Part 12 (2/2)

”If we brained them on the spot, who could blame us? 'Tis ourselves that would think it no sin if it was done by any one else,” said a private of the Dublin Fusiliers. ”Let me tell you,” he went on, ”what happened to myself. As I raced across the open with my comrades, jumping in and out of sh.e.l.l holes, and the bullets flying thick around us, laying many the fine boy low, I said to myself, this is going to be a fight to the last gasp for those of us that get to the Germans.

As I came near to the trenches I picked a man out for myself. Straight in front of me he was, leaning out of the trench, and he with a rifle firing away at us as if we were rabbits. I made for him with my bayonet ready, determined to give him what he deserved, when--what do you think?--didn't he notice me and what I was up to. Dropping his rifle, he raised himself up in the trench and stretched out his hands towards me. What could you do in that case, but what I did? Sure you wouldn't have the heart to strike him down, even if he were to kill you. I caught sight of his eyes, and there was such a frightened and pleading look in them that I at once lowered my rifle. I could no more prod him with my bayonet than I could a toddling child. I declare to the Lord the state of the poor devil almost made me cry. I took him by the hand, saying, 'You're my prisoner.' I don't suppose he understood a word of what I said, but he clung to me, crying, 'Kamerad! kamerad!'

I was more glad than ever then that I hadn't the blood of him on my soul. 'Tis a queer thing to say, maybe, of a man who acted like that; but, all the same, he looked a decent boy every bit of him. I suppose the truth of it is this: we soldiers, on both sides, have to go through such terrible experiences that there is no accounting for how we may behave. We might be devils, all out, in the morning, and saints, no less, in the evening.”

The relations between the trenches include even attempts at an exchange of repartee. The wit, as may be supposed, in such circ.u.mstances, is invariably ironic and sarcastic. My examples are Irish, for the reason that I have had most to do with Irish soldiers, but they may be taken as fairly representative of the taunts and pleasantries which are often bandied across No Man's Land. The Germans holding part of their line in Belgium got to know that the British trenches opposite them were being held by an Irish battalion. ”h.e.l.lo, Irish,” they cried; ”how is King Carson getting on? and have you got Home Rule yet?” The company sergeant-major, a big Tipperary man, was selected to make the proper reply, and in order that it might be fully effective he sent it through a megaphone which the colonel was accustomed to use in addressing the battalion on parade. ”h.e.l.lo, Gerrys,” he called out. ”I'm thinking it isn't information ye want, but divars.h.i.+on; but 'tis information I'll be after giving ye, all the same. Later on we'll be sending ye some fun that'll make ye laugh at the other side of ye'r mouths. The last we heard of Carson he was prodding the Government like the very devil to put venim into their blows at ye, and more power to his elbow while he's at that work, say we. As for Home Rule, we mean to have it, and we'll get it, please G.o.d, when ye're licked. Put that in ye're pipes and smoke it.”

Of all the horrible features of the war, surely the most heartrending is the fate of the wounded lying without succour in the open between the opposing lines, owing to the inability of the higher command on both sides to agree to an arrangement for a short suspension of hostilities after an engagement so that the stricken might be brought in. p.r.o.ne in the mud and slush they lie, during the cruel winter weather, with the rain pouring down upon them, their moans of agony in the darkness of the night mingling with the cold blasts that howl around them. But, thanks to the loving kindness of man for his fellow, even in war, these unfortunate creatures are not deserted.

British soldiers without number have voluntarily crept out into No Man's Land to rescue them, often under murderous fire from the enemy.

Many of the Victoria Crosses won in this war have been awarded for conspicuous gallantry displayed in these most humane and chivalrous enterprises.

One of the most uplifting stories I have heard was told me by a captain of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. Out there in front of the trench held by his company lay a figure in khaki writhing in pain and wailing for help. ”Will no one come to me?” he cried in a voice broken with anguish. He had been disabled in the course of a raid on the German trenches the night before by a battalion which was relieved in the morning. These appeals of his were like stabs to the compa.s.sionate hearts of the Irish Fusiliers. Several of them told the captain they could stand it no longer, and must go out to the wounded man. If they were shot in the attempt, what matter? It happened that a little dog was then making himself quite at home in both the British and German trenches at this part of the lines. He was a neutral; he took no sides; he regularly crossed from one to the other, and found in both friends to give him food and a kind word, with a pat on the head. The happy thought came to the captain to make a messenger of the dog. So he wrote, ”May we take our wounded man in?”, tied the note to the dog's tail, and sent him to the German trenches. The message was in English, for the captain did not know German, and had to trust to the chance of the enemy being able to read it. In a short time the dog returned with the answer. It was in English, and it ran: ”Yes; you can have five minutes.” So the captain and a man went out with a stretcher and brought the poor fellow back to our lines.

