CHAPTER V

"For most conspicuous bravery. He advanced to the assault with his platoon three times. Early next morning,hearing a rumour that his platoon officer was lying out wounded, he went out seven times to look for him under heavy shell and machine-gun fire, each time bringing back a wounded man. The last man he dragged in on a waterproof sheet from within a few yards of the enemy's wire. He was seven hours engaged in this most gallant work, and finally was so exhausted that he had to give it up."

It was also "for most conspicuous bravery" in searching for wounded men under continuous and heavy fire that Lieutenant Geoffrey Shillington Cather of the Royal Irish Fusiliers got the Victoria Cross. He lost his life in thus trying to succour others on the night and morning after the advance of the Ulster Division. "From 7 p.m. till midnight he searched 'No Man's Land,' and brought in three wounded men," says the official account. "Next morning, at 8 a.m., he continued his search, brought in another wounded man, and gave water to others, arranging for their rescue later. Finally, at 10.30 a.m., he took out water to another man, and was proceeding further on when he was himself killed. All this was carried out in full view of the enemy, and under direct machine-gun fire, and intermittent artillery fire. He set a splendid example of courage and self-sacrifice."

Lieutenant Cather was twenty-five years of age, a son of Mrs. Cather, Priory Road, West Hampstead, London. His father, who was dead, had been a tea merchant in the City. On his mother's side, Lieutenant Cather was a grandson of the late Mr. Thomas Shillington, of Tavanagh House, Portadown; and on his father's side, of the late Rev. Robert Cather, a distinguished minister of the Irish Methodist Church. He was a nephew of Captain D. Graham Shillington, of Ardeevin, Portadown, who, with his son, Lieutenant T.G. Shillington, was serving in the same battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. Lieutenant Cather was educated at Rugby. He first joined thePublic Schools' Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), and obtained his commission in the County Armagh Volunteers in May, 1915.

The second officer of the Ulster Division to win the Victoria Cross was Captain Eric N.F. Bell of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, whose gallantry on July 1 also cost him his life. He was about twenty-two years old, one of three soldier sons of Captain E.H. Bell, formerly of the Inniskillings (serving in Egypt in a garrison battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment), and Mrs. Bell, an Enniskillen lady living in Bootle. The two brothers of the late Captain Bell hold commissions in the Ulster Division. The deeds for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross are thus set out in the official account—

"For most conspicuous bravery. He was in command of a trench mortar battery, and advanced with the infantry in the attack. When our front line was hung up by enfilading machine-gun fire Captain Bell crept forward and shot the machine gunner. Later, on no less than three occasions, when our bombing parties, which were clearing the enemy's trenches, were unable to advance, he went forward and threw trench mortar bombs among the enemy. When he had no more bombs available he stood on the parapet, under intense fire, and used a rifle with great coolness and effect on the enemy advancing to counter-attack. Finally he was killed rallying and reorganising infantry parties which had lost their officers. All this was outside the scope of his normal duties with his battery. He gave his life in his supreme devotion to duty."

Colonel Ricardo, in a very fine and sympathetic letter to the bereaved mother, gives additional particulars of Captain Bell's gallantry—

"The General, hearing that his parents were old friends of mine, has asked me to write on his behalf, sending his sympathy and telling of the gallantry of Eric, which was outstanding on a day when supreme courage and gallantry was the order of the day. Eric was in command on July 1 of his trench mortar battery, which had very important duties to perform, and which very materially helped the advance. We knowfrom his servant, Private Stevenson, a great deal of Eric's share in the day's work. He went forward with the advance, and, coming under heavy machine-gun fire, and seeing where it came from, he took a rifle and crawled towards the machine-gun and then shot the gunner in charge, thus enabling a party on his flank to capture the gun. This gallant action saved many lives."When in the German lines Eric worked splendidly, collecting scattered units and helping to organise the defence. He was most energetic, and never ceased to encourage the men and set all a very fine example. Having exhausted all his mortar ammunition, he organised a carrying party and started back to fetch up more shells; it was whilst crossing back to our own line that Eric was hit. He was shot through the body, and died in a few moments without suffering. His servant stayed with him to the end and arrived back quite exhausted, and has now been admitted into hospital. Nothing could have exceeded the courage and resource displayed by Eric. The Brigade are proud that he belonged to it. It is only what I should have expected from him. It must be a solace to his father and mother that he died such a gallant death. He was a born soldier and a credit to his regiment. May I add my heartfelt sympathy to my dear old friends."

