Part 1

THE STORY OF THE MUNSTERS

THE STORY OF THE MUNSTERS

AT

ETREUX, FESTUBERT, RUE DU BOIS AND HULLOCH

BY

MRS. VICTOR RICKARD

AUTHOR OF "DREGS," "THE LIGHT ABOVE THE CROSSROADS," "THE FRANTIC BOAST," "THE FIRE OF GREEN BOUGHS"

_WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY_

LORD DUNRAVEN

_Honorary Colonel, 5th Royal Munster Fusiliers_

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

MCMXVIII

DEDICATED TO VICTOR RICKARD AND HIS COMRADES IN ALL RANKS OF THE MUNSTER FUSILIERS, WHO FOUGHT AND FELL IN THE GREAT WAR, 1914-15

* * * * *

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake."

* * * * *

The shamrock, which forms part of the cap badge of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, was first introduced, in February 1915, by Lieut.-Colonel Rickard, in the Second Battalion, with the object of giving a distinctively Irish emblem to all ranks of the Regiment. It is now worn by all the battalions of the Munsters.

PREFACE

I should like to express my thanks to the officers of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, and also to the friends and relatives who have helped me to collect and arrange this book. In the following accounts of the engagements of Etreux, Festubert, Rue du Bois and Hulloch, I do not wish in any sense to appear as an historian; that task awaits far abler and more qualified hands. What follows has been threaded together as a little tribute to the men who gave their lives for an Ideal, and who were brave soldiers in the Great War.

The first three chapters of this book appeared in _New Ireland_ during the summer of 1915, and were shortly afterwards republished by that paper, together with the supplementary letters, as _The Story of the Munsters_. A second impression was sold out by the end of the year, since when no copies of the book have been obtainable. The new features of the present edition are the historical Introduction specially written by Lord Dunraven, to whom my best thanks are due, and the four pictures and the account of the Munsters at Hulloch which have already appeared in _The Sphere_. Its Editor, Mr. Clement Shorter, has a special claim to the lasting gratitude of the Munster Fusiliers for the deep interest he has always shown in all records of the Regiment; and it is by his permission that the illustrations, which add incalculably to the slender story itself, are here reproduced. My thanks are also offered to Mr. Geddes, who has designed the colour plate on the cover, and brought into the book a sense of the traditions which surround the regimental flags.

L. RICKARD.

INTRODUCTION

The origin of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, like that of those other great Irish Regiments, the Dublins and the Leinsters, is inextricably bound up with those great movements of Imperial expansion which took place in the eighteenth century. Of the Leinsters one battalion was originally raised in Canada and another in India. Both regular battalions of the Dublins were raised in India. Like them, the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Royal Munsters (before the Caldwell reconstruction the 101st and 104th Foot) were originally regiments in the army of the East India Company, raised out of British-born volunteers in India and only taken over as part of the British Army when the control of India passed from the Company to the Crown. It is for this reason that on the grenade which, in common with other Fusilier battalions, is worn by the Munsters the royal tiger of India is superimposed.

Until the present war, with the exception of the notable service performed by the 1st Battalion in South Africa, all the battle honours of the Regiment come from India or the surrounding countries. The regimental colours record service for the 1st Battalion at the following actions: Plassey, Condore, Masulipatam, Badara, Buxar, Rohilcund, Carnatic, Sholinghur, Guzerat, Deig, Bhurtpore, Afghanistan, Ghuznee, Ferozeshah, Sobraon, Pegu, Delhi, Lucknow and Burmah; while for the 2nd Battalion, raised as we shall see eighty years after the first, there are the Punjaub, Chillianwallah, Goojerat, Pegu and Delhi. To trace these records in detail would be to write the history of the steps by which we acquired our Indian Empire. They explain sufficiently (with the regimental origin in the Company's forces) why there were no Munsters in the Napoleonic wars.

The 1st Battalion dates its corporate existence from the 22nd December, 1756, when Clive, who had just returned to India and was about to begin the most glorious epoch of his career, raised it under the title of the Bengal European Regiment. The Regiment fought in his army at Plassey and Condore and in every action of that war up to the great victory of Buxar in October 1764. In 1779 it was sent to the Presidency of Madras and under Eyre Coote fought at Windeywash; in 1794 it took part under Abercrombey in the Rohilla wars; it was present (being known then, after the fashion of the India Army, by the name of its Colonel-- Clark's Corps) at the occupation of Macao in 1808. In 1839 it served in Afghanistan, when out of volunteers for it the 104th Regiment (now the 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers) was formed. It served with distinction in the Sikh War, and as a reward for its services was raised to the dignity of a fusilier corps. The colours carried by the Regiment at this period hang in Winchester Cathedral. It went through all the fiercest engagements of the Mutiny and was present at the siege and capture of Lucknow. In 1861 it went under the Crown and became the 101st Regiment (Royal Bengal Fusiliers). From 1868 to 1874 it served in England, then abroad again, and in 1883 became the 1st Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers. In 1899 it had the distinction of being sent to South Africa from Fermoy before mobilisation, being the first home regiment to go out to the war. It served with great distinction in Lord Methuen's force at Belmont, and afterwards on the march to Pretoria, and in the latter period of the war supplied a mounted infantry battalion.

