During the retirement a despatch-rider reached the Munsters. He had a message for them to retire "at once." It was not timed, but it was probably the last of the three orders sent from Headquarters, and was therefore written hurriedly. It seems also to have been written many hours before it was delivered, as the bearer said he had been compelled to hide for a long time from the Germans. But it was too late. The Munsters were encircled by a ring of fire. The enemy had worked round to their rear and now barred the way to the village of Etreux. Major Paul Charrier, described as a hearty, genial Kerryman, was in command of the Munsters. Three times he gallantly led his men in an attack upon the key of the German position, a large mansion that was loopholed and turned into a fortress. He was twice wounded, yet he continued to lead, and in the last assault he fell to rise no more with a bullet in his head. Eight other officers were also dead. Six of the survivors were disabled. Between four and five hundred of the rank and file were killed or wounded. Ammunition was run out. Not another cartridge was to be found by the men in the bandoliers of their dead and dying comrades. It was then 9 p.m. The men listened for sounds of approaching relief, but none was heard. There was nothing left for the remnant of the battalion, reduced to four officers and 256 non-commissioned officers and men, but to surrender. Only 155 men got out of the trap, and most of these belonged to the regimental transport. It came out afterwards that the Munsters had been engaged against seven battalions of German infantry, three batteries of artillery, many cavalry, and many Maxim guns.
So impressed were the Germans by the bravery of those Irish lads that they paid every respect to the living and the dead. Captain H.S. Jervis, the senior surviving officer, in letters written to the bereaved wives and mothers of his fellows, states that the next day the Germans allowed him to send out a burial party of his own men. "They found Paul Charrier lying as he had fallen, head towards the enemy," he tells Mrs. Charrier. "The sergeant told me he looked as if he were asleep. They buried him, with eight other officers of the regiment, in a grave separate from the men." More than that, when the Germans learnt that their prisoners were Irish and Catholic they sent for one of their own Catholic chaplains to read the service for the dead at the graveside of the rank and file.
Sir Conan Doyle, in a lecture on "The Great Battles of the War," delivered in London, made the remark: "If ever surrender was justifiable it was so in these circumstances." That was said before full and authentic reports of what happened, including the composition of the overwhelming forces that surrounded the Munsters, had come from the officers imprisoned in Germany, which will be found in a little pamphlet called "The Munsters," written by Mrs. Victor Rickard, the widow of a brave man who afterwards commanded the battalion and fell at Rue Du Bois. The military lesson of the episode, in the opinion of Conan Doyle, is that great attention should be paid to making known the real situation to troops operating at a distance, and the miscarriage of the messages sent to the Munsters makes pertinent the telling here of a story, on the authority of a wounded corporal of the Gloucestershire Regiment, of a splendid example of Irish resolution and endurance in the operations on the Aisne later on in September:—
"Orders had to be given to a battalion holding an advanced position to fall back. The only way was to send a man with orders through a murderous fire. Volunteers were asked for from the Royal Irish Fusiliers. All wanted to go, but by tossing for it a selection was made at last. He was a shock-headed lad who did not look as if there was much in him, but he had grit. Ducking his head in a way that made us laugh, he rushed into the hail of shot and shell. He cleared the first hundred yards without being hit; but in the second they brought him down. He rose again and struggled on for a few minutes, was hit once more, and then staggered a bit before finally collapsing.
"Two more men of the Irish Fusiliers dashed into the fire and rushed across while the Germans were doing their best to pink them. One picked up the wounded lad and started back to the trenches, and the other, taking the despatch, ran ahead. Just as the wounded man and his mate were within a few yards of our trenches and we were cheering them, there came another hail of bullets, and both went down dead. Meanwhile, the man with the despatch was racing for all he was worth. He got through all right till the last lap, when he was brought down. He was seen from the other trenches, and half a dozen men ran to his aid. They were all shot; but the man with the message was now crawling towards the battalion in danger. With assistance he reached them and the object was gained; they were withdrawn to a new position before the Germans succeeded in their plan of cutting them off."
