CONTEST FOR THE CHANNEL COAST
IMPETUOUS DASH OF LEINSTERS AND ROYAL IRISH, AND GRIM TENACITY OF
IRISH GUARDS AND RIFLES
It had become evident that the design of the Germans, then hacking
their way through Belgium, was to reach Calais and Boulogne so as to
cut the direct communication of the British with the Channel coast of
Belgium and France. With the view of frustrating these plans, Sir John
French, early in October, withdrew his forces from the orchards and
woodlands by the banks of the Aisne to French Flanders, on the
north-west, a mingled industrial and agricultural country. The British
Commander had also hoped to be in time to outflank the right wing of
the enemy, but in this he was disappointed by the fall of Antwerp,
which enabled the Germans to sweep quickly round to Ostend, higher up
the Belgian coast.
The British lines now ran, first from the historic French city of St.
Omer in a south-easterly direction to the smaller towns of Bethune,
Givenchy, and La Bassee, towards the great French manufacturing city
of Lille, prominent on the landscape with its forest of tall chimneys;
and, secondly, from St. Omer again north to Ypres, the ancient and
beautiful capital of Flanders. Here, for months to come, many most
desperate and critical battles were to be fought, in an extraordinary
tangle of railways, canals, roads, industrial villages, mills,
breweries, dyeworks, machine-shops, brick-fields, lime-kilns, and
intervening patches of intensive agriculture--the most densely crowded
area in the world--with the ultimate result that the advance of the
Germans to the Channel coast was stopped by impregnable lines of
British trenches.
In these operations both the 1st and 2nd battalions of the Leinsters,
the Connaught Rangers, the Irish Rifles, the Irish Fusiliers, and the
Irish Regiment took part, with the 2nd battalions of the Dublins,
Munsters, and Inniskillings, whose first battalions--as we shall see
later--were destined for more terrible enterprises against the Turks
at the Dardanelles. It is not easy to get from the official despatches
the correct proportion of the main events in France and Flanders, not
to speak of being able, by the impersonal generalities of these
documents, rightly to estimate the worth of the services of particular
battalions. My purpose, therefore, is to attempt to depict the war on
the Western Front, as seen through the eyes, not of the commanders,
but of the men in the ranks and the regimental officers, and in doing
so I confine myself necessarily to episodes happening here and there
over the far-spreading field of conflict in which Irish regiments and
individual Irish soldiers distinguished themselves.
There were two tremendous and prolonged struggles for the possession
of Ypres. The chief battle, that of Ypres-Armentieres, lasted from
October 17th to November 15th, 1914. One of the first movements of the
British was to dislodge the enemy from positions they held near Lille.
In these engagements national impetuosity led to the advance of two
Irish battalions too far without supports, and their practical
annihilation. On October 18th the 2nd Leinster Regiment was part of a
Division which chased the Germans out of the French town of
Hazebrouck, about twenty-five miles north-west of Lille, and pursued
them beyond Armentieres, a town on the river Lys, within nine miles of
Lille. The Leinsters were about a mile in advance of the main body.
They pushed on to a French village called Premesque, still nearer to
Lille, and there entrenched, when the Germans surrounded them. For a
day and a half the Leinsters held out until they were relieved by
French troops. The French Commander thanked them for saving the
village, but it cost the battalion more than 500 men and officers.
At the same time another Irish battalion was engaged on a similar
enterprise in the same field of operations with more disastrous
results. "On October 19th," says Sir John French in his despatch on
the battle of Ypres-Armentieres, "the Royal Irish Regiment, under
Major Daniell, stormed the village of Le Pilly, which they held and
entrenched. On the 20th, however, they were cut off and surrounded,
suffering heavy losses." As the possession of Le Pilly threatened
their communications between La Bassee and Lille, the Germans made a
determined effort to capture it. It was evident to the Royal Irish
that their position was most precarious. They held on, however, and
beat off a succession of attacks, hoping that assistance would come
before they were completely isolated. German riflemen crept up and
ensconced themselves in farm buildings on the outskirts of the village
on one side; and machine-guns were brought to a little wood on the
other, so that the Royal Irish were enfiladed to the left and right.
