STORMING OF GUILLAMONT BY THE IRISH BRIGADE
RAISING THE GREEN FLAG IN THE CENTRE OF THE VILLAGE
At the end of August the Irish Brigade was ordered to the Somme. The
civil authorities of the district, headed by the mayor and cure,
called upon General Hickie to express their appreciation of the good
conduct and religious devotion of his troops. The General was a proud
man that day. Nothing pleased him more than praise of his soldiers. In
return, they gloried in him. As an example of his fatherly solicitude
for them, he had established a divisional laundry under the care of
the nuns, in which 25,000 shirts a week and 5000 pairs of socks per
day are washed for them, and every day's rations sent to the men in
the trenches was accompanied by a dry pair of socks. The result was
that "trench feet"--feet benumbed with the cold and the wet--were
almost unknown in the Division. He also provided for a thousand baths
a day being given to his men in a specially constructed bath-house.
The marches of the Brigade to their new station was done to the
accompaniment of patter, drip, trickle, ripple, splash--all the creepy
sounds of continuous rain, and across the sodden and foul desolation
that was once the fair fields of France. Up to the firing line swung
a battalion of the Munster Fusiliers, gaily whistling and singing in
the rain. They carried a beautiful banner of the Sacred Heart, the
gift of the people of the city of Limerick, from which many of the men
came. Miss Lily Doyle of Limerick, who made the presentation to Major
Lawrence Roche of the battalion, tells me that the idea of the banner
originated with the Reverend Mother of the Good Shepherd's Convent,
Limerick, who had read, in what are termed the "Extended Revelations,"
that a promise was given by Jesus to Blessed Margaret Mary that,
inasmuch as soldiers derided His Sacred Heart when He hung upon the
Cross, any soldiers who made reparation by carrying His standard would
have victory with them. The cost of the banner (L10) was mainly raised
by penny subscriptions. It was worked by the Good Shepherd nuns on
crimson poplin. On one side is a beautiful piece of embroidery
representing Our Lord with His Heart exposed on His breast to Blessed
Margaret Mary, with the inscriptions, "Tu Rex Gloria Christi" and
"Parce Domine, parce populo tuo." On the other side are the words of
the Archangel Michael: "Quis ut Deus," surrounded with monograms of
"Royal Munster Fusiliers" and "God save Ireland." "You could not have
sent us a more suitable gift," the Rev. J. Wrafter, S.J., chaplain of
the battalion, wrote to Miss Doyle, "or one which would give more
pleasure to the men. I believe they prefer it to any material comforts
that are sent to them." This is the third religious banner borne by
soldiers since the Crusades. The first was the standard of Joan of
Arc, and the second that of the Pontifical Zouaves, when Rome was an
independent state. As the Munsters thus marched to battle a cry of
"Look!" was suddenly raised in the ranks, and as all eyes turned in
the direction indicated a wonderful sight was seen. The great tower of
Albert Cathedral appeared through the mist of rain, and the sun shone
on the great copper statue of the Blessed Virgin and the Child, which
dominated the countryside for miles around, and, laid prostrate by
German gunners, was now lying out level with the top of the tower.
Thus that symbol of faith, though fallen, was not overthrown. Its
roots in the pedestal were firm and strong. The Virgin Mother, facing
downwards, still held the Infant Jesus scathless in her outstretched
hands, as if showing Him the devastation below, ready to be uplifted
again on the day of Christianity's victory. The piety of the battalion
was kindled by that strange and moving spectacle. Quickly responsive
always to things that appeal to the imagination, the men felt as if
they were witnesses of a miracle, and with one accord they took off
their helmets and cheered and cheered again.
Though it is an unusual thing for the Commander-in-Chief to give in
his dispatches the names of the troops who took part in a particular
engagement, Sir Douglas Haig makes special mention of the Irish
Brigade in his message announcing that Guillamont had fallen. "The
Irish regiments which took part in the capture of Guillamont on
September 3 behaved," he says, "with the greatest dash and gallantry,
and took no small share in the success gained that day."
