A sergeant of the battalion supplies some details of the feat:—"One morning after we had had several days of awful shelling in the trenches the Germans came to attack us. They advanced into view through the rain and mist, and though they were ten times our strength we held our ground until the necessary dispositions could be made in other parts of the field to withstand their onslaught." As will be seen from many an incident in the course of this narrative the Irish fight best when it comes to the real crisis—the two antagonists engaged in close and relentless contest, man to man and bayonet to bayonet. At first it was furious smithing, gleaming thrust and parry, stab and hack, hack and stab, with the Irish in the trenches and the Germans above; and, in the end, it was the Germans running away and the Irish speeding their departure with rifle fire. "We did not think there was anything very wonderful about what we did," says the sergeant modestly, "but everyone went wild about it. One staff officer said we ought all to have two Victoria Crosses each, and we had the satisfaction of being splendidly praised by the General in Command."
"Nothing," says Napier in his "Peninsular War," "so startled the French soldiery as the wild yell with which the Irish regiments sprang to the charge." We are also told by Napier that at Barrosa and Bussaco the heroes of Marengo and Austerlitz reeled before the thunder shout of Faugh-a-Ballagh ("Clear the Way") raised by the Royal Irish Fusiliers and the Connaught Rangers. What is more likely is that the French gave way before the irresistible bayonet charge that swept like a flame in the thunder of that haughty battle-cry. The Great War shows that both these historic regiments maintain the ancient tradition of raising a wild, terrific yell when they dash forward, a yell which sends the creeps down the back, and impels the foe irresistibly to turn and fly for fear of what is to follow.
The Irish Fusiliers were the first to enter Armentières (on the occasion that the Leinsters impetuously pushed forward to Premesque), and they did so shouting their old Irish slogan, Faugh-a-Ballagh, and enforcing it by driving the enemy from their positions behind every tree and at every turn on the road leading into the town. Private H. Dawson, a West port boy in the 1st Connaught Rangers, tells how a company of the battalion frightened a big force of Germans out of their trenches, and out of their senses also, no doubt, by the blood-curdling yells they gave vent to as they advanced with the bayonet. It was on the night of November 4th, 1914, in the neighbourhood of Neuve Chapelle. The company was ordered to attack the German trenches, two platoons to do the fighting and the two others to follow after with shovels, to fill in the trenches, if they were taken. "At midnight," writes Private Dawson, "we moved forward with such cheers, shouts, and cries that the Germans, thinking that a whole brigade was advancing, evacuated the trenches and fled. The moon was shining, and when the Germans afterwards saw the handful of men that routed them they returned in greatly increased numbers and made a murderous onslaught on us."
They can sing, too, as they advance, these Connaught Rangers, as Private Robert McGregor of the Gordon Highlanders relates in a graphic letter to his father at Parkhead, Scotland. On December 26th, 1914, the Germans attacked the trenches in front of them at a particular point. The Gordons who held the trenches got out to meet the enemy as they came on in the open. There was a close fight with varying fortunes, but the Germans were reinforced, and as there were only about 170 of the Gordons left it seemed as if they were bound to be annihilated.
"But just at that moment," writes Private McGregor, "we heard the sound of singing, and the song was 'God Save Ireland.' It was the Connaught Rangers coming to our relief. Well, I have seen some reckless Irishmen in my time, but nothing to match the recklessness and daring of these gallant Rangers. They took the Germans on the left flank. The Germans now probably numbered about 2,000 against 800 Connaughts and 170 of us, but were they 50,000 I don't believe in my soul they could have stood before the Irish. The Connaughts simply were irresistible, and all the time they kept singing 'God Save Ireland.' One huge red-haired son of Erin having broken his rifle got possession of a German officer's sword, and everything that came in the way of this giant went down. I thought of Wallace. Four hundred and seventy Huns were killed and wounded, and we took 70 prisoners. Had it not been for the Irish I wouldn't be writing this, and when it comes to a hand-to-hand job there is nothing in the whole British Army to approach them. God save Ireland and Irishmen."