"When in the German lines Eric worked splendidly, collecting scattered units and helping to organise the defence. He was most energetic, and never ceased to encourage the men and set all a very fine example. Having exhausted all his mortar ammunition, he organised a carrying party and started back to fetch up more shells; it was whilst crossing back to our own line that Eric was hit. He was shot through the body, and died in a few moments without suffering. His servant stayed with him to the end and arrived back quite exhausted, and has now been admitted into hospital. Nothing could have exceeded the courage and resource displayed by Eric. The Brigade are proud that he belonged to it. It is only what I should have expected from him. It must be a solace to his father and mother that he died such a gallant death. He was a born soldier and a credit to his regiment. May I add my heartfelt sympathy to my dear old friends."

Among the many other distinctions gained by the Division were Military Crosses to two of the chaplains: Captain Rev. J. Jackson Wright and Captain Rev. Joseph Henry McKew. Captain Wright was the Presbyterian minister of Ballyshannon, County Donegal. He gave up that position temporarily to accept an Army chaplaincy, and was posted to the Ulster Division in November, 1914, being attached to the Inniskilling Brigade. He was ordained in 1893. Captain McKew was curate of the parish of Clones prior to being appointed Church of Ireland chaplain to the troops in August, 1915. He is a Trinity man, and during his university career won a moderatorship in history. Ordained in 1914, he has spent his entire ministry under Canon Ruddell in Clones. Before going to the Front he was a chaplain at the Curragh.

The company officers led their men with conspicuous gallantry and steadfastness. "Come on, Ulsters;" "Remember July the First," they cried. They were severely thinned out before the day was far advanced. It was the same with the non-commissioned ranks. At the end several parties of men desperately fighting had not an officer or a non-commissioned officer left. Among the officers lost were two brothers, Lieutenant Holt Montgomery Hewitt, Machine-gun Corps (Ulster Division), and Second-Lieutenant William Arthur Hewitt, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (Tyrone Volunteers). They were the sons of Mr. J.H. Hewitt, manager of the workshops for the blind, Royal Avenue, Belfast. A third son, Lieutenant Ernest Henry Hewitt, Royal Lancaster Regiment, was killed in action on June 15, 1915. The three brothers were members of the Ulster Volunteer Force before the War. They were prominent athletes, and played Rugby football for the North of Ireland club. In that respect they were typical of the officers of the Ulster Division. They were also typical of them for high-mindedness and cheerful devotion to duty. "Poor Holt, the most genial and lovable of souls!" exclaims Lieutenant E.W. Crawford, the adjutant of his battalion of the Inniskillings. "Willie led his platoon fearlessly over the top." The commanding officer of the battalion, Colonel Ricardo, in a letter to Mr. Hewitt, pays a remarkable tribute to Second-Lieutenant William Holt. He says: "It was a sad day for us, and I feel quite stunned and heartbroken. Your Willie was one of the nicest-minded boys I ever knew. My wife saw a letter he wrote to the widow of a man in his company, and she told me it was the most beautiful letter of sympathy she had ever read. No one but a spiritually-minded boy could have written such a letter. I made him my assistant-adjutant, and of all my young lads I couldspare him the least. No words can express the sympathy we all feel for yourself and Mrs. Hewitt and your family in this grievous double blow."

Captain C.C. Craig, Royal Irish Rifles (South Antrim Volunteers), M.P. for South Antrim and brother of Colonel James Craig, M.P. for East Down, was taken prisoner. When last seen he was lying wounded in a shell hole at the most advanced point of the narrow and dangerous salient carved by the Ulstermen in the enemy lines, shouting encouragement to his company. In a letter to his wife, written from a hospital at Gutersloh, Westphalia, Germany, and dated July 13, Captain Craig states it was while he was directing his men to convert the C line of trenches into defences against the Germans by making them face the opposite way, that he was hit by a piece of shrapnel in the back of the leg below the knee. "This put me out of action," he says. "I was bandaged up, and, as I could not get about, I sent a message to R. Neill to take command, and I crawled to a shell-hole, where I lay for six hours. This was at about 10 a.m. on the 1st July. During this six hours the shelling and machine-gun fire was very heavy, but my shell-hole protected me so well that I was not hit again, except for a very small piece of shrapnel on the arm, which only made a small cut." At about four o'clock in the afternoon the enemy made a counter attack, during which Captain Craig was found and taken prisoner. Describing his treatment as a prisoner, Captain Craig says—