The history of the 2nd Battalion is shorter, but no less glorious. Formed during the first Afghan War in 1839 out of surplus volunteers for its sister Battalion, it took part in the great victory of Chillianwallah, went through the Burmese War 1851-53, and in the Mutiny was part of the force which stormed Delhi. In 1861 it was brought into the line as the 104th Regiment, but served for ten years more in India before it came home. In 1887 it joined the Second Burmah Expedition, and like the 1st Battalion served with great distinction in the South African War in Natal, and later under Lord Kitchener in the Transvaal and Cape Colony. The 2nd Battalion was sent to France at the beginning of the present war. It suffered very severely and has been reinforced by the 3rd, 4th and 5th Battalions. The 1st, 6th and 7th Battalions have served at the Dardanelles, and after the evacuation of Gallipoli the 1st Battalion went to France. They have also suffered heavy losses. Both on the Western front and in the East the Regiment has splendidly maintained its ancient renown. To go further into modern history would be to trespass upon Mrs. Victor Rickard's admirable pages. I write these few lines about the origin of the Regiment because they may be interesting to her readers. We must not forget that though the bones come from Bengal, the blood and sinews are Irish. It is as an Irish regiment that the Munsters are celebrated in these pages. It is Irishmen who have won its new battle honours. It is Irish men and women who have suffered, Irishmen who have triumphed in the field. The record of the Regiment is splendid, and I am proud to sign myself

DUNRAVEN, _Hon. Col. 5th Battalion_, _Royal Munster Fusiliers_.

CONTENTS

PAGE THE STAND OF THE MUNSTERS AT ETREUX. 1

THE MUNSTERS AT FESTUBERT 17

THE MUNSTERS AT RUE DU BOIS 32

THE MUNSTERS AT HULLOCH 45

THE STAND AT ETREUX 55

APPENDIX 67

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE MUNSTERS AT ETREUX (_Drawn by Christopher Clark_) _To face page_ 1

MAJOR P. A. CHARRIER (_Photograph_) " 6

THE MUNSTERS AT FESTUBERT (_Drawn by Philip Dadd_) " 17

LT.-COL. A. M. BENT, C.M.G. (_Photograph_) " 24

LT.-COL. G. J. RYAN, D.S.O. (_Photograph_) " 28

THE LAST ABSOLUTION AT RUE DU BOIS . (_Drawn by F. Matania_) " 34

LT.-COL. V. G. H. RICKARD (_Photograph_) " 38

CAPT. J. CAMPBELL-DICK (_Photograph_) " 40

THE MUNSTERS AT HULLOCH (_Drawn by F. Matania_) " 45

MAJOR J. W. CONSIDINE (_Photograph_) " 49

MAPS TO ILLUSTRATE THE STAND OF THE MUNSTERS AT ETREUX (_Sketch A_) _page_ 57 (_Sketch B_) " 63

OFFICERS OF THE 2ND RL. MUNSTER FUSILIERS, MAY 1915 (_Photograph_) _To face page_ 66

THE STAND OF THE MUNSTERS AT ETREUX

_August 27th, 1914_

(WHICH TOOK PLACE DURING THE RETREAT FROM MONS)

"Then lift the flag of the last crusade, And fill the ranks of the last brigade, March on to the fields where the world's remade And the ancient dreams come true." "A Song of the Irish Armies." By T. M. KETTLE.

On the 13th of August, 1914, the 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers left Aldershot on their way to an unknown destination "somewhere in France."

The Expeditionary Force was reaching forward, as one of the officers wrote, towards "a jolly in Belgium," and he also added, "some of us will not come back." The same joy that was with Garibaldi and his thousand when they went forth to the redemption of a small and gallant race, went, we all know, with the men of the First Division. Each one knew that an hour lay ahead when great issues were to be joined, and the Munsters were proud to feel that the chance was with them to add to the records of their Regimental history.

The Battalion embarked at Southampton, and the transport steamed out shortly after noon, arriving at Le Havre at 3 a.m. on the 14th of August. From there they marched to a rest camp on the ridge west of Harfleur, where they remained until the 16th of August, and once more they marched to Havre, where they entrained for the concentration area at Le Nouvion. On Sunday, the 17th, Le Nouvion was crowded with French troops, and the townsfolk, wild with enthusiasm, welcomed the Munsters, and from thence the Regiment marched to Bouey, three miles distant from Etreux. The dawn of the 22nd of August saw the Battalion on the road again, marching towards Mons.

