“He rushed on like one possessed, never looking behind to see if his
comrades were following. A railway bank rose in front of him. He
cleared it, and went on, heedless of risks....”]
The last night of January the enemy’s fire was particularly hot. It
was decided that the trenches were too expensive to hold. But before
evacuating them the men were ordered to storm the enemy’s position.
In order to prepare the way for the assault, the artillery commenced
one of the fiercest bombardments of the war up till then. The boom of
the big pieces and the detonation of their shells were audible twenty
miles away. The guns fired with such intensity in order to demolish
what had become a regular bastion in the German lines, also to break
down the barbed wire entanglements in front of the German trenches, and
thoroughly to demoralize the enemy before the men stormed the positions.
No. 2 Company of the Irish Guards was ordered to keep up a hot rifle
fire. This was to make the Germans keep under cover, no matter how much
they wished to escape from the artillery. The diversion also caused the
enemy to expect an attack from this direction, with the result that he
concentrated his fire on the trench occupied by No. 2 Company.
Then No. 1, O’Leary’s Company, which was on the left of No. 2 Company’s
trench, was ordered to charge. The Irish dashed over the parapet with a
yell, their bayonets fixed, and rushed at the enemy in fine style. The
distance they had to cover to reach the German positions was from 100
to 150 yards. The men were very eager to be at the enemy after their
long spell in the trenches, and went for their foe at racing speed.
O’Leary soon outstripped his comrades. His Irish blood was up. “You
would laugh if you saw us chasing the Huns and mowing them down,” he
wrote to his parents.