CHAPTER III

CONTEST FOR THE CHANNEL COAST

IMPETUOUS DASH OF LEINSTERS AND ROYAL IRISH, AND GRIM TENACITY OF IRISH GUARDS AND RIFLES

It had become evident that the design of the Germans, then hacking their way through Belgium, was to reach Calais and Boulogne so as to cut the direct communication of the British with the Channel coast of Belgium and France. With the view of frustrating these plans, Sir John French, early in October, withdrew his forces from the orchards and woodlands by the banks of the Aisne to French Flanders, on the north-west, a mingled industrial and agricultural country. The British Commander had also hoped to be in time to outflank the right wing of the enemy, but in this he was disappointed by the fall of Antwerp, which enabled the Germans to sweep quickly round to Ostend, higher up the Belgian coast.

The British lines now ran, first from the historic French city of St. Omer in a south-easterly direction to the smaller towns of Bethune, Givenchy, and La Bassee, towards the great French manufacturing city of Lille, prominent on the landscape with its forest of tall chimneys; and, secondly, from St. Omer again north to Ypres, the ancient and beautiful capital of Flanders. Here, for months to come, many most desperate and critical battles were to be fought, in an extraordinary tangle of railways, canals, roads, industrial villages, mills, breweries, dyeworks, machine-shops, brick-fields, lime-kilns, and intervening patches of intensive agriculture--the most densely crowded area in the world--with the ultimate result that the advance of the Germans to the Channel coast was stopped by impregnable lines of British trenches.

In these operations both the 1st and 2nd battalions of the Leinsters, the Connaught Rangers, the Irish Rifles, the Irish Fusiliers, and the Irish Regiment took part, with the 2nd battalions of the Dublins, Munsters, and Inniskillings, whose first battalions--as we shall see later--were destined for more terrible enterprises against the Turks at the Dardanelles. It is not easy to get from the official despatches the correct proportion of the main events in France and Flanders, not to speak of being able, by the impersonal generalities of these documents, rightly to estimate the worth of the services of particular battalions. My purpose, therefore, is to attempt to depict the war on the Western Front, as seen through the eyes, not of the commanders, but of the men in the ranks and the regimental officers, and in doing so I confine myself necessarily to episodes happening here and there over the far-spreading field of conflict in which Irish regiments and individual Irish soldiers distinguished themselves.

There were two tremendous and prolonged struggles for the possession of Ypres. The chief battle, that of Ypres-Armentieres, lasted from October 17th to November 15th, 1914. One of the first movements of the British was to dislodge the enemy from positions they held near Lille. In these engagements national impetuosity led to the advance of two Irish battalions too far without supports, and their practical annihilation. On October 18th the 2nd Leinster Regiment was part of a Division which chased the Germans out of the French town of Hazebrouck, about twenty-five miles north-west of Lille, and pursued them beyond Armentieres, a town on the river Lys, within nine miles of Lille. The Leinsters were about a mile in advance of the main body. They pushed on to a French village called Premesque, still nearer to Lille, and there entrenched, when the Germans surrounded them. For a day and a half the Leinsters held out until they were relieved by French troops. The French Commander thanked them for saving the village, but it cost the battalion more than 500 men and officers.

At the same time another Irish battalion was engaged on a similar enterprise in the same field of operations with more disastrous results. "On October 19th," says Sir John French in his despatch on the battle of Ypres-Armentieres, "the Royal Irish Regiment, under Major Daniell, stormed the village of Le Pilly, which they held and entrenched. On the 20th, however, they were cut off and surrounded, suffering heavy losses." As the possession of Le Pilly threatened their communications between La Bassee and Lille, the Germans made a determined effort to capture it. It was evident to the Royal Irish that their position was most precarious. They held on, however, and beat off a succession of attacks, hoping that assistance would come before they were completely isolated. German riflemen crept up and ensconced themselves in farm buildings on the outskirts of the village on one side; and machine-guns were brought to a little wood on the other, so that the Royal Irish were enfiladed to the left and right.