"I had to hobble into a trench close at hand, where I stayed till ten o'clock, till two Germans took me to another line of trenches about 400 or 500 yards further back. This was the worst experience I had, as my leg was stiff and painful. The space between the lines was being heavily shelled by our guns, and my two supporters were naturally anxious to get over the ground as quickly as possible, and did not give me much rest,so I was very glad when, after what seemed an age, though it was not more than fifteen minutes or so, we got to the trench. I was put in a deep dug-out, where there were a lot of officers and men, and they were all very kind to me and gave me food and water, and here I spent the night. My leg was by now much swollen, but not painful except when I tried to walk. There were no stretchers, so in the morning I had to hobble as best I could out of the trenches till we came to a wood. Soon after I passed a dug-out where some artillery officers lived, and the captain seeing my condition refused to allow me to go any further on foot, and took me in and gave me food and wine, and set his men to make a kind of sling to carry me in. This proved a failure; as I was so heavy, I nearly broke the men's shoulders. He then got a wheelbarrow, and in this I was wheeled a mile or more to a dressing station, where my wound was dressed, and I was inoculated for tetanus. That night I was taken to a village, and had a comfortable bed and a good sleep."

Another officer of the Division who was "pipped," as he calls it, tells in an interesting story how he worked himself along the ground towards the British lines, and his experiences on the way. "By and by," he says, "a Boche corporal came crawling along after me. He shouted some gibberish, and I waved him on towards our lines with my revolver. He wasn't wounded, but he was devilish anxious to make sure of being a prisoner—begad, you don't get our chaps paying them the same compliment. They'll take any risks sooner than let the Boche get them as prisoners. So this chap lay down close beside me. I told him to be off out o' that, but he lay close, and I'd no breath to spare. That crawling is tiresome work. Presently I saw a man of ours coming along, poking round with his rifle and bayonet. He'd been detailed to shepherd in prisoners. He was surprised to see me. Then he saw my Boche. 'Hell to yer sowl!' says he; 'what the divil are ye doin' there beside my officer? Get up,' says he, 'an' be off with ye out a' that!' And he poked at him with his bayonet; so the fellowsquealed and plucked up enough courage to get up on his feet and run for our lines. Our own man wanted to help me back—a good fellow, you know—but I'd time enough before me, so told him to carry on. I wriggled all the way back to our line, and a stretcher-bearer got me there, so I was all right."

When they were relieved, the survivors of the Division came back very tired and bedraggled, their faces black with battle smoke and their uniforms white from the chalky soil. But they were in a joyous mood; and well they might be, for they had battered in one of the doors of the supposed impregnable German trenches and left it ajar. Their exploits add a brilliant chapter to the record of Irish valour and romance. Grief for the dead will soon subside into a sad memory, but the glory of what they accomplished will endure for ever. Because of it, the First of July is certain to be as great a day for Ulster in the future as the Twelfth has been in the past.

There is a story of Wellington and his army in the Peninsular campaign which embodies, in a humorous fashion, the still popular idea of the chief national characteristics of the races within the United Kingdom.

It says that if Wellington wanted a body of troops to get to a particular place quickly by forced marches he gave an assurance that on their arrival Scottish regiments would be given their arrears of pay; English regiments would have a good dinner of roast beef, and the bait held out to Irish regiments to give speed to their feet, however weary, was an all-round tot of grog. The Welsh, it will be noticed, are not in the story. This cannot be explained by saying they had yet to achieve separate national distinction on the field of battle. The 23rd Regiment of Foot (Royal Welsh Fusiliers) served under Wellington and contributed more than their fair share to the martial renown of the British Army. It is solely due, I think, to the fact that they had not yet emerged from their absorption in the English generally. But, to round off the story, what motive of a material kind would impel the Welsh Regiments to greater military exertions? Shall we say any one of the three inducements mentioned—pay, grub or grog, or, better still, all of them together?

The present war has provided the most searching tests of the qualities of the races involved in it. They have all been profoundly moved to the uttermost deeps of their being, both in the mass and as individuals. The superficial trappings of society and even of civilisation have fallen from them, and they appear as they really are—brave or cowardly, noble or base, unselfish or egotistical. We see our own soldiers, English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, not perhaps quite as each came from the hands of Nature, but certainly as the original minting of each has been modified only by the influence of racial environment. All the races within the United Kingdom are alike in this, that each is a medley of many kinds of dissimilar individuals with very varied faculties and attributes. But there are certain broad, main characteristics which distinguish in the mass each racial aggregate of dissimilar units; and it is these instincts, ideas, habits, customs, held in common, that fundamentally separate each nationality from the other. That is what I mean by racial environment.