The fight was still going on when darkness fell. "All night we could
hear the firing up there," writes Gunner P. Hall, Royal Field
Artillery, who was with his battery on a hill some miles from Le
Pilly; "and desperate efforts were made by our tired troops to regain
the ground the Royal Irish had left uncovered, but the job was too big
for men so exhausted as they were." What exactly had happened was but
a matter for surmise. For hours after the village had been surrounded
by the Germans the crackle of rifles and the rapid volleying of the
machine-guns told that the Royal Irish were yet unsubdued. Then there
came an ominous silence; and in the early hours of the morning a few
survivors of the battalion staggered more dead than alive into the
British camp. "They got a rousing cheer, for we had given them all up
as lost," says Gunner Hall. For the rest, some weeks later, a long
official list of names of the Royal Irish Regiment appeared under the
heading "missing." But the vast majority of them will never be found
until the Day of Judgment.
The Royal Irish Regiment had ceased to exist as a fighting force. The
battalion may be said to have been defeated. The enemy, no doubt,
boasted of it as such. But they set thus early in the war a shining
example of dash, resolution, and endurance in facing fearful odds
which must have had as much moral effect as a victory to our arms.
The most terrific phase of the great battle was from October 29th to
November 2nd, immediately to the south of Ypres, east and west; and the
most critical hours were, as Sir John French says, on October 31st when
the Germans broke through the British lines at Gheluvelt, a village on
the road leading from Ypres south-east to Menin. On November 2nd the
Germans were everywhere repulsed. The Brigadier-General, Lord Cavan,
commanding the 4th (Guards) Brigade, paid the following remarkable
tribute to the work of the Irish Guards on that momentous occasion in
a letter to the Officer Commanding the battalion, Colonel Proby:--
"I want you to convey to every man in the battalion that I
consider that the safety of the right flank of the British
section depended entirely on their staunchness after the
disastrous day, November 1st. Those of them that were left have
made history, and I can never thank them enough for the way in
which they recovered themselves, and showed to the enemy that
Irish Guards must be reckoned with, however hard hit."
Lord Cavan, in a report dated November 7th, further states:--"On
October 31st, November 1st and 6th, the Irish Guards lost 16 officers
and 597 other ranks in disputing 200 yards of ground with superior
forces." Private Stephen Shaughnessy supplies an account of the
incidents of November 6th, when the Irish Guards were overwhelmed. He
says:--"At this time the enemy's strength was two to one. We
endeavoured to hold the enemy by machine-guns and rifle fire, until
they succeeded in penetrating the French line about two or three miles
on our right, and managed to come behind our rear line." Then he gives
an instance of the desperate duels that were fought between the slowly
retiring Irish and the hotly pressing Germans. "While retreating," he
says, "Captain King-Harman was the only officer I saw alive. He was
then standing up and firing with his revolver on the Germans, who were
only 60 yards away. I, or anyone else in our battalion, did not see
him alive afterwards." He adds:--"The only comrade I found within
reasonable distance was Private Birmingham, of Clonmel, formerly of
the Royal Irish Constabulary. We discussed the situation. He got over
the trench to fall back to the troops reforming in our rear. As I was
getting out of the trench, a rifle bullet came through my great coat,
penetrated my cardigan jacket without touching my body. We formed up
again, and were reinforced by the Life Guards, notwithstanding which
we were unable to regain our lost territory. When darkness came, we
were brought back a mile behind the line for a rest and refreshments.
The roll was called, and only 47 of the battalion answered."
The worst was over; and Sir John French indirectly, at least, extols
the Irish Guards for helping to avert a disaster, by his praise of
their Brigade Commander, Lord Cavan. In his despatch on the Battle of
Ypres-Armentieres, the Field-Marshal says:--"The First Corps Commander
(Sir Douglas Haig) informs me that on many occasions Brigadier-General
the Earl of Cavan, commanding the 4th Guards Brigade, was conspicuous
for the skill, coolness, and courage with which he led his troops, and
for the successful manner in which he dealt with many critical
situations."
Another Irish regiment to obtain one of these rare and therefore much
coveted recognitions by a Commander of an Army Corps was the Royal
Irish Rifles, who were fighting round the village of Neuve Chapelle,
to the south, from October 25th to October 27th. "During an attack on
the 7th Infantry Brigade," runs an order issued by Sir H.
Smith-Dorrien, the Commander of the 2nd Corps, "the enemy came to
close quarters with the Royal Irish Rifles, who repulsed them with
great gallantry with the bayonet. The Commander wishes to compliment
the regiment on its splendid feat, and directs that all battalions
shall be informed of the circumstances of his high appreciation of the
gallantry displayed." On October 27th the Germans gained possession of
the northern part of the village, but towards evening the British had
partially recovered the lost ground when fresh hostile reinforcements
were brought up, and the entire village was captured by the enemy. The
Germans would have made a bigger advance were it not for the gallant
stand of the Irish Rifles against overwhelming odds.
