THE IRISH SOLDIER'S HUMOUR AND SERIOUSNESS
STORIES FROM THE FRONT, FUNNY AND OTHERWISE
The memorable words of an Irish member, speaking in the House of
Commons during the South African War, on the gallantry of the Irish
regiments, come to my mind. "This war has shown," said he, "that as
brave a heart beats under the tunic of a Dublin Fusilier as under the
kilt of a Gordon Highlander."
The saying may be curiously astray as to the anatomy of the Scotch,
but the truth of it in regard to Irish courage has been emphasised by
the victories and disasters alike of the great world war. On all the
fields of conflict east and west the Irish soldiers have earned the
highest repute for valour. "They are magnificent fighters," says
Lieutenant Denis Oliver Barnett, an English officer of a battalion of
the Leinster Regiment, in letters which he wrote home to his own
people. A public school boy, with a high reputation for scholarship,
he became a soldier at the outbreak of war instead of going to Oxford.
Courageous and high-minded himself--as his death on the parapet of the
trenches, directing and heartening his men in bombing the enemy,
testifies--his gay and sympathetic letters show that he was a good
judge of character. He also says of his men, "They are cheerier than
the English Tommies, and will stand anything." Cheeriness in this
awful war is indeed a most precious possession. It enhances the
fighting capacity of the men. Where it does not exist spontaneously
the officers take measures to cultivate it. As far as possible they
try to remove all depressing influences, and make things bright and
cheerful. I have got many such glimpses of the Irish soldier at the
Front, and their total effect is the impersonation or bodying forth of
an individual who provides his own gaiety, and has some over to give
to others--whimsical, wayward, with a childlike petulance and
simplicity; and yet very fierce withal.
I met at a London military hospital an Irish Catholic chaplain and an
Irish officer of the Army Medical Corps back from French Flanders.
They told Irish stories, to the great enjoyment and comfort of the
wounded soldiers in the ward. "Be careful to boil that water before
drinking it," said the doctor to men of an Irish battalion whom he
found drawing supplies from a canal near Ypres. "Why so, sir?" asked
one of the men. "Because it's full of microbes and boiling will kill
them," answered the doctor. "And where's the good, sir?" said the
soldier. "I'd as soon swallow a menagerie as a graveyard any day."
Another example of a quick-witted Hibernian reply was given by the
chaplain. He came upon a man of the transport service of his battalion
belabouring a donkey which was slowly dragging a heavy load. "Why do
you beat the poor animal so much?" remonstrated the priest; and he
recalled a legend popular in Ireland by saying, "Don't you know from
the cross on the ass's back that it was on an ass Our Lord went into
Jerusalem?" "But, Father," said the soldier, "if Our Lord had this
lazy ould ass He wouldn't be there yet." One of the inmates of the
ward kept the laughter going by giving an example of Irish traditional
blundering humour from the trenches--a humour due to an excited and
over-active mind. "Don't let the Germans know we're short of powder
and shot," cried an Irish sergeant to his men, awaiting the bringing
up of ammunition; "keep on firing away like blazes."
Some of the flowers of speech that have blossomed from the Irish
regiments at the Front are also worth culling. Speaking of the
Catholic chaplain of his battalion, a soldier said, "He'd lead us to
heaven; an' we'd follow him to hell." As a loaf of bread stuck on a
bayonet was passed on to him in the trenches another exclaimed, "Here
comes the staff of life on the point of death." The irregularity of
the food supply in the trenches was thus described: "It's either a
feast or a famine. Sometimes you drink out of the overflowing cup of
fulness, and other times you ate off the empty plate." "What have you
there?" asked a nurse of an Irish private of the Army Medical Corps,
at a base hospital, as he was rummaging among the contents of a
packing-case. Taking out a wooden leg, he answered: "A stump speech
agin the war."
Good-humour at the Front is by no means an exclusively Irish
possession. Happily the soldiers of all the nationalities within the
United Kingdom are so light-hearted as to find even in the most dismal
situation cause for raillery, pleasantry and laughter, and to derive
from their mirth a more enduring patience of discomfort and trouble.