September 3 was a Sunday. On the night before the battle the Irish
troops selected for the attack on Guillamont bivouacked on the bare
side of a hill. They were the Connaughts, the Royal Irish, the
Munsters and the Leinsters. The rain had ceased, but the ground was
everywhere deep in mud, the trenches were generally flooded and the
shell holes full of water. It was a bleak and desolate scene, relieved
only here and there by the sparkle of the little fires around which
the platoons clustered. Just as the men of one of the battalions were
preparing to wrap themselves in their greatcoats and lie down for the
rest which they might be able to snatch in such a situation, the
Catholic chaplain came over the side of the hill and right to the
centre of the camp. "In a moment he was surrounded by the men," writes
Major Redmond. "They came to him without orders--they came gladly and
willingly, and they hailed his visit with plain delight. He spoke to
them in the simple, homely language which they liked. He spoke of the
sacrifice which they had made in freely and promptly leaving their
homes to fight for a cause which was the cause of religion, freedom
and civilisation. He reminded them that in this struggle they were
most certainly defending the homes and the relations and friends they
had left behind them in Ireland. It was a simple, yet most moving
address, and deeply affected the soldiers." Major Redmond goes on to
say: "When the chaplain had finished his address he signed to the men
to kneel, and administered to them the General Absolution given in
times of emergency. The vast majority of the men present knelt, and
those of other faith stood by in attitudes of reverent respect. The
chaplain then asked the men to recite with him the Rosary. It was most
wonderful the effect produced as hundreds and hundreds of voices
repeated the prayers and recited the words, 'Pray for us now and at
the hour of our death. Amen.' At the dawn Masses were said by the
chaplains of all the battalions in the open, and most of the officers
and men received Holy Communion."
The attack was timed to begin at noon. All the morning the war-pipes
of these Leinsters, Munsters and Connaughts gave out inspiring Irish
tunes--"Brian Boru's March," that was played at the Battle of Clontarf
in the eleventh century when the Danish invaders were driven from
Ireland; "The White Cockade," the Jacobite marching tune of the first
Irish Brigade in the service of France; "The Wearin' o' the Green,"
one of the finest expressions of a country's devotion to an ideal; and
"A Nation Once Again," thrilling with the hopes of the future. The
pipers strode up and down, green ribbons streaming from their pipes,
sending forth these piercing invocations to ancient Irish heroes, to
venerable saints of the land, to the glories and sorrows of Ireland,
to the love of home, to the faith and aspirations of the race, to come
to the support of the men in the fight. And what of the men as they
waited in the assembly trenches for the word? The passage from
Shakespeare's _Henry V_ best conveys their mood: "I see ye stand like
grey-hounds in the leash straining upon the start."
At twelve o'clock the battalions emerged from the trenches. Numbers of
the men had tied to their rifles little green flags with the yellow
harp. Like the English infantry associated with them, the Irish
advanced in the open snaky lines in which such attacks are always
delivered. But there was a striking difference--noted by the war
correspondents--in the pace and impetus of the Irish and the English.
Mr. Beach Thomas of the _Daily Mail_ says: "It gives, I think, a
satisfying sense of the variety and association of talent in the new
Army to picture these dashing Irish troops careering across the open
while the ground was being methodically cleared and settled behind
them by English riflemen." "The English riflemen who fought on their
right had more solidity in their way of going about the business,"
says Mr. Philip Gibbs of the _Daily Chronicle_, "but they were so
inspired by the sight of the Irish dash and by the sound of the Irish
pipes that those who were in support, under orders to stand and hold
the first German line, could hardly be restrained from following on."
The English advance was calm, restrained, deliberate, infused by a
spirit of determination that glowed rather than flamed. A breath of
fire seemed to sweep through the Irish. From first to last they kept
up a boisterous jog-trot charge. "It was like a human avalanche," was
the description given by the English troops who fought with them.
