In the middle of December the cadet-battalions were wound up and the
officers, after a few days’ leave, were sent back to their units. The
Third Battalion of the Royal Welch was now at Limerick. I decided to
overstay my leave until Nancy’s baby was born. She was expecting it
early in January 1919, and her father had taken a house at Hove for the
occasion. Jenny was born on Twelfth Night. She was neither coal-black
nor affected by the shocks of the previous months. Nancy had had no
foreknowledge of the experience—I assumed that she knew—and it took her
years to recover from it. I went over to Limerick; the battalion was at
the Castle Barracks. I lied my way out of the over-staying of leave.
Limerick was a Sinn Fein stronghold, and there were constant clashes
between the troops and the young men of the town, yet little
ill-feeling; Welsh and Irish got on well together, as inevitably as
Welsh and Scottish disagreed. The Royal Welch had the situation well
in hand; they made a joke of politics and used their entrenching-tool
handles as shillelaghs. It looked like a town that had been through
the war. The main streets had holes in them like shell-craters and
many of the bigger houses seemed on the point of collapse. I was told
by an old man at an antique shop that no new houses were now built
in Limerick, that when one house fell down the survivors moved into
another. He said too that everyone died of drink in Limerick except
the Plymouth Brethren, who died of religious melancholia. Life did not
start in the city before about a quarter past nine in the morning. At
nearly nine o’clock once I walked down O’Connell Street and found it
deserted. When the hour chimed, the door of a magnificent Georgian
house was flung open and out came, first a shower of slops, which just
missed me, then a dog, which lifted up its leg against a lamp-post,
then a nearly naked child, which sat down in the gutter and rummaged
in a heap of refuse for dirty pieces of bread; finally a donkey, which
began to bray. Ireland was exactly as I had pictured it. I felt its
charm as dangerous. Yet when I was detailed to take out a search-party
in a neighbouring village for concealed rifles I asked the adjutant to
find a substitute; I said that I was an Irishman and did not wish to be
mixed up in Irish politics.
I realized too that I had a new loyalty, to Nancy and the baby, tending
to overshadow regimental loyalty now that the war was over. Once I was
writing a rhymed nonsense letter to Nancy and Jenny in my quarters
overlooking the barrack square:
Is there any song sweet enough
For Nancy or for Jenny?
Said Simple Simon to the Pieman:
‘Indeed, I know not any.’
I have counted the miles to Babylon,
I have flown the earth like a bird,
I have ridden cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
But no such song have I heard.
At that moment some companies of the battalion returned to barracks
from a route-march; the drums and fifes drew up under my window,
making the panes rattle with _The British Grenadiers_. The insistent
repetition of the tune and the hoarse words of command as the parade
formed up in the square, company by company, challenged Banbury
Cross and Babylon. _The British Grenadiers_ succeeded for a moment in
forcing their way into the poem:
Some speak of Alexander,
And some of Hercules,
but were driven out:
But where are there any like Nancy and Jenny,
Where are there any like these?