The Irish form of humour, however, differs entirely from the English,
Scottish or Welsh variety not only in quality but in the type of mind
and character it expresses. In most things that the Irish soldier says
or does there is something racially individual. Perhaps its chief
peculiarity, apart from its quaintness, is that usually there is an
absence of any conscious aim or end behind it. The English soldier,
and the Cockney especially, is a wag and a jester. He is very prone to
satire and irony, deliberate and purposeful. Even his "grousing"--a
word, by the way, unheard in the Irish regiments, unless it is
somewhat incomprehensibly used by an English non-commissioned
officer--is a form of caustic wit. Irish humour has neither subtlety
nor seriousness. It is just the light and spontaneous whim, caprice or
fancy of the moment. It is humour in the original sense of the word,
that is the expression of character, habit and disposition.
The Munstermen have contributed to the vocabulary at the Front the
expressive phrase, "Gone west," for death; the bourne whence no
traveller returns. In Kerry and Cork the word "west" or "wesht," as it
is locally pronounced, expresses not only the mysterious and unknown,
but is used colloquially for "behind," "at the back," or "out of the
way." So it is also at the Front. A lost article is gone west as well
as a dead comrade. "When I tould the Colonel," said an Irish orderly,
"that the bottle of brandy was gone wesht, he was that mad that I
thought he would have me ate." As food and drink are sent west,
perhaps the Colonel had his suspicions. The saying, "Put it wesht,
Larry, an' come along on with you," may be heard in French estaminets
as well as in Kerry public-houses.
At parade a subaltern noticed that one of his men had anything but a
clean shave on the left side of his jaw. "'Twas too far wesht for me
to get at, sir," was the excuse. "Well," said the dentist to a Munster
Fusilier, "where's this bad tooth that's troubling you?" "'Tis here,
sir," said the soldier, "in the wesht of me jaw." Another Irish
soldier told his Quartermaster that he was in a very unpleasant
predicament for want of a new pair of trousers. "The one I've on me is
all broken wesht," said he. It is fairly obvious what part of the
trousers the west of it was.
It would seem from the stories I have heard that odd escapes from
death are an unfailing source of playfulness and laughter. A shell
exploded in a trench held by an Irish battalion. One man was hurled
quite twelve feet in the air, and, turning two somersaults in his
descent, alighted on his back, and but little hurt, just outside the
trench. He quickly picked himself up and rejoined his astonished
comrades. "He came down with that force," said an invalided Irish
soldier who told me of the incident, "that it was the greatest wonder
in the world he didn't knock a groan out of the ground." No groan came
from the man himself. "That was a toss and a half, and no mistake," he
remarked cheerily when he got back to the trench; and in answer to an
inquiry whether he was much hurt he said, "I only feel a bit moidhered
in me head." More comical still in its unexpectedness was the reply of
another Irishman who met with a different misadventure from the same
cause. A German 17-in. shell exploded on the parapet of a trench, and
this Irishman was buried in the ruins. However, he was dug out alive,
and his rescuers jokingly asked him what all the trouble was about.
"Just those blessed snipers again," he spluttered through his mouth
full of mud, "and may the divil fly away with the one that fired that
bullet."
It is readily acknowledged at the Front that the Irish soldiers have a
rich gift of natural humour. But, what is more--as some of my stories
may show--they are never so exceedingly comic as when they do not
intend to be comic at all. Is it not better to be funny without
knowing it than to suffer the rather common lot of attempting to be
funny and fail? It arises from an odd and unexpected way of putting
things. How infinitely better it is than to be of so humdrum a quality
as to be incapable of being comical even unconsciously in saying or in
deed! Yet in this essentially Irish form of fun there is often a
snare for the unwary. How can you tell that these laughable things are
said and done by Irish soldiers without any perception of humour or
absurdity? If you could look behind the face of that apparently
simple-minded Irish soldier you might find that in reality he was
"pulling your leg"--or "humbugging," as he would say himself--in a way
that you would regard as most uncalled for and aggravating.
For instance, an Irish sentry in a camp in France was asked by a
colonel of the Army Service Corps whether he had seen any of his
officers about that morning. "Indeed, and I did, sir," was the reply.
