The British rearguard frequently gave battle to their pursuers, holding them in check or sending them staggering back with the vehemence of the blow. On Wednesday, August 26th, the first stand was made on the Cambrai—Le Cateau—Landrecies line. Here it was that the 2nd Connaught Rangers gave the Germans another unpleasant taste of the fighting quality of the Irish. "It was a grand time we had, and I wouldn't have missed it for lashin's of money," says a private of the regiment in a racy account of the episode. "The Germans kept pressing our rearguard all the time. They were at least five to one, and we were in danger of being cut off. At last the Colonel could stand it no longer, so the word was passed round that we were to give them hell and all. 'Rangers of Connaught,' says he, 'the eyes of all Ireland are on you to-day, and I know you never could disgrace the old country by allowing Germans to beat you while you have arms in your hands and hearts in your breasts. Up, then, and at them, and if you don't give them the soundest thrashing they ever got you needn't look me in the face again in this world—or the next!' And we went for them with just what you would know of a prayer to the Mother of Our Lord to be merciful to the loved ones at home if we should fall in the fight. We charged through and through them until they broke and ran like frightened hares in terror of hounds."
That same day one Division of the Third Army Corps was brought hurriedly up by train to Le Cateau. In it were three other Irish regiments—1st Irish Fusiliers, 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, and 2nd Inniskilling Fusiliers. They went straight into action to protect one of the flanks of the resumed retirement. In a fight near Le Cateau the Inniskillings lost many officers and men. The Dublins were at Cambrai. They appear to have been uproariously and outrageously Irish. A few weeks later the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian gave some interesting extracts from a letter written by an English officer of the Dublins. He said that while the men were waiting for the Germans they sang "The Wearing of the Green" and "God Save Ireland." One of the officers remarked, by way of a joke, "We have heard enough all day of your damned Fenian songs, boys; give us something else." The boys then struck up, the officer says, a song called "Dear Old Ireland." This ballad, by T.D. Sullivan, tells in stirring verses and chorus, set to a rousing air, of some of the habits and customs of Ireland, and of the affection she inspires. One verse runs:—
"We've seen the wedding, and the wake, the pattern and the fair,
The well-knit frames at the grand old games in the kindly Irish air;
The loud 'Hurroo,' we've heard it, too; and the thundering 'Clear the way!'
Ah, dear old Ireland, gay old Ireland, Ireland, boys, hurrah."
It was not the first time that the song was heard on a field of battle. On that night in December, 1863, in the American Civil War, when the Federals and Confederates were bivouacked on the banks of the Rappahannock awaiting the dawn to commence the bloody fight for Fredericksburg, an Irish regiment in the service of the North sang the song as they sat by their camp fires. Was that a tremendous echo that came across the river?—
"For Ireland, boys, hurrah; for Ireland, boys, hurrah!
Here's dear old Ireland; fond old Ireland—
Ireland, boys, hurrah!"
The Irishmen of the North listened intently. Then it came upon them with wild surprise that the chorus had been taken up by an Irish regiment in the service of the South!
The officers of the Dublin Fusiliers at Cambrai were not scandalised, nor did they put on a severe air, when they heard these rebelly songs, survivals of a dead past, and yet deeply moving for the national memories clustering round them. On the contrary, like good regimental officers, they welcomed them, as they would probably have welcomed anything that helped to raise the hearts of their men in their hour of trial. "As my old brother-officer observes," says the writer of the letter, "'These confounded Fenians can fight. Four times within one hour my blackguards drove a charge home with the bayonet.'"
That day was a most critical one for the British. The Second Army Corps was streaming southwards. But Von Kluck was making a determined effort to outflank and envelop the First Army Corps. The Corps escaped the net with the loss of one of their finest regiments, the 2nd Munster Fusiliers, killed, wounded, and made prisoners. It was the most tragic event of the retreat. A day or two previously the Munsters were entrenched behind six guns of Field Artillery. Uhlans swept down upon the battery and killed the gunners. Then two companies of the Munsters charged with fixed bayonets, and put the Germans to flight. But what was to be done with the guns? All the horses had been killed, and time was pressing. Were the guns to be lost after all? The thought never entered into the heads of the Munsters. By putting themselves into harness, with a few light cavalry horses which they had captured from the Uhlans, they pulled the guns away. "As we had not enough horses," said a wounded Munster in hospital at Tralee, "we made mules of ourselves, for we were not such asses as to leave the guns to the enemy." The guns were brought back five miles, where horses were available to relieve the Munsters.
On the night of August 26th the regiment were rearguard to the retiring First Army. They held two cross-roads between Chapeau Rouge to the north, and Fesney to the south, and had orders to keep watch over these important positions until they got word to fall back. It is said the word was sent not once, but thrice—the first during the night—but only one reached them the following afternoon, and then it was too late. The other despatch-riders lost their way, or were shot or made prisoners. The result was that the Munsters were left in the lurch while the mass of the First Corps, unaware of their comrades' desperate position, were hurrying away to the south. At dawn, as the regiment lay concealed behind the hedgerows and in the beet fields of the farmsteads and in the orchards laden with fruit, they were discovered by a German patrol. The enemy at once surrounded them on three sides and attacked with vastly superior forces. "The Germans came at us from all points, horse, foot and artillery and all," said one of the survivors, "and the air was raving with shouting, screaming men waving swords and rifles and blazing away at us like blue murder." To add to their troubles the rain was falling in torrents, drenching the men to the skin.
The officers decided to withdraw to the village of Etreux, a few miles back, where they hoped to find the shelter of a position of defence which might help them to hold up the Germans, despite the terrific odds on the side of the enemy. The battalion retired by companies—two companies covering the withdrawal of one another in turns. In fighting these rearguard actions the men sought cover wherever they could find it—crouching in farm buildings, and behind wagons, walls, and heaps of stones, firing at the ever-advancing Germans. The Munsters were grimly silent until it came to bayonet fighting between khaki and grey, and then the air was rent with yells of rage and hate, shrieks of pain, and the low wailing sobbing of the Irish keen.