A sergeant of the battalion supplies some details of the feat:--"One
morning after we had had several days of awful shelling in the
trenches the Germans came to attack us. They advanced into view
through the rain and mist, and though they were ten times our strength
we held our ground until the necessary dispositions could be made in
other parts of the field to withstand their onslaught." As will be
seen from many an incident in the course of this narrative the Irish
fight best when it comes to the real crisis--the two antagonists
engaged in close and relentless contest, man to man and bayonet to
bayonet. At first it was furious smithing, gleaming thrust and parry,
stab and hack, hack and stab, with the Irish in the trenches and the
Germans above; and, in the end, it was the Germans running away and
the Irish speeding their departure with rifle fire. "We did not think
there was anything very wonderful about what we did," says the
sergeant modestly, "but everyone went wild about it. One staff officer
said we ought all to have two Victoria Crosses each, and we had the
satisfaction of being splendidly praised by the General in Command."
"Nothing," says Napier in his "Peninsular War," "so startled the
French soldiery as the wild yell with which the Irish regiments sprang
to the charge." We are also told by Napier that at Barrosa and Bussaco
the heroes of Marengo and Austerlitz reeled before the thunder shout
of _Faugh-a-Ballagh_ ("Clear the Way") raised by the Royal Irish
Fusiliers and the Connaught Rangers. What is more likely is that the
French gave way before the irresistible bayonet charge that swept like
a flame in the thunder of that haughty battle-cry. The Great War shows
that both these historic regiments maintain the ancient tradition of
raising a wild, terrific yell when they dash forward, a yell which
sends the creeps down the back, and impels the foe irresistibly to
turn and fly for fear of what is to follow.
The Irish Fusiliers were the first to enter Armentieres (on the
occasion that the Leinsters impetuously pushed forward to Premesque),
and they did so shouting their old Irish slogan, _Faugh-a-Ballagh_,
and enforcing it by driving the enemy from their positions behind
every tree and at every turn on the road leading into the town.
Private H. Dawson, a West port boy in the 1st Connaught Rangers, tells
how a company of the battalion frightened a big force of Germans out
of their trenches, and out of their senses also, no doubt, by the
blood-curdling yells they gave vent to as they advanced with the
bayonet. It was on the night of November 4th, 1914, in the
neighbourhood of Neuve Chapelle. The company was ordered to attack the
German trenches, two platoons to do the fighting and the two others to
follow after with shovels, to fill in the trenches, if they were
taken. "At midnight," writes Private Dawson, "we moved forward with
such cheers, shouts, and cries that the Germans, thinking that a whole
brigade was advancing, evacuated the trenches and fled. The moon was
shining, and when the Germans afterwards saw the handful of men that
routed them they returned in greatly increased numbers and made a
murderous onslaught on us."
They can sing, too, as they advance, these Connaught Rangers, as
Private Robert McGregor of the Gordon Highlanders relates in a graphic
letter to his father at Parkhead, Scotland. On December 26th, 1914,
the Germans attacked the trenches in front of them at a particular
point. The Gordons who held the trenches got out to meet the enemy as
they came on in the open. There was a close fight with varying
fortunes, but the Germans were reinforced, and as there were only
about 170 of the Gordons left it seemed as if they were bound to be
annihilated.
"But just at that moment," writes Private McGregor, "we heard the
sound of singing, and the song was 'God Save Ireland.' It was the
Connaught Rangers coming to our relief. Well, I have seen some
reckless Irishmen in my time, but nothing to match the recklessness
and daring of these gallant Rangers. They took the Germans on the left
flank. The Germans now probably numbered about 2,000 against 800
Connaughts and 170 of us, but were they 50,000 I don't believe in my
soul they could have stood before the Irish. The Connaughts simply
were irresistible, and all the time they kept singing 'God Save
Ireland.' One huge red-haired son of Erin having broken his rifle got
possession of a German officer's sword, and everything that came in
the way of this giant went down. I thought of Wallace. Four hundred
and seventy Huns were killed and wounded, and we took 70 prisoners.
Had it not been for the Irish I wouldn't be writing this, and when it
comes to a hand-to-hand job there is nothing in the whole British Army
to approach them. God save Ireland and Irishmen."