The Irish on the Somme / Being a Second Series of 'The Irish at the Front'

by Michael MacDonagh

Nevertheless the men went on steadily, undaunted by the fire and tumult; and the shuddering earth; undaunted even by the spectacle of the dead and dying of the battalions which preceded them in the attack; shaken only by one horror—a horror unspeakable—that of seeing fond comrades of their own falling bereft of life, as in a flash, by a bullet through the brain or heart; or, worse still, just as suddenly disappearing into bloody fragments amid the roar and smoke of a bursting shell. Now and then men stopped awhile, trembling at the sight and aghast; and, under the sway of impulses that were irresistible, put their right hands over their faces as a protection to their eyes—an appeal, expressed in action rather than in words, that they might be mercifully spared their sight—or else made a sweeping gesture of the arm, as if to brush aside the bullets which buzzed about them like venomous insects.

The pace, therefore, was necessarily slow. It was rather a succession of short rushes, a few yards at a time, with intervening pauses behind such shelter as was available in order to recover breath. The right soldierly quality is not to be over rash, but to adapt oneself to the nature of the fighting and its scene; the circumstances of the moment, the ever-varying requirements of the action. Such an advance, whatever precautions be taken, entails great sacrifices. Every life that is lost should be made to go as far as possible in the gaining of the victory. Foolhardy movements, due to unreflecting bravery, were accordingly discouraged. Advantage was to be taken of any cover afforded by the natural features of the country or the state into which it had been transformed by the pounding of high explosives. The influence of the officers, so cool and alert were they, so suggestive of capability in direction, was most reassuring and stimulating to the men. On the other hand, the officers were relieved by the intelligence, the amenable character of the men and their fine discipline, from the worry and annoyance which company commanders have so often to endure in the course of an action by the casual doings, and the lack of initiative on the part of those under their charge. Simple, biddable, gallant and faithful unto death, it was the wish of the Tyneside Irish that, if they were to fall, their bodies might be found, not in the line of the advance, but at the German positions to the north-west of Contalmaison, out of both of which they had helped to drive the enemy.

But now the lines or waves of men which had left the trenches in extended formation were broken up into separate little bodies, all independently engaged in various grim tasks. They had mounted La Boiselle hill, and moved down into the valley which still intervened between them and Bailiff's Wood and Contalmaison. Thus they were in the very centre of the labyrinth of the enemy's system of defences. An air of intolerable mystery and sinister hidden danger hung over it. Was it not possible that those brutes, those dirty fighters, the inventors of poisonous gas, liquid fire and flame jets, who had established themselves in the very vitals of the place, might not have other devilish inventions prepared for the wholesale massacre of their adversaries? The thought arose in the minds of many, and caused a vague sense of apprehension. The Germans, however, had no further hellish surprises. Even so, the place was baneful and noxious enough. The Germans had suffered terrible losses and were morally shaken by the artillery bombardment—gigantic, devastating, thunderous—which preceded the British advance. It is the fact, nevertheless, that most of the survivors had enough courage and tenacity left doggedly to contest every inch of the way. They lay concealed in all sorts of cunning traps and contrivances, apart from their demolished trenches. Machinery on the side of the British—in the form of big guns—had done its part. The time had come for the play of human qualities, the pluck, the endurance and the stout arm of the British infantry man. Snipers had to be dislodged from their burrows; hidden machine-gun posts had likewise to be found out and silenced. So the men of the Tyneside Irish were rushing about in small parties, shooting, bayoneting, clubbing, bombing; and the triumphant yells which arose here and there proclaimed the discovery of yet another lair of the foe.

Many a stirring story of personal adventure could be told. Sergeant Knapp of Sunderland, who won his stripes in the advance, gives this account of his experiences—

"I had just taken the machine-gun off my mate to give him a rest when 'Fritz' opened fire on us from the left with a machine-gun, which played havoc with the Irish. Then I heard my mate shout, 'Bill, I've been hit,' and when I looked round I saw I was by myself; he, poor chap, had fallen like the rest. Now I had to do the best I could, so I picked up a bag of ammunition for the gun and started across 'No Man's Land.' Once I had to drop into a shell-hole to take cover from machine-gun fire.

"After a short rest I pushed on again and got into the German second line. By this time I was exhausted, for I was carrying a machine-gun and 300 rounds of ammunition, besides a rifle and 120 rounds in my pouches, equipment, haversack and waterproof cape, so I had a fair load. I stopped there for a few minutes picking off stray Boches that were kicking about. Then along came a chap, whom I asked to give me a help with the gun, which he did. We had scarcely gone ten yards when a shell burst on top of us. I stood still, I don't think I could have moved had I wanted to. Then I looked around for my chum, but alas! man and gun were missing. Where he went to I don't know, for I have not seen him or my precious weapon since."

