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

by Michael MacDonagh

The marches of the Brigade to their new station was done to the accompaniment of patter, drip, trickle, ripple, splash—all the creepy sounds of continuous rain, and across the sodden and foul desolation that was once the fair fields of France. Up to the firing line swung a battalion of the Munster Fusiliers, gaily whistling and singing in the rain. They carried a beautiful banner of the Sacred Heart, the gift of the people of the city of Limerick, from which many of the men came. Miss Lily Doyle of Limerick, who made the presentation to Major Lawrence Roche of the battalion, tells me that the idea of the banner originated with the Reverend Mother of the Good Shepherd's Convent, Limerick, who had read, in what are termed the "Extended Revelations," that a promise was given by Jesus to Blessed Margaret Mary that, inasmuch as soldiers derided His Sacred Heart when He hung upon the Cross, any soldiers who made reparation by carrying His standard would have victory with them. The cost of the banner (£10) was mainly raised by penny subscriptions. It was worked by the Good Shepherd nuns on crimson poplin. On one side is a beautiful piece of embroidery representing Our Lord with His Heart exposed on His breast to Blessed Margaret Mary, with the inscriptions, "Tu Rex Gloria Christi" and "Parce Domine, parce populo tuo." On the other side are the words of the Archangel Michael: "Quis ut Deus," surrounded with monograms of "Royal Munster Fusiliers" and "God save Ireland." "You could not have sent us a more suitable gift," the Rev. J. Wrafter, S.J., chaplain of the battalion, wrote to Miss Doyle, "or one which would give more pleasure to the men. I believe they prefer it to any material comforts that are sent to them." This is the third religious banner borne by soldiers since the Crusades. The first was the standard of Joan of Arc, and the second that of the Pontifical Zouaves, when Rome was an independent state. As the Munsters thus marched to battle a cry of "Look!" was suddenly raised in the ranks, and as all eyes turned in the direction indicated a wonderful sight was seen. The great tower of Albert Cathedral appeared through the mist of rain, and the sun shone on the great copper statue of the Blessed Virgin and the Child, which dominated the countryside for miles around, and, laid prostrate by German gunners, was now lying out level with the top of the tower. Thus that symbol of faith, though fallen, was not overthrown. Its roots in the pedestal were firm and strong. The Virgin Mother, facing downwards, still held the Infant Jesus scathless in her outstretched hands, as if showing Him the devastation below, ready to be uplifted again on the day of Christianity's victory. The piety of the battalion was kindled by that strange and moving spectacle. Quickly responsive always to things that appeal to the imagination, the men felt as if they were witnesses of a miracle, and with one accord they took off their helmets and cheered and cheered again.

Though it is an unusual thing for the Commander-in-Chief to give in his dispatches the names of the troops who took part in a particular engagement, Sir Douglas Haig makes special mention of the Irish Brigade in his message announcing that Guillamont had fallen. "The Irish regiments which took part in the capture of Guillamont on September 3 behaved," he says, "with the greatest dash and gallantry, and took no small share in the success gained that day."

September 3 was a Sunday. On the night before the battle the Irish troops selected for the attack on Guillamont bivouacked on the bare side of a hill. They were the Connaughts, the Royal Irish, the Munsters and the Leinsters. The rain had ceased, but the ground was everywhere deep in mud, the trenches were generally flooded and the shell holes full of water. It was a bleak and desolate scene, relieved only here and there by the sparkle of the little fires around which the platoons clustered. Just as the men of one of the battalions were preparing to wrap themselves in their greatcoats and lie down for the rest which they might be able to snatch in such a situation, the Catholic chaplain came over the side of the hill and right to the centre of the camp. "In a moment he was surrounded by the men," writes Major Redmond. "They came to him without orders—they came gladly and willingly, and they hailed his visit with plain delight. He spoke to them in the simple, homely language which they liked. He spoke of the sacrifice which they had made in freely and promptly leaving their homes to fight for a cause which was the cause of religion, freedom and civilisation. He reminded them that in this struggle they were most certainly defending the homes and the relations and friends they had left behind them in Ireland. It was a simple, yet most moving address, and deeply affected the soldiers." Major Redmond goes on to say: "When the chaplain had finished his address he signed to the men to kneel, and administered to them the General Absolution given in times of emergency. The vast majority of the men present knelt, and those of other faith stood by in attitudes of reverent respect. The chaplain then asked the men to recite with him the Rosary. It was most wonderful the effect produced as hundreds and hundreds of voices repeated the prayers and recited the words, 'Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.' At the dawn Masses were said by the chaplains of all the battalions in the open, and most of the officers and men received Holy Communion."

The attack was timed to begin at noon. All the morning the war-pipes of these Leinsters, Munsters and Connaughts gave out inspiring Irish tunes—"Brian Boru's March," that was played at the Battle of Clontarf in the eleventh century when the Danish invaders were driven from Ireland; "The White Cockade," the Jacobite marching tune of the first Irish Brigade in the service of France; "The Wearin' o' the Green," one of the finest expressions of a country's devotion to an ideal; and "A Nation Once Again," thrilling with the hopes of the future. The pipers strode up and down, green ribbons streaming from their pipes, sending forth these piercing invocations to ancient Irish heroes, to venerable saints of the land, to the glories and sorrows of Ireland, to the love of home, to the faith and aspirations of the race, to come to the support of the men in the fight. And what of the men as they waited in the assembly trenches for the word? The passage from Shakespeare's Henry V best conveys their mood: "I see ye stand like grey-hounds in the leash straining upon the start."