"'Twas only a while ago that two of the gintlemen came out of the
office down there below, and passed by this way." "And how did you
know they were Army Service officers?" "Aisy enough, sir. Didn't I see
their swords stuck behind their ears?" And in which category must be
placed the equally amusing retort of another Irish sentry to his
officer--the naively simple, or the slyly jocular? The sentry looked
so shy and inexperienced that the officer put to him the question,
"What are you here for?" and got the stereotyped answer, "To look out
for anything unusual." "What would you call unusual?" asked the
officer. "I don't know exactly, sir, until I saw it," was the reply.
The officer became sarcastically facetious. "What would you do if you
saw five battleships steaming across the field?" he said. "Take the
pledge, sir," was the sentry's answer.
These officers are, by all accounts, but two of many who have got
unlooked-for but diverting answers from Irish soldiers. A sergeant who
was sent out with a party to make observations felt into an ambuscade
and returned with only a couple of men. "Tell me what happened," said
the commanding officer, when the sergeant came to make his report;
"were you surprised?" "Surprised isn't the word for it, sir,"
exclaimed the sergeant. "It was flabbergasted entirely I was when,
creeping round the end of a thick hedge, we came plump into the divil
of a lot of Germans lying on their stomachs." Then, seeing the officer
smiling, as if in doubt, as he thought, he hastened thus to emphasise
his wonder and astonishment at this sudden encounter. "I declare to
you, sir, it nearly jumped the heart up out of me throat with the
start it gave me." Of a like kind for ingenuousness was the report
made by another Irish non-com. who found himself all alone in a
trench, with only a barrier of sandbags between him and the Germans.
"I had nayther men, machine-gun or grenade," he wrote, expressing not
only his temporal but his spiritual condition, for he added, "nothing,
save the help of the Mother of God."
In Ireland domestic servants are noted for their forward manners and
liberty of speech with the family, and the same trait is rather
general in the relations between different social grades. An
illustration of what it leads to in the Army was afforded at a camp
concert attended by a large assembly of officers and men of a certain
Division, into which, at a solemn moment, an unsophisticated Irish
soldier made a wild incursion. Lord Kitchener had been there that day
and had inspected the Division, and the General in command announced
from the platform how greatly pleased the Secretary for War was with
the soldierly fitness of the men. "I told Lord Kitchener," continued
the General, speaking in grave and impressive tones, "that the
Division would see the thing through to the bitter end." In the midst
of a loud burst of cheering an Irish private rushed forward, and
sweeping aside the attempt of a subaltern to stop him, jumped on to
the platform, and seizing the aged General by the hand, exclaimed,
"Glory to you, me vinerable friend! The ould Division will stick to
it to the last, and it's you that's the gran' man to lade us to
victory and everlasting fame." The General, greatly embarrassed, could
only say, "Yes, yes, to be sure, my good fellow; yes, yes"; and the
staff turned aside to hide their grins at this comic encounter between
incongruities.
The Colonel of an Irish battalion, after a harassing day in the
trenches, got a pleasant surprise in the shape of a roast fowl served
for dinner by his orderly. After he had eaten it and found it tender
he recalled that complaints were rather rife among the inhabitants
about the plundering of hen-roosts, and his conscience smote him. "I
hope you got that fowl honestly," he said. "Don't you be troubling
your head about that, sir," replied the orderly, in a fine burst of
evasion and equivocation. "Faith, 'twas quite ready for the killing,
so it was, and that's the main thing." Then, as if to improve the
occasion by a homily, he added, in a tone of religious fervour, "Ah,
sure, if we wor all as ready to die as that hin, sir, we needn't mind
a bit when the bullet came." The Colonel was almost "fit to die" with
quiet laughter.