The soldiers of the United Kingdom possess in general certain fine qualities of character and conduct which may be ascribed to the traditions and training of the British Army. But when we come to consider them racially we find that their points of difference are more striking even than their points of similarity. Each nationality evolves its own type of soldier, and every type has its distinctly marked attributes. As troops, taken in the mass, are the counterpart of the nations from which they spring, and, indeed, cannot be anything else, so they must, for one thing, reveal in fighting the particular sort of martial spirit possessed by their race. Though I am an Irishman, I would not be so boastful as to say that the Irish soldiers have a superior kind of courage to which neither the English, the Scottish nor the Welsh canlay claim. They are all equally brave, but the manifestation of their bravery is undoubtedly different—that is, different not so much in degree as in kind. In a word, courage, like humour, is not racial or geographical, but, like humour also, it takes on a racial or geographical flavour.

General Sir Ian Hamilton has written: "When, once upon a time, a Queen of Spain saw the Grenadier Guards she remarked they were strapping fellows; as the 92nd Highlanders went by she said, 'The battalion marches well'; but, at the aspect of the Royal Irish, the words 'Bloody War!' were wrung from her reluctant lips." After a good deal of reading on the subject, and some thought, I venture to suggest the following generalisations as to the qualities which distinguish the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, in valour, one from another.

English—the courage of an exalted sense of honour and devotion to duty, and of the national standard of conduct which requires them to show, at all costs, that they are better men than their opponents, whoever they may be.Scottish—the courage of mental as well as physical tenacity, coolly set upon achieving the purpose in view.Welsh—the courage of perfervid emotion, religious in its intensity.Irish—the courage of dare-devilry, and the rapture of battle.

Scottish—the courage of mental as well as physical tenacity, coolly set upon achieving the purpose in view.

Welsh—the courage of perfervid emotion, religious in its intensity.

Irish—the courage of dare-devilry, and the rapture of battle.

All these varieties of courage are to be found, to some extent, in each distinct national unit, and thus they cross and recross the racial boundary lines within our Army. Still, I think they represent broadly the dominant distinguishing characteristics of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish as fighting men. Thequalities lacking in one race are supplied by the others; and the harmonious whole into which all are fused provide that fire and dash, cool discipline, doggedness and high spirits for which our troops have always been noted. The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, is said to have made a most interesting estimate of the qualities of the soldiers of the three home races under his command. The Irish are best for brilliant and rapid attack, and the English are best for holding a position against heavy onslaughts. The Scottish, he thinks, are not quite so fiery and dashing in assault as the Irish, but they are more so than the English, and not quite so tenacious in holding on under tremendous fire as the English, but they are more so than the Irish.

It is this combination of attributes which enables the British Army, more perhaps than any other army, to get out of a desperate situation with superb serenity and honour. There is an old saying that it never knows when it is beaten. Soult, Marshal of France, whose brilliant tactics in the Peninsular War so often countered the consummate strategy of Wellington and the furious dash of the Irish infantry, bore testimony in a novel and vivid way to this trait of the British. "They could not be persuaded they were beaten," he said. "I always thought them bad soldiers," he also said. "I turned their right, pierced their centre, they were everywhere broken; the day was mine; and yet they did not know it and would not run."

Any other troops, in a hopeless pass, would retreat or surrender, and would do so without disgrace. There are numberless instances in British military history where our troops, faced with fearful odds, stood, magnificently stubborn, with their backs to the wall, as it were, willing to be fired at and annihilated rather than give in. Mr. John Redmond tells a story of a reply given by an English General when asked his opinionof the Irish troops. "Oh," he said, "they are magnificent fighters, but rotten soldiers. When they receive an order to retire their answer is, 'Be damned if we will.'" I may add, in confirmation of this story, that one of the incidents of the retreat from Mons, which was the subject afterwards of an inquiry by the military authorities, was the refusal of a few hundred men of a famous Irish regiment to retire from what appeared to be an untenable position, much less to surrender, one or other of which courses was suggested by their superior officer. The answer of the men was as stunning as a blow of a shillelagh, or as sharp as a bayonet thrust. "If we had thrown down our arms," one of them said to me, "we could never have shown our faces in Ireland again."

