COMBATIVENESS OF THE IRISH SOLDIER
THE BRITISH BLENDS OF COURAGE
There is a story of Wellington and his army in the Peninsular campaign
which embodies, in a humorous fashion, the still popular idea of the
chief national characteristics of the races within the United Kingdom.
It says that if Wellington wanted a body of troops to get to a
particular place quickly by forced marches he gave an assurance that
on their arrival Scottish regiments would be given their arrears of
pay; English regiments would have a good dinner of roast beef, and the
bait held out to Irish regiments to give speed to their feet, however
weary, was an all-round tot of grog. The Welsh, it will be noticed,
are not in the story. This cannot be explained by saying they had yet
to achieve separate national distinction on the field of battle. The
23rd Regiment of Foot (Royal Welsh Fusiliers) served under Wellington
and contributed more than their fair share to the martial renown of
the British Army. It is solely due, I think, to the fact that they had
not yet emerged from their absorption in the English generally. But,
to round off the story, what motive of a material kind would impel the
Welsh Regiments to greater military exertions? Shall we say any one of
the three inducements mentioned--pay, grub or grog, or, better still,
all of them together?
The present war has provided the most searching tests of the qualities
of the races involved in it. They have all been profoundly moved to
the uttermost deeps of their being, both in the mass and as
individuals. The superficial trappings of society and even of
civilisation have fallen from them, and they appear as they really
are--brave or cowardly, noble or base, unselfish or egotistical. We
see our own soldiers, English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, not perhaps
quite as each came from the hands of Nature, but certainly as the
original minting of each has been modified only by the influence of
racial environment. All the races within the United Kingdom are alike
in this, that each is a medley of many kinds of dissimilar individuals
with very varied faculties and attributes. But there are certain
broad, main characteristics which distinguish in the mass each racial
aggregate of dissimilar units; and it is these instincts, ideas,
habits, customs, held in common, that fundamentally separate each
nationality from the other. That is what I mean by racial environment.
The soldiers of the United Kingdom possess in general certain fine
qualities of character and conduct which may be ascribed to the
traditions and training of the British Army. But when we come to
consider them racially we find that their points of difference are
more striking even than their points of similarity. Each nationality
evolves its own type of soldier, and every type has its distinctly
marked attributes. As troops, taken in the mass, are the counterpart
of the nations from which they spring, and, indeed, cannot be anything
else, so they must, for one thing, reveal in fighting the particular
sort of martial spirit possessed by their race. Though I am an
Irishman, I would not be so boastful as to say that the Irish soldiers
have a superior kind of courage to which neither the English, the
Scottish nor the Welsh can lay claim. They are all equally brave, but
the manifestation of their bravery is undoubtedly different--that is,
different not so much in degree as in kind. In a word, courage, like
humour, is not racial or geographical, but, like humour also, it takes
on a racial or geographical flavour.
General Sir Ian Hamilton has written: "When, once upon a time, a Queen
of Spain saw the Grenadier Guards she remarked they were strapping
fellows; as the 92nd Highlanders went by she said, 'The battalion
marches well'; but, at the aspect of the Royal Irish, the words
'Bloody War!' were wrung from her reluctant lips." After a good deal
of reading on the subject, and some thought, I venture to suggest the
following generalisations as to the qualities which distinguish the
English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, in valour, one from another.
English--the courage of an exalted sense of honour and devotion
to duty, and of the national standard of conduct which requires
them to show, at all costs, that they are better men than their
opponents, whoever they may be.
Scottish--the courage of mental as well as physical tenacity,
coolly set upon achieving the purpose in view.
Welsh--the courage of perfervid emotion, religious in its
intensity.
Irish--the courage of dare-devilry, and the rapture of battle.
