CHAPTER IX
THE IRISH BRIGADE[ToC]
"EVERYWHERE AND ALWAYS FAITHFUL"
Pride and sorrow struggle for mastery at the spectacle of troops returning to camp from the battle, their appearance telling of the intolerable strain which this war imposes, even in the case of victory, upon the human faculties. The thought of it alone is painful to the feelings of any one who has the least imagination. They are all begrimed and careworn, and many have the distraught look of those who have seen and suffered terrible things. So the Irish Brigade came back from Guillamont and Guinchy, on the Somme, in the early days of September 1916, what time the Empire was resounding with the fame of their exploits. On a Sunday they carried Guillamont with a rush; on the following Saturday they literally pounced upon Guinchy, and in between they lay in open trenches under continuous shell fire.
I saw the Irish Brigade before they left for the Front, and noted in the ranks the many finely shaped heads and thoughtful faces of poets and leaders of men, interspersed with the lithe frames of athletes and the resolute, hard-bitten countenances of born fighters. At first I was moved to sorrow at the thought of the pass to which civilisation has come that the best use which could be made of all this superb youth and manhood in its valiancy was to send it forth into the devouring jaws of war. Then I perceived that something like a radiance shimmered about the marching ranks. It came, I noticed, both from their muscular strength and their martial ardour, for the flush of battle already mantled their cheeks, and its light was in their dancing eyes; and at once I understood that if I saw but the mound surmounted by the little wooden cross in France, and in Ireland the desolate hearthstone, they, with the wider and more aspiring imagination of youth, rejoiced that they were going out to fight in liberty's defence, and saw only their bayonets triumphantly agleam in the fury of the engagement. Careless and gay, they captured the two villages on the Somme in a ding-dong, helter-skelter fashion. They maintained the reputation of the Irish infantry as "the finest missile troops in the British Army" (so they are described by Colonel Repington, the renowned military correspondent of The Times), by the spirit and dash of their charge, their eagerness to get quickly into touch with the foe, and the energy and dexterity with which they wield that weapon which finally decides the issue of battles—the bayonet.
As they emerged out of the cloud of smoke on the Somme, and marched back to camp in much diminished numbers—caked with mud, powdered with grey dust, very tired—across the ground their valour had won and their grit maintained against fierce counter attacks, they displayed quite another phase of the Irish nature—its melancholy and its mysticism. The piper that led them back began to play some old Irish rhapsodies having that wonderful blending of joy and grief which makes these airs so haunting. That was well. For the men were in so extreme a stage of exhaustion, physical and mental, that they lurched and reeled, and were overwhelmed with distress at missing many beloved comrades that fought with them, and officers that led them only a few days before. Then they heard the pipes, and their hearts were uplifted by the strains, plaintive and yearning, defiant and challenging, which expresses in music the history of their race. They seemed, indeed, to have caught even some of the jaunty, boastful swagger of the piper, as he strode before them, blowing into his reeds and working the bag with his left elbow.
The General of the Brigade watched his troops go by, and in his eyes they were all the grander for the horrid disarray of their torn, muddy and bloody uniforms, and their haggard faces blackened with sweat and smoke and soil. "I am proud of you," he called out in a voice surging with emotion. "Ye did damned well, boys." A handful of men, once a company, was led by a sergeant. Every officer was gone. "Bravo, Dublins!" exclaimed the General; but for the moment his heart was heavy within him as he recalled to mind the dashing, gallant young lads, so hearty and joyous, buried now round about the ruins of the villages from which the Germans had been driven at the bayonet-point by the splendid rank and file at whose head they fell. Quickly the thoughts of the General came back to the survivors. "Ireland is proud of you, boys," he cried in exultant tones. He knew that would stir them. Ireland is their glory; and they lifted up their heads a little more as they caught the import of their Commander's words.