Racial distinctions are to be seen on the weak side as well as on the strong side of character. Each nationality, regarded as fighters, has therefore its own particular failing. The Irish are disposed to be foolhardy, or heedless of consequences. It is the fault of their special kind of courage. "The British soldier's indifference to danger, while it is one of his finest qualities, is often the despair of his officers," says Mr. Valentine Williams, one of the most brilliant and experienced of war correspondents, in his book,With our Army in Flanders, and he adds, "The Irish regiments are the worst. Their recklessness is proverbial." They are either insensible to the perils they run, or, what is more likely, contemptuous of them.

I have been given several examples of the ways they will needlessly expose themselves. Though they can get to the rear through the safe, if wayward, windings of the communication trenches, it is a common thing for them to climb the parapets and go straight across the open fields under fire so as to save half an hour. To go by the trenches, they will argue, doubles the time taken in getting back without halving the risk.In like manner, they prefer to go down a road swept by the enemy's artillery, which leads direct to their destination, rather than waste time by following a secure but circuitous way round. There is an Irish proverb against foolhardy risks which says it is better to be late for five minutes than dead all your lifetime, but evidently it is disregarded by Irish soldiers at the Front.

An English officer in the Royal Irish Regiment writes: "Really the courage and cheerfulness of our grand Irish boys are wonderful. They make light of their wounds, and, owing to their stamina, make rapid recoveries. The worst of them is they get very careless of the German bullets after a while and go wandering about as if they were at home." Another English officer begins an amusing story of an Irish orderly in an English regiment with the comment: "I shall never now believe that there is on this earth any man to beat the Irish for coolness and pluck." The officer was in his dug-out, and first noticed the Irishman chopping wood to make a fire for cooking purposes on a road which was made dangerous during the day by German snipers. He remarked to another officer, "By Jove! that man will get shot if he isn't careful." "No sooner had I said the word," he writes, "when a bullet splattered near his head. Then another between his legs. I saw the mud fly where the bullet struck. The man, who is the Captain's servant, turned round in the direction of the sniper and roared, 'Good shot, Kaiser. Only you might have hit me, though, for then I could have gone home.' After this the orderly proceeded to roast a fowl, singing quite unconcernedly, 'I often sigh for the silvery moon.' Another bullet came and hit him in the arm. He roared with delight; and, as he basted the fowl, exclaimed, 'Oh, I'm not going to lave you, me poor bird.' The officer shouted to him to comeinto the dug-out. He did so, but when he had licked the wound in his arm, and bound it up, he said he must get the fowl, or it would be overdone; and before the officer could utter a word of protest, he ran across the road to the fire, started singing again, though the bullets, once more, came whistling past his ear. When he returned to the dug-out with the fowl nicely roasted he remarked cheerily, 'People may say what they like, but them Germans are some marksmen, after all.'"

The whimsical side of Irish daring is further illustrated by a story of some men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers. To while away the time in the trenches one night they made bets on doing this or that. One fellow wagered a day's pay that he would go over to the German lines and come back with a maxim gun, which was known to be stationed at a particular point. In the darkness he wriggled across the intervening space on his stomach, and, coming stealthily upon the guard, stabbed him with a dagger. Then slinging the maxim across his shoulder, he crawled safely back to the trenches. "Double pay to-day!" he cried to the comrade he made the bet with. "But you haven't won," said the other. "Where's the machine's belt and ammunition?" The next night he sallied forth on his belly again, and returned with the complete outfit. The spirit of the anecdote is true to the Irish temperament, though the episode it records may be fanciful. There is no doubt that things of the kind are done very frequently by Irish soldiers. They call it "gallivanting"; and the mood takes on an air of, say, recklessness which, at times, seems very incongruous against the frightful background of the war.

The very root of courage is forgetfulness of self. Self-consciousness is, in no great degree, an Irish failing, or virtue, either, if it is to be regarded as such.Especially when he is absorbed in a martial adventure, the Irishman has no room in his mind left for a thought of being afraid, or even nervous. He likes the thrill of movement, the fierce excitement of advancing under fire for a frontal attack on the enemy, the ferocity of a contest at close grips. This is the temperament that responds blithely to the whistle—"Over the parapets!" His blood is stirred when the actual fighting begins, and as it progresses he is carried more and more out of himself. The part of warfare repugnant to him, most trying to his temper, is that of long watching and waiting. For the work of lining the trenches a different kind of courage is required. The slush, the miseries, the herding together, the cramped movements, are enough to drive all the heat out of the blood. The qualities needed for the severe and incessant strain of this duty are an immovable calm, a tireless patience, an endurance which no hardships can break down. Here the English and the Scottish shine, for by nature they are more disciplined, more submissive to authority, and they hold on to the end with an admirable blend of good-humour and doggedness. On the other hand, I am told, on the authority of an officer of the Welsh Guards, that when the Irish Guards are in the trenches they find the long dreary vigil and the boredom of inaction so insupportable that it is a common thing for parties of them to go to the officer in command and say, "Please, sir, may we go out and bomb the Germans?"

