Wounded three times and mentioned in orders five times, he was awarded
many decorations, French, English, Belgium, Portuguese and American.
He carried out the first American gas-projector attack.]
“We joined in on the left. There was no time for us any more than the
others to get into extended order. We formed another stream converging
on the others at the summit. By this time we were all wildly excited.
Our shouts and yells alone must have struck terror into the Germans,
who were firing their machine guns down the slope. But there was no
wavering in the Irish host. We couldn’t run. We advanced at a steady
walking pace, stumbling here and there, but going ever onward and
upward. That numbing dread had now left me completely. Like the others,
I was intoxicated with the glory of it all. I can remember shouting and
bawling to the men of my platoon, who were only too eager to go on. The
German barrage had now been opened in earnest, and shells were falling
here, there, and everywhere in No Man’s Land. They were mostly dropping
on our right, but they were coming nearer and nearer, as if a screen
were being drawn across our front. I knew that it was a case of ‘now
or never’ and stumbled on feverishly. We managed to get through the
barrage in the nick of time, for it closed behind us, and after that we
had no shells to fear in front of us.