CHAPTER I

THE RETREAT FROM MONS

HOW THE MUNSTERS SAVED THE GUNS AND GOT RINGED ROUND WITH FIRE

Regular battalions of all the Irish regiments were included in the British Expeditionary Force which left for France, at the outbreak of war, in the early weeks of August, 1914. For its size it was the finest Army that the world has ever seen, in equipment, discipline, and martial ardour. It was commanded by Field-Marshal Sir John French, the scion of an Irish family long settled in Roscommon, of which Lord De Freyne is the head, and a soldier who made a brilliant reputation as a cavalry leader in the South African War.

On the morning of Sunday, August 23rd, two of the three Army Corps which composed the Force were extended along a front of twenty-five miles east and west of Mons, a Belgian town of 25,000 inhabitants and the centre of coal mining, iron, and glass works. In the First Corps, under Sir Douglas Haig, were the 1st Irish Guards, the 2nd Munster Fusiliers, and the 2nd Connaught Rangers. The Second Corps, under Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, included the 2nd Irish Rifles and the 2nd Royal Irish Regiment. The 4th Royal Irish Dragoons were with the cavalry. An Irish trooper of that regiment on outpost duty had the distinction of opening the Great War between England and Germany by firing the first shot, which brought down a Uhlan officer, in the early hours of Saturday, August 22nd, fifteen miles beyond Mons, on the road to Brussels.

The Battle of Mons, the first encounter in force between the British and the Germans, commenced at twenty minutes to one o'clock on Sunday, August 23rd. Not a German was then in sight. But an enemy aeroplane hovered overhead, like a hawk peering for prey in the fields and hedges, and there was a burst of shrapnel over the British lines, followed by the booming of distant artillery. An attack so soon was unexpected. The bells of Mons had been ringing for the Sunday services, as usual, all the morning, and the Cathedral was crowded with worshippers at the High Mass when the sound of the German guns broke startlingly in upon their devotions. It was a beautiful day, and many of the men in one of the Irish regiments billeted in a farmyard close to the town were bare but for their trousers--availing themselves of the warm sunshine to wash and dry their shirts and socks after their long tramp in France and Belgium--when the bugles rang out "Stand to arms." The Germans were unseen, but having on Saturday beaten the French at Charleroi--to the British right--they were advancing in overwhelming numbers, under Von Kluck, in the cover of the woods, railway embankments and hedgerows. Soon the sharp crackle of musketry was added to the cannonading of the guns, and the sabre and lance of cavalry gleamed in the sun.

The first of the Irish regiments to exchange shots with the enemy's infantry were the 2nd Rifles, who suffered severely, holding a position in the suburbs of Mons. The 2nd Royal Irish Regiment defended a village behind the town, and on the main road leading south. A Gordon Highlander named Smiley says the Irish were "fearfully cut up" when his company, about two miles behind, were directed to advance to their relief. The Gordons crept up the road, and reached the trenches of the Irish at dusk. Another Gordon says:--"When we got to the trenches the scene was terrible. The Irish were unprepared for the sudden attack. They were having dinner when the Germans opened on them, and their dead and wounded were lying all around."

The Irish Guards, who lay to the east of Mons, on the British right, had, as the regiment's first experience of warfare, to meet the shock of a cavalry charge. One of the most popular recruiting posters in the early days of the war was a picture of a comical-looking Tommy on the field of battle. He was represented striking a match to light his pipe, and saying, with a devil-may-care glint in his roguish eye, "Half a mo', Kaiser," while German horsemen in the background were charging towards him. The idea was suggested to the artist by an incident in the encounter between the Irish Guards and the Germans at Mons. "I am told," says an English newspaper correspondent, "that when the German cavalry were only 200 yards away one Irish Guardsman momentarily put down his rifle and begged a cigarette of a comrade, which he coolly lit. Then they 'prepared to receive cavalry,' and did it in better order and with much less excitement than if they had been about to witness the finish of a St. Leger." In this we have an example of the easy bearing in the presence of the advancing foe for which, by all accounts, the Irish are remarkable. Such imperturbability springs not so much from contempt of the enemy, as from confidence in their own prowess. The two front ranks were kneeling, and presenting a double row of steel. Their virgin bayonets, seen now for the first time on a field of battle, glittered as sharp and terrible as if they had around them the halo of a hundred victories. Standing behind were two other ranks who poured a stream of rifle fire into the German horsemen. So the Irish Guards met the whirlwind of galloping horses and flashing swords, and drove back the survivors in a ragged, straggling line. They were eager to start winning battle honours for their banners, and Mons is a brilliant opening of a list that promises to be lengthy and crowded before this Great War terminates.

