All round and about Chapeau Rouge, a village near the river Sambre, and not far from Le Cateau, the country is a bower of green hedgerows in the month of August. In ordinary times, when trenches, deeper than any grave, 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.
The morning broke sullen and heavy, and the distant electric premonition of coming storm and coming battle vibrated in the air. The Munsters were placed as the Right Battalion, next to them came the Coldstream, further on the Scots Guards, with the Black Watch in reserve. The frontage of the Munsters extended from Chapeau Rouge, where the roads crossed, to another cross roads north of Fesmy. Major Charrier (commanding the Munsters) had explicit orders to hold the cross roads above Chapeau Rouge, unless or until he received orders to retire. Dawn found the men of B Company, commanded by Captain Simms, busily digging trenches and strengthening their position, while the air was comparatively cool.
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. The German patrol, whose business it was to locate their position, kept up an intermittent fire, and the small handful of Irish did the hardest thing of all for them—they waited. The lulls and bursts followed one upon the other; tremendous echoes repeated the volleys of sound, and the swinging shrill of flying bullets continued overhead, punctuated now and again by spells of intense quiet.
Suddenly the midsummer storm broke with a violence that is indescribable. Torrents of drenching rain soaked the men to the skin and collected in the trenches, and in the vortex of the storm the Germans advanced to the attack. In one moment it was “War, war, bloody war,” and the first onslaught fell upon B Company, and D Company (commanded by Captain Jervis) with Lieutenant Crozier and Lieutenant R. W. Thomas.
Major P. A. Charrier
2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers, killed at the head of his Battalion at Etreux, near Mons, August 27th, 1914
Record of Service:—West Africa, 1900—Operations in Ashanti, slightly wounded; Despatches, London Gazette, 8th March, 1901. South African War, 1902—Employed with Imperial Yeomanry operations in Cape Colony, May, 1902. Queen’s Medal, with two clasps. East Africa, 1903-4—Operations in Somaliland on Staff (as Special Service Officer). Employed on Transport (from November, 1903). Medal, with clasp.