All these varieties of courage are to be found, to some extent, in
each distinct national unit, and thus they cross and recross the
racial boundary lines within our Army. Still, I think they represent
broadly the dominant distinguishing characteristics of the English,
Scottish, Welsh and Irish as fighting men. The qualities lacking in
one race are supplied by the others; and the harmonious whole into
which all are fused provide that fire and dash, cool discipline,
doggedness and high spirits for which our troops have always been
noted. The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, is said to have made
a most interesting estimate of the qualities of the soldiers of the
three home races under his command. The Irish are best for brilliant
and rapid attack, and the English are best for holding a position
against heavy onslaughts. The Scottish, he thinks, are not quite so
fiery and dashing in assault as the Irish, but they are more so than
the English, and not quite so tenacious in holding on under tremendous
fire as the English, but they are more so than the Irish.
It is this combination of attributes which enables the British Army,
more perhaps than any other army, to get out of a desperate situation
with superb serenity and honour. There is an old saying that it never
knows when it is beaten. Soult, Marshal of France, whose brilliant
tactics in the Peninsular War so often countered the consummate
strategy of Wellington and the furious dash of the Irish infantry,
bore testimony in a novel and vivid way to this trait of the British.
"They could not be persuaded they were beaten," he said. "I always
thought them bad soldiers," he also said. "I turned their right,
pierced their centre, they were everywhere broken; the day was mine;
and yet they did not know it and would not run."
Any other troops, in a hopeless pass, would retreat or surrender, and
would do so without disgrace. There are numberless instances in
British military history where our troops, faced with fearful odds,
stood, magnificently stubborn, with their backs to the wall, as it
were, willing to be fired at and annihilated rather than give in. Mr.
John Redmond tells a story of a reply given by an English General when
asked his opinion of the Irish troops. "Oh," he said, "they are
magnificent fighters, but rotten soldiers. When they receive an order
to retire their answer is, 'Be damned if we will.'" I may add, in
confirmation of this story, that one of the incidents of the retreat
from Mons, which was the subject afterwards of an inquiry by the
military authorities, was the refusal of a few hundred men of a famous
Irish regiment to retire from what appeared to be an untenable
position, much less to surrender, one or other of which courses was
suggested by their superior officer. The answer of the men was as
stunning as a blow of a shillelagh, or as sharp as a bayonet thrust.
"If we had thrown down our arms," one of them said to me, "we could
never have shown our faces in Ireland again."
Racial distinctions are to be seen on the weak side as well as on the
strong side of character. Each nationality, regarded as fighters, has
therefore its own particular failing. The Irish are disposed to be
foolhardy, or heedless of consequences. It is the fault of their
special kind of courage. "The British soldier's indifference to
danger, while it is one of his finest qualities, is often the despair
of his officers," says Mr. Valentine Williams, one of the most
brilliant and experienced of war correspondents, in his book, _With
our Army in Flanders_, and he adds, "The Irish regiments are the
worst. Their recklessness is proverbial." They are either insensible
to the perils they run, or, what is more likely, contemptuous of them.
I have been given several examples of the ways they will needlessly
expose themselves. Though they can get to the rear through the safe,
if wayward, windings of the communication trenches, it is a common
thing for them to climb the parapets and go straight across the open
fields under fire so as to save half an hour. To go by the trenches,
they will argue, doubles the time taken in getting back without
halving the risk. In like manner, they prefer to go down a road swept
by the enemy's artillery, which leads direct to their destination,
rather than waste time by following a secure but circuitous way round.
There is an Irish proverb against foolhardy risks which says it is
better to be late for five minutes than dead all your lifetime, but
evidently it is disregarded by Irish soldiers at the Front.
An English officer in the Royal Irish Regiment writes: "Really the
courage and cheerfulness of our grand Irish boys are wonderful. They
make light of their wounds, and, owing to their stamina, make rapid
recoveries. The worst of them is they get very careless of the German
bullets after a while and go wandering about as if they were at home."