At twelve o'clock the battalions emerged from the trenches. Numbers of the men had tied to their rifles little green flags with the yellow harp. Like the English infantry associated with them, the Irish advanced in the open snaky lines in which such attacks are always delivered. But there was a striking difference—noted by the war correspondents—in the pace and impetus of the Irish and the English. Mr. Beach Thomas of the Daily Mail says: "It gives, I think, a satisfying sense of the variety and association of talent in the new Army to picture these dashing Irish troops careering across the open while the ground was being methodically cleared and settled behind them by English riflemen." "The English riflemen who fought on their right had more solidity in their way of going about the business," says Mr. Philip Gibbs of the Daily Chronicle, "but they were so inspired by the sight of the Irish dash and by the sound of the Irish pipes that those who were in support, under orders to stand and hold the first German line, could hardly be restrained from following on." The English advance was calm, restrained, deliberate, infused by a spirit of determination that glowed rather than flamed. A breath of fire seemed to sweep through the Irish. From first to last they kept up a boisterous jog-trot charge. "It was like a human avalanche," was the description given by the English troops who fought with them.

The country across which this dash was made was pitted with innumerable shell holes, most of them of great width and depth and all full of water and mud. A Munster Fusilier graphically likened the place to a net, in his Irish way—"all holes tied together." So the men, as they advanced, stumbled over the inequalities of the ground, or slipped and tripped in the soft, sticky earth. It was a scene, too, of the most clamorous and frightful violence. The shells were like fiends of the air, flying with horrid shrieks or moans on the wings of the wind, ignoring one another and intent only on dropping down to earth and striking the life out of their human prey. Blasts of fire and flying bits of metal also swept the plain.

There is a loud detonation, and when the smoke clears away not a trace is seen of the ten or dozen comrades that a moment before were rushing forward like a Rugby pack after the ball. They have all been blown to the four winds of heaven. "Jim, I'm hit," cries a lad, as if boastingly, on feeling a blow on his chest. He twirls round about like a spinning top and then topples face downward. His body has been perforated by a rifle bullet. A shell explodes and a man falls. He laughs, thinking he has been tripped up by a tree root or piece of wire. Both his legs are broken. Another shell bursts. A Leinsterman sees a companion lifted violently off his feet, stripped of his clothes, and swept several yards before he is dashed violently to the ground. He goes over to his friend and can see no sign of a wound on the quite naked body. But his friend will never lift up his head again. The blasting force of the high explosive, the tremendous concussion of the air, has knocked the life out of him. "Good-bye, Joe, and may God have mercy on your soul," the Leinsterman says to himself, and, as he dashes on again he thinks, "Sure, it may be my own turn next." It is that which assuages the grief of a soldier for a dead comrade, or soon ousts it altogether from his mind.

Khaki and grey-clad forms were lying everywhere in the frightfully distorted postures assumed by the killed in action—arms twisted, legs doubled together, heads askew. Some had their lips turned outward, showing their teeth in a horrible sneer. Their mouths had been distended in agony. Others had a fixed expression of infinite sadness, as if in a lucid moment before death there came a thought of home. More horrifying still was the foul human wreckage of former battles—heads and trunks and limbs trodden under foot in the mud, and emitting a fearful stench.

The priests followed in the wake of the troops to give the consolations of religion to the dying. They saw heartrending sights. One of them, describing his experiences, says: "I was standing about a hundred yards away, watching a party of my men crossing the valley, when I saw the earth under their feet open, and twenty men disappear in a cloud of smoke, while a column of stones and clay was shot a couple of hundred feet into the air. A big German shell, by the merest chance, had landed in the middle of the party. I rushed down the slope, getting a most unmerciful whack between the shoulders. I gave them all a General Absolution, scraped the clay from the faces of a couple of buried men who were not wounded, and then anointed as many of the poor lads as I could reach. Two of them had no faces to anoint, and others were ten feet under the clay, but a few were living still. By this time half a dozen volunteers had run up, and were digging the buried men out. We dug like demons for our lads' lives, and our own, to tell the truth, for every few minutes another 'iron pill' from a Krupp gun would come tearing down the valley." Another priest says: "Many of the wounded were just boys, and it was extraordinary how they bore pain, which must have been intense. Very few murmurings were heard. One young man said to me, 'Oh, father, it is hard to die so far from home in the wilds of France.' Certainly the fair land of France just here did seem wild, with the trees all torn and riven with shot, and the earth on every side ploughed with huge shell holes."

But the Irish troops swept on. Nothing could stop them—neither their fallen comrades, nor the groans of the wounded, nor the abominably mangled dead; and the blasts of fire and iron and steel which the enemy let loose beat in vain against their valour and resolution. "'Tis God's truth I'm telling you," a Leinsterman remarked to me, "when I say we couldn't stop ourselves in the height of our hurry, we were that mad." In fact, they had captured Guillamont before they were aware of it. "Where's that blessed village we've got to take?" they shouted, as they looked round and saw not a stick or a stone. "We're in it, boys," replied a captain of the Munsters as he planted a green flag with a yellow harp on the dust heap which his map indicated was once the centre of Guillamont, and the Irishmen, mightily pleased with themselves, raised a wild shout.