Then came the order for a general retreat of the British forces. In the evening Sir John French found out that he was vastly outnumbered in men and guns--250,000 Germans to 82,000 British--and saw that if his Army were to escape being outflanked and annihilated they must retire until they got behind some substantial line of natural defence which they could hope to hold against such fearful odds.

The retreat lasted twelve days. It was one long drawn-out rearguard action. The fighting took place along a line of about twenty-five miles and backwards for a distance of about eighty miles, which was covered by forced marches at night as well as by day. Hardly for an hour were the British permitted any rest or respite. They were continually harassed by enormous masses of the enemy who by thundering at their heels and striking at their flanks sought to turn the retreat into a rout. In that the Germans completely failed. The retirement was a splendid military achievement. It was also an episode of intense dramatic interest, and though I am necessarily concerned only with the part taken by the Irish regiments in the ordeal, it was made memorable for all time by feats of unparalleled heroism and endurance by every arm of the Service, and each and all of the nationalities represented in it.

The British rearguard frequently gave battle to their pursuers, holding them in check or sending them staggering back with the vehemence of the blow. On Wednesday, August 26th, the first stand was made on the Cambrai--Le Cateau--Landrecies line. Here it was that the 2nd Connaught Rangers gave the Germans another unpleasant taste of the fighting quality of the Irish. "It was a grand time we had, and I wouldn't have missed it for lashin's of money," says a private of the regiment in a racy account of the episode. "The Germans kept pressing our rearguard all the time. They were at least five to one, and we were in danger of being cut off. At last the Colonel could stand it no longer, so the word was passed round that we were to give them hell and all. 'Rangers of Connaught,' says he, 'the eyes of all Ireland are on you to-day, and I know you never could disgrace the old country by allowing Germans to beat you while you have arms in your hands and hearts in your breasts. Up, then, and at them, and if you don't give them the soundest thrashing they ever got you needn't look me in the face again in this world--or the next!' And we went for them with just what you would know of a prayer to the Mother of Our Lord to be merciful to the loved ones at home if we should fall in the fight. We charged through and through them until they broke and ran like frightened hares in terror of hounds."

That same day one Division of the Third Army Corps was brought hurriedly up by train to Le Cateau. In it were three other Irish regiments--1st Irish Fusiliers, 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, and 2nd Inniskilling Fusiliers. They went straight into action to protect one of the flanks of the resumed retirement. In a fight near Le Cateau the Inniskillings lost many officers and men. The Dublins were at Cambrai. They appear to have been uproariously and outrageously Irish. A few weeks later the London correspondent of the _Manchester Guardian_ gave some interesting extracts from a letter written by an English officer of the Dublins. He said that while the men were waiting for the Germans they sang "The Wearing of the Green" and "God Save Ireland." One of the officers remarked, by way of a joke, "We have heard enough all day of your damned Fenian songs, boys; give us something else." The boys then struck up, the officer says, a song called "Dear Old Ireland." This ballad, by T.D. Sullivan, tells in stirring verses and chorus, set to a rousing air, of some of the habits and customs of Ireland, and of the affection she inspires. One verse runs:--

"We've seen the wedding, and the wake, the pattern and the fair, The well-knit frames at the grand old games in the kindly Irish air; The loud 'Hurroo,' we've heard it, too; and the thundering 'Clear the way!' Ah, dear old Ireland, gay old Ireland, Ireland, boys, hurrah."