It may well be that sometimes the English officers of Irish battalions
are puzzled by the nature of their men--its impulsiveness, its glow,
its wild imagery and over-brimming expression. It is easy to believe,
too, that the changeful moods of the men, childlike and petulant, now
jovial, now fierce, and occasionally unaccountable, may be a sore
annoyance to officers who are very formal and precise in matters of
discipline. I have heard from an Irish Colonel of an Irish battalion
that the English commander of the Brigade of which the battalion was a
unit came to him one day in a rage and asked him where his damned
fools had been picked up. It appears the Brigadier-General, going the
rounds alone, came suddenly upon one of the sentries of the battalion
at a remote post. The sentry happened to be a wild slip of an Irish
boy, not long joined and quite fresh from Mayo, and, taken by
surprise, he challenged the Brigadier-General by calling out, "In the
name of God, who the divil are you?" The Colonel told me his reply to
the Brigadier-General was this: "Certainly, the challenge and the
salute were not quite proper. But you can imagine what kind of a
reception that simple but fearless lad would give to a German; and,
after all, is not that the main thing just now?" Yes, the capacity of
fighting well should, in war time, cover a multitude of imperfections
in a soldier.
In order to get the best out of the Irish soldiers it is necessary to
have a knowledge of their national habits and peculiarities, and a
sympathetic understanding of their qualities and limitations. I am
glad to be able to say that the most glowing tributes to the sterling
character of the Irish soldiers that I have heard have come from their
English or Scottish officers. These are true leaders, because they
possess imagination and sympathy by which they can look into the
hearts of men that are diverse from them in blood and temperament and
nature.
I suppose there is nothing on earth, no matter how solemn or terrible,
which may not be turned into a subject of irreverent humour in one or
other of its aspects. English soldiers appear to have found that out
even in regard to the war. An officer told me of a remarkable
encounter on a Flanders high road between an Irish battalion coming
back from the trenches and an English battalion going up for a turn at
holding a section of the lines, which he thought presented a striking
contrast in racial moods. The uniforms of the Irishmen were plastered
with mud, and they had a week's grime on their unshaven faces. They
had also suffered heavily in repelling a German attack. Yet they
looked as proud as if they had saved Ireland by their exertions, and
hoped to save the Empire by their example, and they sang from the
bottom of their hearts, and at the top of their voices, the anthem of
their national yearnings and aspirations, with its refrain--
"Whether on the scaffold high, or the battlefield we die,
What matter when for Erin dear we fall."
The English battalion, spick and span, swung by to horrible
discomforts, to wounds and death, as blithely as if they were on a
route march at home. They also were singing, and if they were in the
same mood as the Irishmen they would be rendering the chorus--
"Land of Hope and Glory,
Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee
Who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider
Shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty,
Make thee mightier yet."
But instead of that the chorus of their song, set to a hymn tune, was
this--
"Will you fight for England?
Will you face the foe?
And every gallant soldier
Boldly answered--NO!"
It has been said, with general acceptance, that the spirit of a nation
can best be studied in its songs. But can it really? How wrong would
be the moral drawn from its application in this case! High patriotism
is a solemn thing; but the average British soldier's attitude towards
it is like that of Dr. Johnson when he took up philosophy--"somehow
cheerfulness was always breaking in." The English soldier will not
sing songs of a lofty type and deep purpose--songs which express
either intimate personal feeling or deeply felt national convictions.
These emotions he hides or suppresses, for he cannot give vent to them
without feeling shamefaced or fearing that he may be regarded as
insincere. Yet he is by no means so inconsequential or cynical as he
affects to be. He is animated--none more so--by the spirit of duty and
sacrifice. When it comes to fighting he is in earnest, desperately and
ferociously in earnest, as the Germans know to their cost. It seems to
me that he has been misled by Kipling into supposing that the true
pose of the British soldier is to be more concerned with the temporal
than with the spiritual, to grumble about the petty inconveniences of
his calling, to pretend to an indifference to its romantic side and
its ideals, to die without thinking that the spirits of his national
heroes are looking down upon him.
The Irish have the reputation of having a delight in fighting. It is
supposed that "ructions" are the commonplace of their civic life.
Undoubtedly they have "a strong weakness"--as they would phrase it
themselves--for distributing bloody noses and cracked crowns even
among friends. It is true, also, that they find the grandest scope for
their natural disposition in warfare. A war correspondent relates that
he met a wounded Dublin Fusilier hobbling painfully back to the field
dressing-station after a battle, and giving the man his arm to help
him on, he was prompted to make the pitying remark: "It's a dreadful
war." "'Tis indeed, sir; a dreadful war enough," said the soldier; and
then came the characteristic comment: "but, sure, 'tis far better than
no war at all."