All of this is now like the fragment of a dream, and the troops who marched and sang are many of them on the further side of the boundary; but still the memory remains, though the rows and ranks of men are gone, and, like the clerk in the old story, "Come to Oxford and their friends no more."

"It's a long way to Tipperary, A long wa-ay to go."

* * * * *

All round and about Chapeau Rouge, a village near the river Sambre, and not far from Le Cateau, the country is a bower of green hedgerows in the month of August. In ordinary times, when trenches, deeper than any grave, and wire entanglements, and all the devastation of war is not, a country cut up into small fields has an intimate and friendly look. It suggests little things, and is small and near and has none of the sudden desolation of open space, stretching empty to the sky line. But what is beautiful in times of peace may in one moment become terrible in time of war, and the little hedgerows cost Ireland dear on the morning of the 27th of August, 1914.

The morning broke sullen and heavy, and the distant electric premonition of coming storm and coming battle vibrated in the air. The Munsters were placed as the Right Battalion, next to them came the Coldstream, further on the Scots Guards, with the Black Watch in reserve. The frontage of the Munsters extended from Chapeau Rouge, where the roads crossed, to another cross roads north of Fesmy. Major Charrier (commanding the Munsters) had explicit orders to hold the cross roads above Chapeau Rouge, unless or until he received orders to retire. Dawn found the men of B Company, commanded by Captain Simms, busily digging trenches and strengthening their position, while the air was comparatively cool.

The German attack was expected in the course of the morning, and B Company was the first company of the Battalion to receive its baptism of fire.

For men whose record shows them proud, fiery, and dashing soldiers, the task alloted to B Company was no easy one. It was necessary that their position should be kept secret, and when at last the crackle and rattle of German musketry broke the tension of this waiting, the Company holding the outpost did not reply. The German patrol, whose business it was to locate their position, kept up an intermittent fire, and the small handful of Irish did the hardest thing of all for them--they waited. The lulls and bursts followed one upon the other; tremendous echoes repeated the volleys of sound, and the swinging shrill of flying bullets continued overhead, punctuated now and again by spells of intense quiet.

Suddenly the midsummer storm broke with a violence that is indescribable. Torrents of drenching rain soaked the men to the skin and collected in the trenches, and in the vortex of the storm the Germans advanced to the attack. In one moment it was "War, war, bloody war," and the first onslaught fell upon B Company, and D Company (commanded by Captain Jervis) with Lieutenant Crozier and Lieutenant R. W. Thomas.

[_To face p. 6._]

The Munsters repelled the attack with fierce determination, and the little fields around Chapeau Rouge became a place of violent and terrible memory, but the men held doggedly to their position until the order came to withdraw a mile to the rear. B Company was at this point detailed to act as right flank guard on the east, where the attack was hottest, and in endeavouring to carry out this order, they were cut off from the flank by the thick green hedgerows, and so to them came the adventure of maintaining a little battle of their own.

The rain continued and the mud grew deep, and very slowly and without heavy loss B Company fell back through Fesmy, fighting through the small wide street until it rejoined the Battalion on the further side. They had shaken the Germans off for the moment in spite of their immensely superior numbers, and had done most gallantly. After a short delay Major Charrier sent them to take the head of the column and march to Oisy as advance guard.

The day continued showery for some hours, with occasional drenching bursts, but the men cared nothing for the discomfort of soaked clothes. It has been decreed by the Power that rules the destiny of men and nations that the call of a bugle makes the heart of Ireland glad. There was real adventure in their lives that morning; the actual vital essence of it was touched by the rank and file of the marching men, for abstract safety as a condition to be desired has never entered very much into the Celtic vision of what life can give in those moments when it is at its best.

From Fesmy the Munsters pushed on to Etreux, there to join the main body of troops holding that town.

* * * * *

Up the wide road where the bridge at Oisy spans the curve of the river Sambre, and some miles from where the Munsters were retiring towards Etreux, about sixty men of the Battalion, under Captain Emerson, took up their position, hoping to hold the road. They were here reinforced by the Coldstream Guards, who were endeavouring to get into touch with the Munsters, now separated from them by five miles of road, upon which the enemy were advancing rapidly.

To the meadow near the bridge where the Munsters were collected an orderly carrying a dispatch came up at about three o'clock in the afternoon. The time of the dispatch was not marked upon the message, which was to order the Munsters to retire "at once." The orderly who carried the message had, he said, been chased by the enemy, and after lying hidden for a time under the nearest cover, believed that it was not possible for him to bring the message through to Major Charrier. Upon this incident the tragedy of the whole day turned. Time had been lost, time too precious ever to regain; the exclusive supremacy is nearly always a question of minutes.