As Lord Wolseley had "the Irish drop in him," perhaps it is not to be wondered at that he discounts the old proverb that the better part of valour is discretion. "There are a great many men," he writes, "who pride themselves upon simply doing their duty and restricting themselves exclusively to its simple performance. If such a spirit took possession of anarmy no great deeds can ever be expected from it." What more can one do, it may be asked, than one's duty? Evidently Lord Wolseley would have duty on the battlefield spiced or gingered with audacity. The way the Irish look at it is well illustrated, I think, in a letter which I have seen from a private in a Devon regiment. He states that while he and some comrades were at an observation post in a trench near the enemy's line six Germans advanced close to them, and though they kept firing at them they could not drive them back. "Two fellows of the Royal Irish Rifles came up," continues the Devon man, "and asked us what was on. We told them. Then one turned round to the other and said, 'Come on, Jim, sure we'll shift them.' Then the two of them fixed their bayonets and rushed at the Germans. You would have laughed to see the six Germans running away from the two Irishmen." We have here an exhibition of the spirit of the born fighter who does not stop to count the odds or risks too cautiously. The incident recalls, in a sense, the scene depicted by Shakespeare inKing Henry Vat the camp before Harfleur, France, when Fluellen the Welshman—all shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying in enterprise—wants to argue with Captain Macmorris, the Irishman, concerning the disciplines of war. But the Irishman wants not words but work. Away with procrastination! So he bursts out, in Shakespeare's most uncouth imitation of the brogue—

"It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me: the day is hot, and the weather, and the wars and the King, and the dukes: it is no time to discourse. The town is beseeched, and the trumpet call us to the breach, and we talk, and, be Chrish, do nothing; 'tis shame for us all: so God sa' me 'tis shame to stand still; it is shame by my hand; and there is throats to be cut, and works to be done; and there isn't nothing done, so Chrish sa' me, la!"

Lord Wolseley also lays greater store on the spontaneous courage of the blood, the intuitive or unconscious form of courage, which is peculiarly Irish, than on moral courage, the courage of the mind, the courage of the man who by sheer will-power masters his nervous system and the shrinking from danger which it usually excites. In Lord Wolseley's opinion the man who is physically brave—the man of whom it may often be said that he has no sense of fear because he has no perception of danger—is the true military leader who draws his men after him to the achievement of deeds at which the world wonders.

That is the kind of courage which of old led the mailed knight, bent on a deed of derring-do, to cleave his way with sword or battle-axe to the very heart of the enemy's phalanx for the purpose of bringing their banner to the ground, or dealing them a more vital blow by slaying their commander. There may be little opportunity in trench warfare and in duels between heavy guns, both sides concealed behind the veils of distance, for such a show of spectacular bravery. War is no longer an adventure, a game or a sport. It is a state of existence, and what is needed most for its successful prosecution, so far as the individual fighter is concerned, is a devotion to duty which, however undramatic, never quails before any task to which it is set.

But the Irish soldier still longs for the struggle to the death between man and man, or, better still, of one man against a host of men. At dawn one day a young Irish soldier, inexperienced and of a romantic disposition, took his first turn in the trenches. He had come up filled with an uplifting resolve to do great things. The Germans immediately began a bombardment. The lad at first was filled with vague wonderments. He was puzzled especially by the emptiness of the battlefield. He had in mind theopposing armies moving in sight of each other, as he had seen them in manœuvres. Where was the enemy? Whence came these shells? Then the invisibility of the foe, and this mechanical, impersonal form of fighting appalled him. One of his comrades was blown to pieces by his side. A dozen others disappeared from view in an upheaval of the ground. This was a dastardly massacre and not manly warfare, thought the youth.

He could stand the ordeal no longer. He ran, bewildered, up the trench, shouting "Police! police!" "Hello, there; what are you up to?" said an officer, barring the way. "Oh, sir," cried the young soldier, "there's bloody murder going on down there below, and I am looking for the police to put an end to it."