It was not the first time that the song was heard on a field of battle. On that night in December, 1863, in the American Civil War, when the Federals and Confederates were bivouacked on the banks of the Rappahannock awaiting the dawn to commence the bloody fight for Fredericksburg, an Irish regiment in the service of the North sang the song as they sat by their camp fires. Was that a tremendous echo that came across the river?--

"For Ireland, boys, hurrah; for Ireland, boys, hurrah! Here's dear old Ireland; fond old Ireland-- Ireland, boys, hurrah!"

The Irishmen of the North listened intently. Then it came upon them with wild surprise that the chorus had been taken up by an Irish regiment in the service of the South!

The officers of the Dublin Fusiliers at Cambrai were not scandalised, nor did they put on a severe air, when they heard these rebelly songs, survivals of a dead past, and yet deeply moving for the national memories clustering round them. On the contrary, like good regimental officers, they welcomed them, as they would probably have welcomed anything that helped to raise the hearts of their men in their hour of trial. "As my old brother-officer observes," says the writer of the letter, "'These confounded Fenians can fight. Four times within one hour my blackguards drove a charge home with the bayonet.'"

That day was a most critical one for the British. The Second Army Corps was streaming southwards. But Von Kluck was making a determined effort to outflank and envelop the First Army Corps. The Corps escaped the net with the loss of one of their finest regiments, the 2nd Munster Fusiliers, killed, wounded, and made prisoners. It was the most tragic event of the retreat. A day or two previously the Munsters were entrenched behind six guns of Field Artillery. Uhlans swept down upon the battery and killed the gunners. Then two companies of the Munsters charged with fixed bayonets, and put the Germans to flight. But what was to be done with the guns? All the horses had been killed, and time was pressing. Were the guns to be lost after all? The thought never entered into the heads of the Munsters. By putting themselves into harness, with a few light cavalry horses which they had captured from the Uhlans, they pulled the guns away. "As we had not enough horses," said a wounded Munster in hospital at Tralee, "we made mules of ourselves, for we were not such asses as to leave the guns to the enemy." The guns were brought back five miles, where horses were available to relieve the Munsters.

On the night of August 26th the regiment were rearguard to the retiring First Army. They held two cross-roads between Chapeau Rouge to the north, and Fesney to the south, and had orders to keep watch over these important positions until they got word to fall back. It is said the word was sent not once, but thrice--the first during the night--but only one reached them the following afternoon, and then it was too late. The other despatch-riders lost their way, or were shot or made prisoners. The result was that the Munsters were left in the lurch while the mass of the First Corps, unaware of their comrades' desperate position, were hurrying away to the south. At dawn, as the regiment lay concealed behind the hedgerows and in the beet fields of the farmsteads and in the orchards laden with fruit, they were discovered by a German patrol. The enemy at once surrounded them on three sides and attacked with vastly superior forces. "The Germans came at us from all points, horse, foot and artillery and all," said one of the survivors, "and the air was raving with shouting, screaming men waving swords and rifles and blazing away at us like blue murder." To add to their troubles the rain was falling in torrents, drenching the men to the skin.

The officers decided to withdraw to the village of Etreux, a few miles back, where they hoped to find the shelter of a position of defence which might help them to hold up the Germans, despite the terrific odds on the side of the enemy. The battalion retired by companies--two companies covering the withdrawal of one another in turns. In fighting these rearguard actions the men sought cover wherever they could find it--crouching in farm buildings, and behind wagons, walls, and heaps of stones, firing at the ever-advancing Germans. The Munsters were grimly silent until it came to bayonet fighting between khaki and grey, and then the air was rent with yells of rage and hate, shrieks of pain, and the low wailing sobbing of the Irish keen.