The country across which this dash was made was pitted with
innumerable shell holes, most of them of great width and depth and all
full of water and mud. A Munster Fusilier graphically likened the
place to a net, in his Irish way--"all holes tied together." So the
men, as they advanced, stumbled over the inequalities of the ground,
or slipped and tripped in the soft, sticky earth. It was a scene, too,
of the most clamorous and frightful violence. The shells were like
fiends of the air, flying with horrid shrieks or moans on the wings of
the wind, ignoring one another and intent only on dropping down to
earth and striking the life out of their human prey. Blasts of fire
and flying bits of metal also swept the plain.
There is a loud detonation, and when the smoke clears away not a trace
is seen of the ten or dozen comrades that a moment before were rushing
forward like a Rugby pack after the ball. They have all been blown to
the four winds of heaven. "Jim, I'm hit," cries a lad, as if
boastingly, on feeling a blow on his chest. He twirls round about like
a spinning top and then topples face downward. His body has been
perforated by a rifle bullet. A shell explodes and a man falls. He
laughs, thinking he has been tripped up by a tree root or piece of
wire. Both his legs are broken. Another shell bursts. A Leinsterman
sees a companion lifted violently off his feet, stripped of his
clothes, and swept several yards before he is dashed violently to the
ground. He goes over to his friend and can see no sign of a wound on
the quite naked body. But his friend will never lift up his head
again. The blasting force of the high explosive, the tremendous
concussion of the air, has knocked the life out of him. "Good-bye,
Joe, and may God have mercy on your soul," the Leinsterman says to
himself, and, as he dashes on again he thinks, "Sure, it may be my own
turn next." It is that which assuages the grief of a soldier for a
dead comrade, or soon ousts it altogether from his mind.
Khaki and grey-clad forms were lying everywhere in the frightfully
distorted postures assumed by the killed in action--arms twisted, legs
doubled together, heads askew. Some had their lips turned outward,
showing their teeth in a horrible sneer. Their mouths had been
distended in agony. Others had a fixed expression of infinite sadness,
as if in a lucid moment before death there came a thought of home.
More horrifying still was the foul human wreckage of former
battles--heads and trunks and limbs trodden under foot in the mud, and
emitting a fearful stench.
The priests followed in the wake of the troops to give the
consolations of religion to the dying. They saw heartrending sights.
One of them, describing his experiences, says: "I was standing about a
hundred yards away, watching a party of my men crossing the valley,
when I saw the earth under their feet open, and twenty men disappear
in a cloud of smoke, while a column of stones and clay was shot a
couple of hundred feet into the air. A big German shell, by the merest
chance, had landed in the middle of the party. I rushed down the
slope, getting a most unmerciful whack between the shoulders. I gave
them all a General Absolution, scraped the clay from the faces of a
couple of buried men who were not wounded, and then anointed as many
of the poor lads as I could reach. Two of them had no faces to anoint,
and others were ten feet under the clay, but a few were living still.
By this time half a dozen volunteers had run up, and were digging the
buried men out. We dug like demons for our lads' lives, and our own,
to tell the truth, for every few minutes another 'iron pill' from a
Krupp gun would come tearing down the valley." Another priest says:
"Many of the wounded were just boys, and it was extraordinary how they
bore pain, which must have been intense. Very few murmurings were
heard. One young man said to me, 'Oh, father, it is hard to die so far
from home in the wilds of France.' Certainly the fair land of France
just here did seem wild, with the trees all torn and riven with shot,
and the earth on every side ploughed with huge shell holes."
But the Irish troops swept on. Nothing could stop them--neither their
fallen comrades, nor the groans of the wounded, nor the abominably
mangled dead; and the blasts of fire and iron and steel which the
enemy let loose beat in vain against their valour and resolution.
"'Tis God's truth I'm telling you," a Leinsterman remarked to me,
"when I say we couldn't stop ourselves in the height of our hurry, we
were that mad." In fact, they had captured Guillamont before they were
aware of it. "Where's that blessed village we've got to take?" they
shouted, as they looked round and saw not a stick or a stone. "We're
in it, boys," replied a captain of the Munsters as he planted a green
flag with a yellow harp on the dust heap which his map indicated was
once the centre of Guillamont, and the Irishmen, mightily pleased with
themselves, raised a wild shout.