Still, individuals are to be found among the Irish soldiers who take
quite a materialistic view of the Army, and fail to rise to the
anticipation of glory in a pending action. An agricultural labourer
who had become one of Kitchener's men was asked how he liked
soldiering. "It's the finest life in the whole wide world," he
exclaimed. "It's mate, drink, lodgin' and washin' all in one. Wasn't I
working hard for ten long years for a farmer there beyant in Kerry,
and never once in all that time did the ould boy say to me, 'Stand at
aise.'" It will be noticed that in this enthusiastic outburst there is
nothing about the divarshion of fighting. Another story that I heard
records the grim foreboding of an Irish soldier who was lagging behind
on the march to the trenches for the first time. "Keep up, keep up,"
cried the officer; and, by way of encouragement, he added: "You know,
we'll soon make a Field Marshal of you." "You're welcome to your joke,
sir," said the soldier; "but I know well what you'll make of me--a
casualty, sure enough." Another Irish soldier thought he saw a way of
making money out of the fighting. The Colonel of the battalion told
his men, according to the story, that for every German they would kill
he would give a sovereign. The next morning the men were told the
Germans were coming. "How many?" "Thirty thousand at least." "Wake up,
Mike," said one to a sleeping comrade; "our fortune is made."
There is also a story told of a remark made by an Irish soldier
regardless of the glory and romance of the highest distinction in the
Army. The award of the Victoria Cross to Michael O'Leary was held up
to a battalion for emulation. "Yerra," cried a voice, "I'd a great
deal rather get the Victoria 'bus." It may be that in this we have
nothing more than an instance of the impish tendency in the Irish
nature displaying itself at the spur of the moment, rather than the
yearning for home, its ease, repose and comforts. It recalls an
anecdote of the American Civil War. General Thomas Francis Meagher of
the Irish Brigade was informed by an aide-de-camp in the course of a
battle that the Federalists had carried an important strategic point
and several colours belonging to Confederate battalions. "Here's good
news for ye, boys," shouted Meagher. "Our troops have won the day and
captured the enemy's colours." "Yerra, Gineral," cried a private,
looking up at Meagher, who was on horseback, "I'd rather have, this
blessed minute, half a pint of Dinnis McGure's whisky than all the
colours of the rainbow." Then there is the story told by the Colonel
of an Irish regiment of an incident in the Battle of the Somme. He
noticed that a private followed everywhere at his heels, and
especially where the fighting was hottest. The Colonel thought that
perhaps the private was anxious to come to his aid should any harm
befall him. At the end of the day, however, the private thus explained
his conduct to the Colonel: "My mother says to me, sir, 'Stick to the
Colonel, and you'll be all right. Them Colonels never get hurt.'"
But, with all their playfulness and jocularity, there are no soldiers
to whom the serious aspects of the war make a more direct appeal than
to the Irish. This is seen in various ways. It is seen in their
devotional exercises. The Irish Guards and other Irish regiments have
been known frequently to recite the Rosary and sing hymns even in the
trenches. It is seen also in their national fervour. They go into
action singing their patriotic songs. From these qualities they derive
support for their martial spirit, their endurance and their
unconquerable courage. They never quail in the face of danger. No
soldiers have risen to loftier heights of moral heroism, as the
numerous records of their deeds on the roll of the Victoria Cross bear
inspiring witness.
But their humour always remains. One of the injunctions to men at the
Front is "Don't put your head above the parapet." The Irish soldiers
are more apt than others to disregard it, however frequently its
wisdom is brought home to them. I have heard only one that was
convinced. "Faix," he remarked, as the bullets of the snipers soon
stopped his survey of the prospect outside the trench, "it's aisy to
understand that the more a man looks round in this war the less he's
likely to see." They have a comforting philosophy that it takes many a
ton of lead to kill a man. An Irish soldier invalided home from France
was asked what struck him most about the battles he took part in.
"What struck me most?" said he. "Sure it was the crowd of bullets
flying about that didn't hit me!"