Another English officer begins an amusing story of an Irish orderly in
an English regiment with the comment: "I shall never now believe that
there is on this earth any man to beat the Irish for coolness and
pluck." The officer was in his dug-out, and first noticed the Irishman
chopping wood to make a fire for cooking purposes on a road which was
made dangerous during the day by German snipers. He remarked to
another officer, "By Jove! that man will get shot if he isn't
careful." "No sooner had I said the word," he writes, "when a bullet
splattered near his head. Then another between his legs. I saw the mud
fly where the bullet struck. The man, who is the Captain's servant,
turned round in the direction of the sniper and roared, 'Good shot,
Kaiser. Only you might have hit me, though, for then I could have gone
home.' After this the orderly proceeded to roast a fowl, singing quite
unconcernedly, 'I often sigh for the silvery moon.' Another bullet
came and hit him in the arm. He roared with delight; and, as he basted
the fowl, exclaimed, 'Oh, I'm not going to lave you, me poor bird.'
The officer shouted to him to come into the dug-out. He did so, but
when he had licked the wound in his arm, and bound it up, he said he
must get the fowl, or it would be overdone; and before the officer
could utter a word of protest, he ran across the road to the fire,
started singing again, though the bullets, once more, came whistling
past his ear. When he returned to the dug-out with the fowl nicely
roasted he remarked cheerily, 'People may say what they like, but them
Germans are some marksmen, after all.'"
The whimsical side of Irish daring is further illustrated by a story
of some men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers. To while away the time in
the trenches one night they made bets on doing this or that. One
fellow wagered a day's pay that he would go over to the German lines
and come back with a maxim gun, which was known to be stationed at a
particular point. In the darkness he wriggled across the intervening
space on his stomach, and, coming stealthily upon the guard, stabbed
him with a dagger. Then slinging the maxim across his shoulder, he
crawled safely back to the trenches. "Double pay to-day!" he cried to
the comrade he made the bet with. "But you haven't won," said the
other. "Where's the machine's belt and ammunition?" The next night he
sallied forth on his belly again, and returned with the complete
outfit. The spirit of the anecdote is true to the Irish temperament,
though the episode it records may be fanciful. There is no doubt that
things of the kind are done very frequently by Irish soldiers. They
call it "gallivanting"; and the mood takes on an air of, say,
recklessness which, at times, seems very incongruous against the
frightful background of the war.
The very root of courage is forgetfulness of self. Self-consciousness
is, in no great degree, an Irish failing, or virtue, either, if it is
to be regarded as such. Especially when he is absorbed in a martial
adventure, the Irishman has no room in his mind left for a thought of
being afraid, or even nervous. He likes the thrill of movement, the
fierce excitement of advancing under fire for a frontal attack on the
enemy, the ferocity of a contest at close grips. This is the
temperament that responds blithely to the whistle--"Over the
parapets!" His blood is stirred when the actual fighting begins, and
as it progresses he is carried more and more out of himself. The part
of warfare repugnant to him, most trying to his temper, is that of
long watching and waiting. For the work of lining the trenches a
different kind of courage is required. The slush, the miseries, the
herding together, the cramped movements, are enough to drive all the
heat out of the blood. The qualities needed for the severe and
incessant strain of this duty are an immovable calm, a tireless
patience, an endurance which no hardships can break down. Here the
English and the Scottish shine, for by nature they are more
disciplined, more submissive to authority, and they hold on to the end
with an admirable blend of good-humour and doggedness. On the other
hand, I am told, on the authority of an officer of the Welsh Guards,
that when the Irish Guards are in the trenches they find the long
dreary vigil and the boredom of inaction so insupportable that it is a
common thing for parties of them to go to the officer in command and
say, "Please, sir, may we go out and bomb the Germans?"