Who that has talked with many wounded soldiers has not found that often they are unable to give any coherent account of their own actions and feelings during a battle. In some cases it is due to an unwillingness to revive haunting memories, a wish to banish out of mind for ever the morbid, terrible and grotesque, the ugly aspects in which many experiences in battle present themselves, surpassing the nightmares of any opium eater. In other cases there is an obvious distaste for posing. All one gallant Irish Tynesider would say to me was, "Sure I only went on because I had to. Didn't the officers tell us before we left the trenches that there was to be no going back?" He brushed aside everything he had done that terrible day which got him the Distinguished Conduct Medal, with the jocose assumption that he was but the most unheroic of mortals, that he went to a place where he would not have gone if he had had any choice in the matter. The incommunicativeness of the soldier is also due to the fact that he cannot recall his sensations. During an engagement his mind is in a whirl. He has no disposition to note his thoughts and feelings in the midst of the fighting. In fact, few men can analyse the processes of their emotions in such a situation, either at the time or afterwards. As a rule, an overmastering passion possesses the soldier to stab, hack and annihilate the foe who want to take that life which he so greatly desires to preserve. All else is confused and blurred—a vague sense of desperate happenings shrouded in fire and smoke, out of which there emerges, now and then, with sharp distinctness, some specially horrible incident, such as the shattering of a comrade into bits.

But I have met with cases still more strange, where the mind was a blank during the advance through the showering bullets and shrapnel and the exploding shells. Even the simplest process of the brain—memory, or self-consciousness—was dormant. The soldiers in this mental condition appear to have been like the somnambulist who does things mechanically as he walks in his sleep, and when aroused has an impression of having passed through some unusual experience, but what he cannot tell, so vague and formless is it all. Suddenly all the senses of these hypnotised soldiers became wide awake and alert. This happened when they caught sight of figures in skirted grey tunics and flat grey caps with narrow red bands, emerging from cavernous depths into the light of day, or unexpectedly came upon them crouching in holes or behind mounds of earth away from the trenches. Germans! Face to face with the Bosche at last! The effect was like that of a sudden and peremptory blast of a bugle in a deep stillness. Each Irish Tynesider braced up his nerves for bloody deeds. "My life, or theirs," was the thought that sprang to his mind. Thus it was a scene of appalling violence. It resounded with the clash of bayonets; the crackle of musketry; the explosion of bombs; the rattle of machine-guns; and in that confusion of hideous mechanical noises were also heard the shriek of human anguish and the cry of victory.

It was in a wood not far off Contalmaison that the fighting was most desperate and sanguinary of all. The place was full of Germans. The paths and glades were blocked or barricaded with fallen trees. Beneath the splintered and blackened trunks that were still standing, the undergrowth, freed from the attentions of the woodman in the two years of the war, was dense and tangled. Right through the wood were trenches with barbed wire obstructions. At its upper end were peculiarly strong outposts, which poured machine-gun fire through the trees and bushes. It was commanded by batteries on two sides—from Contalmaison on the right and Oviliers on the left. The attackers had to penetrate this dreadful wood, scrambling, tearing, jumping, creeping in the sultry and stifling heat of the day. There were ferocious personal encounters. The form of fighting was one of the most terrible to which this most hideous of wars has given rise. Probably there has been nothing like it since early man fought those horrid and extinct mammoth animals, the skeletons of which are now to be seen in museums, what time they were alive and savage and ruthless in their haunts in the primeval forest.

The battle was marked by ever-varying vicissitudes of advance and repulse. "The German Guardsmen fought like tigers to hold it," is a phrase in one letter of an Irish Tynesider. Our own official despatches relating to the Somme battle also show that this part of the German front—Oviliers, La Boiselle, Bailiff's Wood, Contalmaison, Mametz Wood—was held by battalions of the Guards, composed of the flower of the youth of Prussia, and standing highest in the mightiest army in the world. These were not the kind of men to put up their hands and cry "Kamerad, mercy!" at the sight even of that pitiless and unnerving thing—a bayonet at the end of a rifle in the hands of a brawny Irishman, with the fury of battle flaming in his eyes. They held on tenaciously, and gave blow for blow. A long bombardment, night and day, by modern heavy guns, is a frightful ordeal. Its objects are, first, to kill wholesale; and, next, to paralyse the survivors with the fear of death, so that they could but offer only a feeble resistance to the advancing troops. Shaken and despairing men were, therefore, encountered—filthy, unshaven, vile-looking, and so mentally dazed as to act and talk like idiots. But they were not all like that. So well-designed and powerful were their subterranean defences that large numbers were unaffected by the visitations of the high explosives, and through it preserved their courage and their rage. Conspicuous among these were the Prussian Guards. They made furious efforts to stop the advancing lines of the Tyneside Irish, and that they were overpowered is a splendid testimony to the martial qualities of our men. Think of it! Two years ago, or so, these young lads of various industrial callings—farm hands, railway porters, clerks, drapers' assistants, policemen, carters, messenger boys, miners—would have regarded as preposterous the idea that at any time of what seemed to them to be their predestined humdrum existence, or in any period even of a conceivably mad and topsy-turvy world, they would not only be soldiers but would encounter the Germans on the fields of France; and—most incredible phantasy of all—defeat the renowned Prussian Guards—men whose hearts from their earliest years throbbed high at the thought that they were to be soldiers; men highly disciplined and trained, belonging to the proudest regiments in the German Army, and always ready and eager for the call of battle.