Having reported at Brigade Headquarters, and having received the reply that no help could be given, Major Ryan split his men into patrols of two and sent them out. At 8 p.m., when it was very dark and the enemy’s fire unceasing, the men, whose names, unfortunately, are not recorded, came back reporting: “Very few officers left; many casualties; Colonel wounded; two senior Majors killed. Send orders.” Major Ryan, fully aware that daybreak would see the end of the gallant Battalion if nothing were done, redoubled his efforts.
“It was 10 o’clock before the Brigadier’s orders got to me to get orders out to the Battalion to retire, and even by then I had not a single unwounded man left of all the four companies that had gone out at 7 a.m. to show me where they had got to. Once more I called on my trusty six who had located them at dusk, and sent them out in three parties, again with definite orders to come back to me at a certain point where I was alone but for a few stray men and no officers. By midnight, to my relief, I got the remnant of the four companies in, worn out and starved, as their officers had fallen and many men, in the advance. All they could do was to follow my guides in. I called for volunteers and took a party out with stretchers and got some wounded in, but drew blank for the Colonel and Major Thomson. The Adjutant had come in unwounded, but dead beat, and could not say where the Colonel was.
“At 2 a.m., or nearly 3, I went round and collected the exhausted non-commissioned officers who had come in, called for volunteers again, and put the machine-gun officer in charge. The party returned carrying the Colonel wounded. All the rescue work was done under fire.... The Regiment did all, and more than all, that men could do; they played up splendidly. I have never known men do so much. I am very proud of them.”
A few weeks later Major Ryan, an officer of the most brilliant promise and striking personality, was killed by a sniper, to the great sorrow of the Battalion.
May 9th, 1915.
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“She, beyond shelter or station, She beyond limit or bar, Urges to slumberless speed Armies that famish and bleed, Giving their lives for her seed, That their dust may re-build her a Nation, That their souls may re-light her a star.” A. C. Swinburne. |
About a mile from the market-place of Neuve Chapelle, and above Festubert and Givenchy, is the Rue du Bois, a street lying east and west, some 500 yards behind the British trenches. Last year the bells of Neuve Chapelle sent the sound swinging over the little distance, but the pounding of the shells of friend and enemy alike, silenced the bells, when war let loose the great stream of human blood and human tears. The Rue was once a thoroughfare for early carts and other traffic going towards the Distillery on the Violaines Road, and had been built according to the Roman system—one straight line of houses all built together. Along this street the carts used to pass, coming up from Richebourg St. Vaast and Richebourg l’Avoué, and going on by the road that leads to distant Lille. The Rue du Bois is now a sad place, for the chimney-stacks have fallen, and the roofs and walls gape desolately. Changed times for France since the early carts went by, and a changed world for many of us.