As Lord Wolseley had "the Irish drop in him," perhaps it is not to be
wondered at that he discounts the old proverb that the better part of
valour is discretion. "There are a great many men," he writes, "who
pride themselves upon simply doing their duty and restricting
themselves exclusively to its simple performance. If such a spirit
took possession of an army no great deeds can ever be expected from
it." What more can one do, it may be asked, than one's duty? Evidently
Lord Wolseley would have duty on the battlefield spiced or gingered
with audacity. The way the Irish look at it is well illustrated, I
think, in a letter which I have seen from a private in a Devon
regiment. He states that while he and some comrades were at an
observation post in a trench near the enemy's line six Germans
advanced close to them, and though they kept firing at them they could
not drive them back. "Two fellows of the Royal Irish Rifles came up,"
continues the Devon man, "and asked us what was on. We told them. Then
one turned round to the other and said, 'Come on, Jim, sure we'll
shift them.' Then the two of them fixed their bayonets and rushed at
the Germans. You would have laughed to see the six Germans running
away from the two Irishmen." We have here an exhibition of the spirit
of the born fighter who does not stop to count the odds or risks too
cautiously. The incident recalls, in a sense, the scene depicted by
Shakespeare in _King Henry V_ at the camp before Harfleur, France,
when Fluellen the Welshman--all shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying in
enterprise--wants to argue with Captain Macmorris, the Irishman,
concerning the disciplines of war. But the Irishman wants not words
but work. Away with procrastination! So he bursts out, in
Shakespeare's most uncouth imitation of the brogue--
"It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me: the day is hot,
and the weather, and the wars and the King, and the dukes: it is
no time to discourse. The town is beseeched, and the trumpet
call us to the breach, and we talk, and, be Chrish, do nothing;
'tis shame for us all: so God sa' me 'tis shame to stand still;
it is shame by my hand; and there is throats to be cut, and
works to be done; and there isn't nothing done, so Chrish sa'
me, la!"
Lord Wolseley also lays greater store on the spontaneous courage of
the blood, the intuitive or unconscious form of courage, which is
peculiarly Irish, than on moral courage, the courage of the mind, the
courage of the man who by sheer will-power masters his nervous system
and the shrinking from danger which it usually excites. In Lord
Wolseley's opinion the man who is physically brave--the man of whom it
may often be said that he has no sense of fear because he has no
perception of danger--is the true military leader who draws his men
after him to the achievement of deeds at which the world wonders.
That is the kind of courage which of old led the mailed knight, bent
on a deed of derring-do, to cleave his way with sword or battle-axe to
the very heart of the enemy's phalanx for the purpose of bringing
their banner to the ground, or dealing them a more vital blow by
slaying their commander. There may be little opportunity in trench
warfare and in duels between heavy guns, both sides concealed behind
the veils of distance, for such a show of spectacular bravery. War is
no longer an adventure, a game or a sport. It is a state of existence,
and what is needed most for its successful prosecution, so far as the
individual fighter is concerned, is a devotion to duty which, however
undramatic, never quails before any task to which it is set.
But the Irish soldier still longs for the struggle to the death
between man and man, or, better still, of one man against a host of
men. At dawn one day a young Irish soldier, inexperienced and of a
romantic disposition, took his first turn in the trenches. He had come
up filled with an uplifting resolve to do great things. The Germans
immediately began a bombardment. The lad at first was filled with
vague wonderments. He was puzzled especially by the emptiness of the
battlefield. He had in mind the opposing armies moving in sight of
each other, as he had seen them in manoeuvres. Where was the enemy?
Whence came these shells? Then the invisibility of the foe, and this
mechanical, impersonal form of fighting appalled him. One of his
comrades was blown to pieces by his side. A dozen others disappeared
from view in an upheaval of the ground. This was a dastardly massacre
and not manly warfare, thought the youth.
He could stand the ordeal no longer. He ran, bewildered, up the
trench, shouting "Police! police!" "Hello, there; what are you up to?"
said an officer, barring the way. "Oh, sir," cried the young soldier,
"there's bloody murder going on down there below, and I am looking for
the police to put an end to it."