The men of the Tyneside Irish battalions stood to arms in the assembly trenches by the Somme on the morning of July 1, 1916. Suddenly the face of the country was altered, in their sight, as if by a frightful convulsion of Nature. Their ears were stunned by shattering explosions, and looking ahead, they saw the earth in two places upheaving, hundreds of feet high, in black masses of smoke. The ground rumbled under their feet, so that many feared it would break apart and bring the parapets down on top of them. Two mines had been sprung beneath the first line of the German trenches to the south-west and north-east of the heap of masonry and timber that once had been the pretty little hamlet of La Boiselle. It was the signal to the Division, which included the Tyneside Irish, that the hour of battle had come.

The part in the general British advance allotted to the Division was first to seize the heights on which La Boiselle stood. This was a few miles beyond the town of Albert, held by the Allies, on the main road to the town of Bapaume, in the possession of the Germans. Thence they were to move forward to Bailiff's Wood, to the north-west of Contalmaison, and to a position on the cross-roads to the north-east of thatvillage. Contalmaison lay about four miles distant, almost in ruins amid its devastated orchards, and with the broken towers of its chateau standing out conspicuously at the back. One brigade had to take the first line of German trenches, other battalions of the Division had to take the second and third lines, after which the Tyneside Irish were to push on over all these lines to the farthest point of the Brigade's objective, the second ridge on which Contalmaison stood, where they were to dig themselves in and remain.

The Tyneside Irish had already had their baptism of fire, and had proved themselves not unworthy of the race from which they have sprung. Captain Davey—formerly editor of theUlster Guardian(a Radical and Home Rule journal)—records a stirring incident of St. Patrick's Day, 1916. On the night of March 15-16 a German patrol planted a German flag in front of the Tyneside Irish, half-way across "No Man's Land." It was determined to wipe out the insult. During the day snipers were allowed to amuse themselves firing at the flag, and it was not long before a lucky shot smashed the staff in two, and left the German ensign trailing in the dust. But the real work was reserved for the night. There were abundance of volunteers, but Captain Davey, with pride in his own province, selected an Ulsterman for the adventure. The man chosen was Second-Lieutenant C.J. Ervine, of Belfast. Mr. Ervine, supported by two Tyneside Irishmen, set out on the eve of St. Patrick's Day, and entered the gloomy depths of "No Man's Land." An hour passed and they returned—but without the flag. The enemy was too keenly on the alert. But in the early hours of St. Patrick's Day Lieutenant Ervine set off again—this time by himself. What happened is thus described by Captain Davey—

"For an hour and a half we waited for his return, expecting eachminute to hear the confounded patrol and machine-gun making the familiar declaration that 'We will not have it.' So keen were the sentries that even when relieved they would not leave their posts. After an hour had passed, Mr. Ervine's sergeant, getting impatient, went over the parapet and crawled to our wire so as to see better. Punctually at a quarter to three a German star-light went up, and by it we could see a dark form making in our direction. In five minutes it reached our wire, and in ten it was over the parapet. The Germans had been caught napping. In less than half an hour, while the spoiler of the Huns stood by in the crude garb of a Highlander in trench boots—for he had fallen into a ditch full of water on the way and we bring no change of clothing to the trenches—another officer and myself had erected a flagstaff in a firing-bay and nailed to it was the German ensign, whileABOVEit floated a green flag with the harp which had been presented to our company before we left home. And so we ushered in St. Patrick's Day!"

Captain Davey proceeds—

"Proudly the green banner floated out, while, of course, we flattered ourselves that the black, white and red of Prussia hung its head in shame below. It was not long before the Germans showed that they were wide awake at last, and the bullets began to sing about our newly-erected monument to Ireland and Ireland's patron saint. But it was a stout flagstaff, and though dozens of bullets struck it, nothing short of a shell could have shifted it. And there it stood all day with the Green above the Black, White and Red. It was no longer a case of 'Deutschland' but of 'Ireland Uber Alles.' I don't know if any similar sight has been seen in a British trench. I know the green flag has led Irish troops to victory in this war, but I think this is the first time the spectacle has been seen of the Irish ensign hoisted above a captured German flag. At any rate the spectacle was sufficiently novel to cause us to have admiring visitors all day long from other parts of the line."

Unfortunately there is a sad pendant to this story of St. Patrick's Day at the Front. Lieutenant Ervine, the gallant hero of the exploit, died from wounds.

