Part 6 (2/2)

A nun writing from a convent in South London says: ”The colonel at ---- sent twenty-two medals to Father X---- to be blessed. The Father took the medals to the barracks himself, where the colonel informed him that he wanted them for Protestant officers who were going to France.” The girls of the Notre Dame Convent School, Glasgow, sent a parcel of 1200 medals to a Scottish regiment. They received a letter of thanks from one of the officers, in which he says: ”You will be glad to know that most, if not all the men, Protestants though they be, have put your medals on the cord to which their ident.i.ty discs are tied, so that Our Lady may help them.”

Thus is the wearing of scapulars and medals in the Army welcomed as an aid to our arms, a reinforcement of our military power. In it may be found the secret of much of the dash and gallantry of the Irish troops. Up to the end of 1916, 221 Victoria Crosses have been awarded for great deeds done in the war. As many as twenty-four have been won by Catholics, of whom eighteen are Irish, a share out of all proportion to their numbers, but not--may I say?--to their valour. In order to appreciate adequately the significance of these figures it is necessary to remember the nature of the deed for which the Victoria Cross is given. It must be exceptionally daring, involving the greatest risk to life. It must be of special military value, or must lead to the saving of comrades otherwise hopelessly doomed. Above all, it must be done not under orders but as a spontaneous act on the soldier's own motion. It is largely due to their religion and the emblems of their religion, and their views of fate and destiny, that Irish Catholic soldiers are so pre-eminently distinguished in the record of the highest and most n.o.ble acts of valour and self-sacrifice in war. There is the significant saying of Sergeant Dwyer, V.C., an Irishman and a Catholic, at a recruiting meeting in Trafalgar Square.

”I don't know what the young men are afraid of,” said he. ”If your name is not on a bullet or a bit of shrapnel it won't reach you, any more than a letter that isn't addressed to you.” He, poor fellow, got a bullet addressed to him on the Somme. ”'Twas the will of G.o.d,” was the lesson taught him by his creed.

CHAPTER VIII

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 scholars.h.i.+p, 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 ca.n.a.l 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 a.s.s's back that it was on an a.s.s Our Lord went into Jerusalem?” ”But, Father,” said the soldier, ”if Our Lord had this lazy ould a.s.s 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 h.e.l.l.” As a loaf of bread stuck on a bayonet was pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.kney especially, is a wag and a jester. He is very p.r.o.ne 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 sh.e.l.l 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. sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed 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 navely 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 battles.h.i.+ps 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 G.o.d.”

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 ill.u.s.tration of what it leads to in the Army was afforded at a camp concert attended by a large a.s.sembly 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 embarra.s.sed, 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 hara.s.sing 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-br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.d, 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 mult.i.tude of imperfections in a soldier.

<script>