The fight was still going on when darkness fell. "All night we could hear the firing up there," writes Gunner P. Hall, Royal Field Artillery, who was with his battery on a hill some miles from Le Pilly; "and desperate efforts were made by our tired troops to regain the ground the Royal Irish had left uncovered, but the job was too big for men so exhausted as they were." What exactly had happened was but a matter for surmise. For hours after the village had been surrounded by the Germans the crackle of rifles and the rapid volleying of the machine-guns told that the Royal Irish were yet unsubdued. Then there came an ominous silence; and in the early hours of the morning a few survivors of the battalion staggered more dead than alive into the British camp. "They got a rousing cheer, for we had given them all up as lost," says Gunner Hall. For the rest, some weeks later, a long official list of names of the Royal Irish Regiment appeared under the heading "missing." But the vast majority of them will never be found until the Day of Judgment.

The Royal Irish Regiment had ceased to exist as a fighting force. The battalion may be said to have been defeated. The enemy, no doubt, boasted of it as such. But they set thus early in the war a shining example of dash, resolution, and endurance in facing fearful odds which must have had as much moral effect as a victory to our arms.

The most terrific phase of the great battle was from October 29th to November 2nd, immediately to the south of Ypres, east and west; and the most critical hours were, as Sir John French says, on October 31st when the Germans broke through the British lines at Gheluvelt, a village on the road leading from Ypres south-east to Menin. On November 2nd the Germans were everywhere repulsed. The Brigadier-General, Lord Cavan, commanding the 4th (Guards) Brigade, paid the following remarkable tribute to the work of the Irish Guards on that momentous occasion in a letter to the Officer Commanding the battalion, Colonel Proby:--

"I want you to convey to every man in the battalion that I consider that the safety of the right flank of the British section depended entirely on their staunchness after the disastrous day, November 1st. Those of them that were left have made history, and I can never thank them enough for the way in which they recovered themselves, and showed to the enemy that Irish Guards must be reckoned with, however hard hit."

Lord Cavan, in a report dated November 7th, further states:--"On October 31st, November 1st and 6th, the Irish Guards lost 16 officers and 597 other ranks in disputing 200 yards of ground with superior forces." Private Stephen Shaughnessy supplies an account of the incidents of November 6th, when the Irish Guards were overwhelmed. He says:--"At this time the enemy's strength was two to one. We endeavoured to hold the enemy by machine-guns and rifle fire, until they succeeded in penetrating the French line about two or three miles on our right, and managed to come behind our rear line." Then he gives an instance of the desperate duels that were fought between the slowly retiring Irish and the hotly pressing Germans. "While retreating," he says, "Captain King-Harman was the only officer I saw alive. He was then standing up and firing with his revolver on the Germans, who were only 60 yards away. I, or anyone else in our battalion, did not see him alive afterwards." He adds:--"The only comrade I found within reasonable distance was Private Birmingham, of Clonmel, formerly of the Royal Irish Constabulary. We discussed the situation. He got over the trench to fall back to the troops reforming in our rear. As I was getting out of the trench, a rifle bullet came through my great coat, penetrated my cardigan jacket without touching my body. We formed up again, and were reinforced by the Life Guards, notwithstanding which we were unable to regain our lost territory. When darkness came, we were brought back a mile behind the line for a rest and refreshments. The roll was called, and only 47 of the battalion answered."

The worst was over; and Sir John French indirectly, at least, extols the Irish Guards for helping to avert a disaster, by his praise of their Brigade Commander, Lord Cavan. In his despatch on the Battle of Ypres-Armentieres, the Field-Marshal says:--"The First Corps Commander (Sir Douglas Haig) informs me that on many occasions Brigadier-General the Earl of Cavan, commanding the 4th Guards Brigade, was conspicuous for the skill, coolness, and courage with which he led his troops, and for the successful manner in which he dealt with many critical situations."

Another Irish regiment to obtain one of these rare and therefore much coveted recognitions by a Commander of an Army Corps was the Royal Irish Rifles, who were fighting round the village of Neuve Chapelle, to the south, from October 25th to October 27th. "During an attack on the 7th Infantry Brigade," runs an order issued by Sir H. Smith-Dorrien, the Commander of the 2nd Corps, "the enemy came to close quarters with the Royal Irish Rifles, who repulsed them with great gallantry with the bayonet. The Commander wishes to compliment the regiment on its splendid feat, and directs that all battalions shall be informed of the circumstances of his high appreciation of the gallantry displayed." On October 27th the Germans gained possession of the northern part of the village, but towards evening the British had partially recovered the lost ground when fresh hostile reinforcements were brought up, and the entire village was captured by the enemy. The Germans would have made a bigger advance were it not for the gallant stand of the Irish Rifles against overwhelming odds.