During the retirement a despatch-rider reached the Munsters. He had a message for them to retire "at once." It was not timed, but it was probably the last of the three orders sent from Headquarters, and was therefore written hurriedly. It seems also to have been written many hours before it was delivered, as the bearer said he had been compelled to hide for a long time from the Germans. But it was too late. The Munsters were encircled by a ring of fire. The enemy had worked round to their rear and now barred the way to the village of Etreux. Major Paul Charrier, described as a hearty, genial Kerryman, was in command of the Munsters. Three times he gallantly led his men in an attack upon the key of the German position, a large mansion that was loopholed and turned into a fortress. He was twice wounded, yet he continued to lead, and in the last assault he fell to rise no more with a bullet in his head. Eight other officers were also dead. Six of the survivors were disabled. Between four and five hundred of the rank and file were killed or wounded. Ammunition was run out. Not another cartridge was to be found by the men in the bandoliers of their dead and dying comrades. It was then 9 p.m. The men listened for sounds of approaching relief, but none was heard. There was nothing left for the remnant of the battalion, reduced to four officers and 256 non-commissioned officers and men, but to surrender. Only 155 men got out of the trap, and most of these belonged to the regimental transport. It came out afterwards that the Munsters had been engaged against seven battalions of German infantry, three batteries of artillery, many cavalry, and many Maxim guns.

So impressed were the Germans by the bravery of those Irish lads that they paid every respect to the living and the dead. Captain H.S. Jervis, the senior surviving officer, in letters written to the bereaved wives and mothers of his fellows, states that the next day the Germans allowed him to send out a burial party of his own men. "They found Paul Charrier lying as he had fallen, head towards the enemy," he tells Mrs. Charrier. "The sergeant told me he looked as if he were asleep. They buried him, with eight other officers of the regiment, in a grave separate from the men." More than that, when the Germans learnt that their prisoners were Irish and Catholic they sent for one of their own Catholic chaplains to read the service for the dead at the graveside of the rank and file.

Sir Conan Doyle, in a lecture on "The Great Battles of the War," delivered in London, made the remark: "If ever surrender was justifiable it was so in these circumstances." That was said before full and authentic reports of what happened, including the composition of the overwhelming forces that surrounded the Munsters, had come from the officers imprisoned in Germany, which will be found in a little pamphlet called "The Munsters," written by Mrs. Victor Rickard, the widow of a brave man who afterwards commanded the battalion and fell at Rue Du Bois. The military lesson of the episode, in the opinion of Conan Doyle, is that great attention should be paid to making known the real situation to troops operating at a distance, and the miscarriage of the messages sent to the Munsters makes pertinent the telling here of a story, on the authority of a wounded corporal of the Gloucestershire Regiment, of a splendid example of Irish resolution and endurance in the operations on the Aisne later on in September:--

"Orders had to be given to a battalion holding an advanced position to fall back. The only way was to send a man with orders through a murderous fire. Volunteers were asked for from the Royal Irish Fusiliers. All wanted to go, but by tossing for it a selection was made at last. He was a shock-headed lad who did not look as if there was much in him, but he had grit. Ducking his head in a way that made us laugh, he rushed into the hail of shot and shell. He cleared the first hundred yards without being hit; but in the second they brought him down. He rose again and struggled on for a few minutes, was hit once more, and then staggered a bit before finally collapsing.

"Two more men of the Irish Fusiliers dashed into the fire and rushed across while the Germans were doing their best to pink them. One picked up the wounded lad and started back to the trenches, and the other, taking the despatch, ran ahead. Just as the wounded man and his mate were within a few yards of our trenches and we were cheering them, there came another hail of bullets, and both went down dead. Meanwhile, the man with the despatch was racing for all he was worth. He got through all right till the last lap, when he was brought down. He was seen from the other trenches, and half a dozen men ran to his aid. They were all shot; but the man with the message was now crawling towards the battalion in danger. With assistance he reached them and the object was gained; they were withdrawn to a new position before the Germans succeeded in their plan of cutting them off."