The country which faced the Tyneside Irish on July 1,1916, had been an agricultural country, inhabited by peasant cultivators before the war. The ravages of war had turned it into a barren waste. The productive soil was completely swept away. Nothing remained but the raw, elemental chalk. It was bare of vegetation, save where, in isolated spots, the hemlock, the thistle, and other gross weeds, proclaimed the rankness of the ground, and also that the processes of Nature ever go on unchecked, even in a world convulsed by human hate. Not only were the villages pounded into rubbish by gun-fire, but the woods—also numerous in these parts—appeared, as seen from a distance, to be but mere clusters of gaunt and splintered tree stumps devoid of foliage. Not a human being was to be seen. Yet that apparently empty waste was infested with men—men turned into burrowing animals like the badger, or, still more, like the weasel, so noted for its ferocious and bloodthirsty disposition. In every shattered wood, in every battered hamlet, in all the slopes and dips by which the face of the country was diversified, they lie concealed, tens of thousands of them, in an elaborately and cunningly contrived system of underground defences, armed with rifles, bombs, machine-guns, trench-mortars, and ready to spring out, with all their claws and teeth displayed, on the approach of their prey, the man in khaki. But, as things turned out, the man in khaki pared the nails of Fritz, and broke his jawbone.

"Before starting, and when our guns were at their heaviest, there was a good deal of movement, up and down, and talking in the trenches. A running fire of chaff was kept up, and there was many a smart reply, for Irish wit will out even in the face of death," said Lieutenant James Hately, who was wounded in that battle. "Some of the fellows were very quiet, but none the less determined. Most of us were laughing. At the same time I felt sorry, for the thought wouldobtrude itself on my mind that many of the poor chaps I saw around me would never see home again. As for myself, curiously enough, it never occurred to me that I would even be hit. Perhaps that was because I am of a sanguine or optimistic disposition. I started off, like many another officer, with a cigarette well alight. Many of the men were puffing at their pipes. Officers and men exchanged 'good-lucks,' 'cheer-ohs' and other expressions of comradeship and encouragement."

Many were, naturally, in a serious mood. They felt too near to death for the chaff of the billets or trenches to be seemly. They thought of home, of dear ones, of life in the workshops and offices of Newcastle and Sunderland, and the gay companions of favourite sports and amusements, and, more poignant still, some recalled the last sight of the cabin in Donegal, before turning down the lane to the valley and the distant station, on their way to try their fortune in England. Thus there was some restlessness and anxiety, but the company officers in closest touch with the men agree that the general mood was eagerness to get into grips with the enemy, and relish for the adventure, without any great concern as to its results to themselves individually. When the command was given, "up and over," the Brigade, in fact, was like a huge electric battery fresh from a generating station, for its immense driving force and not less for the lively agitation of its varied emotions. Up and over the battalions went, and moved forward in successive waves, the men in single file abreast, the lines about fifty yards apart. For about two hundred yards or so nothing of moment happened. Then they came under heavy fire. Shells burst about them, shrapnel fell from above, bullets from rifle and machine-gun tore through the air, or caused hundreds of little spurts of earth to leap and dance about their feet. One ofthe men told me that the shrieking and hissing of these deadly missiles reminded him of banshees and serpents, a confused and grotesque association appropriate to a battlefield as to a nightmare.

It must not be supposed that everything was carried with a rush and a shout, at point of the bayonet. An impetuous advance is what the men would have liked best. It would be most in tune with the ardour of their feelings, and less a strain on their nerves. But there were many reasons why that was impossible. The country, in its natural formation, was upward sloping, and all dips and swells. It was broken up into enormous shell-holes and mine-craters, seamed with zigzag lines of white chalky rubble marking the German trenches, and strewn with the wire of demolished entanglements, fallen trees and the wreckage of houses. The men were heavily equipped in what is called fighting order. They carried haversacks, water-bottles, gas-helmets, bandoliers filled with cartridges, as well as rifles and bayonets. Some were additionally burdened with bombs and hand grenades. Behind them came the working parties with entrenching tools, such as picks and shovels. Accordingly, the physical labour of the advance alone was tremendous. It would have been stiff and toilsome work for the strongest and most active, even if there had been no storm of shot and shell to face besides. There was, furthermore, the danger in a too hasty progress of plunging headlong into the curtain of high explosives which the artillery, firing from miles behind, hung along the front of the infantry, lifting it and moving it forward as the lines were seen to advance.

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 horrorunspeakable—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 thepart 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 theBritish 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—

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