never hear his voice again. He will leave a large gap, not [76] only in the regiment, but in each and all of his brother officers’ hearts. It may be some small consolation to you to know that before the action he was looked upon as the best machine-gun officer of the Brigade, and his work during the day only served to confirm this view. Yesterday, the 28th, the Germans allowed us to send out a burial party of our own men, and they found Chuty, and buried him, with the eight other officers of the regiment who were killed, in a grave separate from the men. ”

“ For them there is no return, for those who waited for them no more reason to cross the days off the calendar; stillness has intervened—the stillness that marks the passing of the mortal to immortality. Tears are useless, broken hearts useless; life will not alter because of these things. ”

“ The noise grew with the morning light, and the boom and bang of heavy crashes grew fiercer, until the hour arrived when the Battalion, [25] led by Colonel Bent, started to the attack.
The men swarmed over the parapets and raced across the fields, carrying their heavy equipment and following their officers over the shell-scarred, churned-up earth. Strands of barbed wire beset their way, and the ground was broken by great shell-holes. Before them, from the German trenches, the machine guns hammered out their deadly message of welcome ”

“ It has been decreed by the Power that rules the destiny of men and nations that the call of a bugle makes the heart of Ireland glad. There was real adventure in their lives that morning; the actual vital essence of it was touched by the rank and file of the marching men, for abstract safety as a condition to be desired has never entered very much into the Celtic vision of what life can give in those moments when it is at its best. ”

“ The outstanding incidents in the masterly-conducted retreat were finely told—the forced marches of the fatigued troops, “who had the depression of defeat without understanding why they had to retire”; the heroic rearguard actions fought, notably by the Cheshires, the Gordons, and the Munsters; the saving of the guns by the 9th Lancers; the hopeless odds which General Smith-Dorrien encountered of three to one in men and six to one in artillery, and the dauntless defence by the remnant of L Battery. ”

“ He had joined the 3rd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers in 1906, having served through the Matabeleland and Mashonaland campaigns in the Rhodesian Horse; he died most nobly, leading at the extreme point of the advance made by C Company, under fierce enfilading fire. The sorrow and the heroism of such death is touched by the great enduring light of glory.
Men fell on the right and left, and again and again they rallied and stumbled over the broken ground, holding steadily [27] on under the wail of tearing shrapnel, and at last the Munsters reached their goal, the given point ”

“ The railway cutting was held in force by the Germans, and D Company, commanded by Captain Jervis, and covered by the steady rifle [13] fire of the men in position by one of the fields on the side of the road, rushed the railway cutting. Every man save two were shot down in the attempt; Lieutenant Crozier, showing the greatest gallantry, crossed a narrow lane, and exposing himself recklessly to the enemy’s fire, shouted, “There they are; come on, men,” and fell, killed instantaneously. The rattle of musketry, the booming of guns speaking terribly, was everywhere ”

“ By dusk the Munsters were taken from support, and put out to the right to fill a gap between the Gloucesters and the next Brigade of the Division.
No food or rest came to the men with nightfall, and all that night was spent in endeavouring to recover trenches originally held by Indians from which they had been forced to retire. Before dawn came the order that all trenches not retaken, originally in British possession, must be captured, the general attack to continue at 7 a.m.
Still no food or rest for men continually under arms since Sunday night. ”

“ I had eight of the saddest letters to write home, besides three others of news of the wounded, but have not had time to write a full account to anyone but you, and that not until to-night, when I feel fitter and not so tired, but you will tell all who want to know—all who care for the Regi [94] ment and feel for the losses—all they may be proud to hear, that the Regiment did all and more than they could; the officers killed all died most gallantly leading their men, and the men did all that men could do—played up splendidly. I have never known men do so much, and I am very proud of them. ”

“ From that day on we have two companies out of four at a time always in trenches about one mile from our disaster; eternal sniping and shooting, no one can move up to the trenches by day. Rain had fallen still, in torrents, the trenches knee-deep in water. ”

“ Afterwards, when the issue is no longer doubtful and the battle is over, and the definite, conspicuous end gained, it is easy for anyone to raise a cheer; but sitting in the liquid mud, weary and very cold, it takes a strong heart and the truest kind of pluck to rise above it all.
By 3 p.m. orders were received that the Battalion was to occupy the trenches at Festubert vacated by the Indian troops; the leading Brigade deployed for attack, and shortly after the Third Brigade were placed on the left of the First Guards Brigade. ”

“ Incidents of great self-sacrifice were many during the retirement. Sergeant Gannon carried one officer and four wounded comrades out under fire; Private Barry, himself mortally wounded, and only a slight slip of a boy from Cork, brought in Captain Hawkes, one of the biggest officers in the Battalion. Captain Hawkes was severely wounded in three places, and could not move, and as he carried his officer to safety, Private Barry fell, dying heroically, his death a tribute to the feeling that so strongly existed between officers and men.
[43]
So the Munsters came back after their day’s work ”

“ At present we are having very fine weather, and we all hope it continues, as it will give the men in the trenches a chance to dry themselves and make their trenches more inhabitable. The rains have been so heavy, add to this the sudden bursts of thaw and frost, the country is like a large jelly, and it is almost impossible to keep the trenches from falling in, especially under heavy shell fire, and one has to be constantly throwing back the falling earthy liquid with scoops and improvised ladles made of old tin biscuit boxes, etc. ”

“ Formed during the first Afghan War in 1839 out of surplus volunteers for its sister Battalion, it took part in the great victory of Chillianwallah, went through the Burmese War 1851-53, and in the Mutiny was part of the force which stormed Delhi. In 1861 it was brought into the line as the 104th Regiment, but served for ten years more in India before it came home. In 1887 it joined the Second Burmah Expedition, and like the 1st Battalion served with great distinction in the South African War in Natal, and later under Lord Kitchener in the Transvaal and Cape Colony. ”

“ A right of way was established at a price that no one can ever tell, since broken lives and hearts are not entered into any known roll of honour, and this right of way was made good by the simple valour and indomitable constancy of the ordinary man. ”

“ By gallant advances, often in the open, under heavy fire, in swampy, boggy [85] country and drenching rain, the advance continued.
The line was straightened out, but the enemy contested every foot, and only retired when he saw the attack was serious, to his original trenches. From that a continuous heavy fire was brought to bear on exhausted and heavily tried troops, but when night came on Tuesday, 23rd, the Division was firmly established in its lines, and not one foot of trench has been given up since, nor was a single British prisoner taken. ”