By August 29th the British had fallen back to the line Compiègne-Soissons, before the German hordes. The weather generally was intensely hot, making the retreat still more trying to the Army. The situation was further complicated by the flight southwards of almost the entire population, thronging and blocking the roads. When the British fell back the inhabitants had just commenced the saving of the harvest which, undreaming of war, they had tended with solicitude and saw growing with joy. But the corn and grass were to be garnered by a dissolute and predatory foreign soldiery whose hands, in many instances, were red with the innocent blood of those who had sown them. So, accompanied by tens of thousands of fugitives—wailing women and children for the most part, distracted by the dread and terror of this calamity which had so incomprehensibly fallen upon them—the British hastened on towards Paris.
On Tuesday, September 1st, the 4th Guards Brigade—Grenadiers, Coldstreams, and Irish—had to sustain at Villers-Cotterets the brunt of another of these fierce onslaughts which the Germans delivered against such of the British troops as attempted to stem the pursuit. The Brigade had had little rest since the commencement of the retreat with the enemy ever at their heels. Only the day before, August 31st, the Irish Guards had the longest and most trying of their forced marches. Hardy, wiry, and fleet-footed, they covered thirty-five miles with very little food, as their transport had to keep far in advance of the column to avoid capture. At a parade of the battalion on the roadside at Villers-Cotterets on the morning of September 1st, the commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Morris, addressing them on horseback, congratulated his men on their grit and vitality. He made the very interesting statement that whilst a substantial percentage of the other regiments in the Guards' Brigade had succumbed to the heat and fatigue of the march, only five men of the Irish Guards had fallen out from exhaustion.
Then all of a sudden, as the tale is told by Private Stephen Shaughnessy of Tuam, the men got orders to "Fix bayonets." The news was brought that the Germans were approaching under cover of the woods which abound in this part of France. Colonel Morris rode through the ranks, shouting, "Irish Guards, form up! Remember you are Irishmen!" The Irish Guards entered one of the woods and almost immediately caught sight of the Germans. Both sides blazed away at one another with the rifle, through the trees and undergrowth, and frequently came into grips at the point of the bayonet. Sergeant Patrick Joseph Bennett, in a letter to his sister at Thurles, gives another instance of the unruffled mood and quiet confidence of the men during the three hours of fighting in the wood. "The Irish boys," he says, "were very cool when the shots were flying round us. They were calmly picking blackberries." In the end the Germans were beaten off, but at the heavy loss to the Irish of 150 of the rank and file and several of the officers. Morris was among the fallen. The last that Private Shaughnessy saw of the Colonel was on the road beside the wood giving orders, mounted on horseback and smoking a cigarette. He was the younger son of Lord Morris and Killanin, a famous Irish judge and humorist, and brother and heir-presumptive of Lord Killanin. He left a son, Michael, who was born ten days before his father left for the Front, and was just a month old when his father fell on the field of honour. Colonel Morris was of the finest type of soldier, and was long mourned by the regiment.
A good idea of the dangers and hardships of the retreat, apart from the fighting, and also the humours which relieved it, is given by a private of the 2nd Irish Rifles:—"It wasn't the fault of the Germans if we got away alive. They were after us night and day," he says. The greatest trouble of the regiment was to find their way through woods and strange country by night. "We got on like the Babes in the Wood, holding each other's hands, so as not to lose touch with each other. We dare not light a match or make a sound that would betray our presence, and when we saw lights in the distance twinkling like will-o'-the-wisps, we had to send our scouts to find out the meaning before we approached." Sometimes it was the Germans, and then the scouts did not get back, and the regiment had to dodge the enemy as best they could. "Once when they were looking for us their searchlight played in the open just where we were, only we were in the shade, and if we had moved another inch our shadows would have been seen. We heard them talking and shouting to each other, but they gave no chase, thinking we had got away in another direction. We had no food for hours, except such fruit as we could pick up on the way." Does it not read as if the pursuers and the pursued were playing some monstrous game of hide-and-seek?
By September 3rd the Marne was crossed, and the long retreat of the British was brought to an end without any grave disaster. French had out-generalled and out-marched Von Kluck. But the Germans were also over the river by the 5th and practically at the gates of Paris. The British Army then fell back upon the Seine. So black did the prospect appear that the French Government and Legislature thought it prudent to remove from Paris to Bordeaux.