Colonel Ponsonby decided that it was best to retire the Coldstreams and the handful of Munsters who were with them, and these were joined some miles back by Captain Woods and seventy men, who had fallen back to the Guise road.

* * * * *

The river Sambre is full of curves, and winds past Fesmy and Etreux. Just along the right bank there runs a railway line, turning through a deep cutting into the station of Etreux. From there, the old you or I who lived before the war could have travelled comfortably across three frontiers in a few short hours. In this pastoral country, surrounded at evening by the softness of rising damp, stands Etreux, but none of the wandering fortunes of life will ever carry anyone back to look at the same picture any more.

When the Munsters marched onwards the early evening was bright again, and the heavy clouds had rolled to westward. The little environs stretched out along the road; a few houses, a cabaret, an orchard bright with cider apples, some already collected in piles under the trees; further again another proud house, bigger than the rest, and then streets, a palisade of trees and a spire. All this seen at a glance, where the road passed the railway cutting; for in the month of August war had not yet made France hag-ridden and desolate. Near to the railway cutting, and on the rise of ground a cross marked a turn to a side road, and a number of tiny lath crosses stuck into the grass signified that the good folk of Etreux carried their dead that way. Beneath the high cross was written "Ave Crux Spes Unica," and its shadow fell over the road, dividing the Munsters from the village like the boundary of a frontier.

Within a few yards of the outlying buildings, a sudden burst of rifle and artillery fire swept through the ranks of the Regiment, informing them finally and terribly that they were cut off. The men rallied magnificently, and B Company extended at once. Led by Captain Simms, they went forward to attack the enemy's main position, which was in the loopholed house that dominated the road. The railway cutting was held in force by the Germans, and D Company, commanded by Captain Jervis, and covered by the steady rifle fire of the men in position by one of the fields on the side of the road, rushed the railway cutting. Every man save two were shot down in the attempt; Lieutenant Crozier, showing the greatest gallantry, crossed a narrow lane, and exposing himself recklessly to the enemy's fire, shouted, "There they are; come on, men," and fell, killed instantaneously. The rattle of musketry, the booming of guns speaking terribly, was everywhere; the air itself vibrated and the ghastly transformation which men call war, continued. Everywhere the dead lay in huddled heaps, and the wounded with grey faces tried to rise, or crawled in maimed agony a little further on to die.

Bit by bit the shattered remnant of the Battalion fell back into the orchard, where Captain Chute brought the machine guns along the road under a hail of lead, and placed them in position. He was wounded in the side, and immediately afterwards was killed by another bullet.

Led by Major Charrier, the Munsters charged and charged again, against the enveloping force which now circled them around with a ring of fire, dropping shells and bullets. Major Charrier, who was twice wounded, steadily continued the direction of the action. He was standing by one of the guns which had been put out of action when Lieutenant Gower came and reported to him, just about sunset. Once more he rallied the men to the charge, and mortally wounded, he fell as they crossed the road.

Incident by incident the later stages of the heroic stand developed as the hours passed on, and ammunition could only be renewed by taking what was left on the dead and dying, and moment after moment gave fresh hostages to death.

Slowly and dreadfully the twilight came as the German onslaught gathered force, and the many sounds of battle rose and rose around the men who, with the Battalion thinned to less than half their fighting forces, still resisted the massed battalions of German soldiers; but the Munsters gave themselves with courage and lavishness, strong and unconsciously splendid. Once more they charged, and the great seas of uncounted enemy's troops crushed and broke them and forced those who were left to surrender.

So the bitterest hour of all was the last.

* * * * *

It is told that the German officers said that men had never fought more bravely; it is also said that they sent back to their headquarters for a chaplain to bury the Irish dead.

Major Charrier and eight officers of the Munsters were buried near the trench where the men were laid to rest, under the shadow of the trees where they had fought their great fight. But though we call them dead, we know that the spirit that is strong and cheerful, and that has added to the page of a nation's history, outlives all so-called untimely endings. The finished work, the completed undertaking, is not for many in the story of this great war, and it is not a little thing but a fine deed, to have left a record that betters the honourable traditions of the Royal Munster Fusiliers.

"Dying ye shall die greatly with a glory that shall surpass the glories of the past."

THE MUNSTERS AT FESTUBERT

_December 22nd, 1914._

"Your ashes o'er the flats of France are scattered, But hold a fire more hot than flesh of ours. The stainless flag that flutters frayed and tattered, Shall wave and wave like spring's immortal flowers. You die, but in your death life grows intenser, You shall not know the shame of growing old. In endless joy you wave the holy censer, And blow a trumpet though your lips are cold."

"To Our Dead." By EDMUND GOSSE.