A sergeant of the battalion supplies some details of the feat:--"One morning after we had had several days of awful shelling in the trenches the Germans came to attack us. They advanced into view through the rain and mist, and though they were ten times our strength we held our ground until the necessary dispositions could be made in other parts of the field to withstand their onslaught." As will be seen from many an incident in the course of this narrative the Irish fight best when it comes to the real crisis--the two antagonists engaged in close and relentless contest, man to man and bayonet to bayonet. At first it was furious smithing, gleaming thrust and parry, stab and hack, hack and stab, with the Irish in the trenches and the Germans above; and, in the end, it was the Germans running away and the Irish speeding their departure with rifle fire. "We did not think there was anything very wonderful about what we did," says the sergeant modestly, "but everyone went wild about it. One staff officer said we ought all to have two Victoria Crosses each, and we had the satisfaction of being splendidly praised by the General in Command."

"Nothing," says Napier in his "Peninsular War," "so startled the French soldiery as the wild yell with which the Irish regiments sprang to the charge." We are also told by Napier that at Barrosa and Bussaco the heroes of Marengo and Austerlitz reeled before the thunder shout of _Faugh-a-Ballagh_ ("Clear the Way") raised by the Royal Irish Fusiliers and the Connaught Rangers. What is more likely is that the French gave way before the irresistible bayonet charge that swept like a flame in the thunder of that haughty battle-cry. The Great War shows that both these historic regiments maintain the ancient tradition of raising a wild, terrific yell when they dash forward, a yell which sends the creeps down the back, and impels the foe irresistibly to turn and fly for fear of what is to follow.

The Irish Fusiliers were the first to enter Armentieres (on the occasion that the Leinsters impetuously pushed forward to Premesque), and they did so shouting their old Irish slogan, _Faugh-a-Ballagh_, and enforcing it by driving the enemy from their positions behind every tree and at every turn on the road leading into the town. Private H. Dawson, a West port boy in the 1st Connaught Rangers, tells how a company of the battalion frightened a big force of Germans out of their trenches, and out of their senses also, no doubt, by the blood-curdling yells they gave vent to as they advanced with the bayonet. It was on the night of November 4th, 1914, in the neighbourhood of Neuve Chapelle. The company was ordered to attack the German trenches, two platoons to do the fighting and the two others to follow after with shovels, to fill in the trenches, if they were taken. "At midnight," writes Private Dawson, "we moved forward with such cheers, shouts, and cries that the Germans, thinking that a whole brigade was advancing, evacuated the trenches and fled. The moon was shining, and when the Germans afterwards saw the handful of men that routed them they returned in greatly increased numbers and made a murderous onslaught on us."

They can sing, too, as they advance, these Connaught Rangers, as Private Robert McGregor of the Gordon Highlanders relates in a graphic letter to his father at Parkhead, Scotland. On December 26th, 1914, the Germans attacked the trenches in front of them at a particular point. The Gordons who held the trenches got out to meet the enemy as they came on in the open. There was a close fight with varying fortunes, but the Germans were reinforced, and as there were only about 170 of the Gordons left it seemed as if they were bound to be annihilated.

"But just at that moment," writes Private McGregor, "we heard the sound of singing, and the song was 'God Save Ireland.' It was the Connaught Rangers coming to our relief. Well, I have seen some reckless Irishmen in my time, but nothing to match the recklessness and daring of these gallant Rangers. They took the Germans on the left flank. The Germans now probably numbered about 2,000 against 800 Connaughts and 170 of us, but were they 50,000 I don't believe in my soul they could have stood before the Irish. The Connaughts simply were irresistible, and all the time they kept singing 'God Save Ireland.' One huge red-haired son of Erin having broken his rifle got possession of a German officer's sword, and everything that came in the way of this giant went down. I thought of Wallace. Four hundred and seventy Huns were killed and wounded, and we took 70 prisoners. Had it not been for the Irish I wouldn't be writing this, and when it comes to a hand-to-hand job there is nothing in the whole British Army to approach them. God save Ireland and Irishmen."