By August 29th the British had fallen back to the line Compiegne-Soissons, before the German hordes. The weather generally was intensely hot, making the retreat still more trying to the Army. The situation was further complicated by the flight southwards of almost the entire population, thronging and blocking the roads. When the British fell back the inhabitants had just commenced the saving of the harvest which, undreaming of war, they had tended with solicitude and saw growing with joy. But the corn and grass were to be garnered by a dissolute and predatory foreign soldiery whose hands, in many instances, were red with the innocent blood of those who had sown them. So, accompanied by tens of thousands of fugitives--wailing women and children for the most part, distracted by the dread and terror of this calamity which had so incomprehensibly fallen upon them--the British hastened on towards Paris.

On Tuesday, September 1st, the 4th Guards Brigade--Grenadiers, Coldstreams, and Irish--had to sustain at Villers-Cotterets the brunt of another of these fierce onslaughts which the Germans delivered against such of the British troops as attempted to stem the pursuit. The Brigade had had little rest since the commencement of the retreat with the enemy ever at their heels. Only the day before, August 31st, the Irish Guards had the longest and most trying of their forced marches. Hardy, wiry, and fleet-footed, they covered thirty-five miles with very little food, as their transport had to keep far in advance of the column to avoid capture. At a parade of the battalion on the roadside at Villers-Cotterets on the morning of September 1st, the commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Morris, addressing them on horseback, congratulated his men on their grit and vitality. He made the very interesting statement that whilst a substantial percentage of the other regiments in the Guards' Brigade had succumbed to the heat and fatigue of the march, only five men of the Irish Guards had fallen out from exhaustion.

Then all of a sudden, as the tale is told by Private Stephen Shaughnessy of Tuam, the men got orders to "Fix bayonets." The news was brought that the Germans were approaching under cover of the woods which abound in this part of France. Colonel Morris rode through the ranks, shouting, "Irish Guards, form up! Remember you are Irishmen!" The Irish Guards entered one of the woods and almost immediately caught sight of the Germans. Both sides blazed away at one another with the rifle, through the trees and undergrowth, and frequently came into grips at the point of the bayonet. Sergeant Patrick Joseph Bennett, in a letter to his sister at Thurles, gives another instance of the unruffled mood and quiet confidence of the men during the three hours of fighting in the wood. "The Irish boys," he says, "were very cool when the shots were flying round us. They were calmly picking blackberries." In the end the Germans were beaten off, but at the heavy loss to the Irish of 150 of the rank and file and several of the officers. Morris was among the fallen. The last that Private Shaughnessy saw of the Colonel was on the road beside the wood giving orders, mounted on horseback and smoking a cigarette. He was the younger son of Lord Morris and Killanin, a famous Irish judge and humorist, and brother and heir-presumptive of Lord Killanin. He left a son, Michael, who was born ten days before his father left for the Front, and was just a month old when his father fell on the field of honour. Colonel Morris was of the finest type of soldier, and was long mourned by the regiment.

A good idea of the dangers and hardships of the retreat, apart from the fighting, and also the humours which relieved it, is given by a private of the 2nd Irish Rifles:--"It wasn't the fault of the Germans if we got away alive. They were after us night and day," he says. The greatest trouble of the regiment was to find their way through woods and strange country by night. "We got on like the Babes in the Wood, holding each other's hands, so as not to lose touch with each other. We dare not light a match or make a sound that would betray our presence, and when we saw lights in the distance twinkling like will-o'-the-wisps, we had to send our scouts to find out the meaning before we approached." Sometimes it was the Germans, and then the scouts did not get back, and the regiment had to dodge the enemy as best they could. "Once when they were looking for us their searchlight played in the open just where we were, only we were in the shade, and if we had moved another inch our shadows would have been seen. We heard them talking and shouting to each other, but they gave no chase, thinking we had got away in another direction. We had no food for hours, except such fruit as we could pick up on the way." Does it not read as if the pursuers and the pursued were playing some monstrous game of hide-and-seek?

By September 3rd the Marne was crossed, and the long retreat of the British was brought to an end without any grave disaster. French had out-generalled and out-marched Von Kluck. But the Germans were also over the river by the 5th and practically at the gates of Paris. The British Army then fell back upon the Seine. So black did the prospect appear that the French Government and Legislature thought it prudent to remove from Paris to Bordeaux.