Some of these understandings are come to by a sort of telepathic suggestion inspired by the principle of ”live and let live,” however incongruous that may seem in warfare. As an instance, recuperative work, such as the bringing up of food to the firing lines is often allowed to go on in comparative quietude. Neither side cares to stand on guard in the trenches with an empty stomach. Often, therefore, firing is almost entirely suspended in the early hours of the night, when it is known that rations are being distributed. That is not the way everywhere and always. A private of the Royal Irish Regiment told me that what he found most aggravating in the trenches was the fusillading by the Germans when the men were getting ready a bit to eat. ”I suppose,” he remarked, ”'twas the smell of the frying bacon that put their dandher up.” But even defensive work has been allowed to proceed without interference, when carried on simultaneously by both sides. Heavy rain, following a hard frost, turned the trenches in the Ypres district into a chaos of ooze and slime. ”How deep is it with you?” a German soldier shouted across to the British. ”Up to our knees, bedad,” was the reply. ”You are lucky fellows. We're up to our belts in it,” said the German. Driven to desperation by their hideous discomfort, the Germans soon after crawled up on to their parapets and sat there to dry and stretch their legs, calling out, ”Kamerads, don't shoot; don't shoot, kamerads!” The reply of the Irish was to get out of their trenches and do likewise. On another occasion, in the broad daylight, unarmed parties of men on both sides, by a tacit agreement, set about repairing their respective barbed-wire entanglements. They were no more than fifteen or twenty yards apart. The wiring-party on the British side belonged to the Munster Fusiliers. Being short of mallets, one of the Munsters coolly walked across to the enemy and said, ”Good-morrow, Gerrys. Would any of ye be so kind as to lend me the loan of a hammer?” The Germans received him with smiles, but as they did not know English they were unable to understand what he wanted until he made it clear by pantomimic action, when he was given the hammer ”with a heart and a half,” as he put it himself. Having repaired the defences of his own trench, he brought back the hammer to the Germans, and thought he might give them ”a bit of his mind,”

without offence, as they did not know what he was saying. ”Here's your hammer, and thanks,” said he. ”High hanging to the man that caused this war--ye know who I mean--and may we be all soon busily at work hammering nails into his coffin.”

Many touching stories might be told of the sympathy which unites the combatants when they find themselves lying side by side, wounded and helpless, in sh.e.l.l holes and copses, or on the open plain after an engagement. The ruling spirit which animates the soldier in the fury of the fight is, as it seems to me, that of self-preservation. He kills or disables so that he may not be killed or disabled himself.

Besides that, each side are convinced they are waging a purely defensive war. So it is that hostility subsides, once the sense of danger is removed, and each side sees in its captives not devils or barbarians, but fellow-men. Especially among the wounded, British and German, do these sentiments prevail, as they lie together on the field of battle. In a dim way they pitifully regard each other as hapless victims caught in the vortex of the greatest of human tragedies, or set against each other by the ambitions of rulers and statesmen in which they have no part. They try to help each other, to ease each other's sufferings, to stanch each other's wounds, to give each other comfort in their sore distress.

”Poor devil, unnerved by sh.e.l.l shock,” was the comment pa.s.sed as a wounded German was being carried by on a stretcher sobbing as if his heart would break. It was not the roar of the artillery and the bursting of high explosives that had unnerved him, but the self-sacrifice of a Dublin Fusilier, who, in succouring him, lost his own life. At the hospital the German related that, on recovering his senses after being shot, he found the Dublin Fusilier trying to stanch the wound in his shattered leg, from which blood was flowing profusely. The Irishman undid the field-dressing, consisting of bandage and antiseptic preparation, which he had wrapped round his own wound, and applied it to the German, as he appeared to be in danger of bleeding to death. Before the two men were discovered by a British stretcher party, the Dublin Fusilier had pa.s.sed away. He developed blood-poisoning through his exposed wound. The German, on hearing the news, broke down and wept bitterly.

Reconciliation between wounded foemen is happily a common occurrence on the stricken plain. The malignant roar of the guns may still be in their ears, and they may see around them bodies battered and twisted out of all human shape. All the more are they anxious to testify that there is no fury in their hearts with each other, and that their one wish is to make the supreme parting with words of reconciliation and prayers on their lips. I have had from a French officer, who was wounded in a cavalry charge early in the war, an account of a pathetic incident which took place close to where he lay. Among his companions in affliction were two who were far gone on the way to death. One was a private in the Uhlans, and the other a private in the Royal Irish Dragoons. The Irishman got, with a painful effort, from an inside pocket of his tunic a rosary beads which had a crucifix attached to it. Then he commenced to mutter to himself the invocations to the Blessed Virgin of which the Rosary is composed. ”Hail, Mary! full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” The German, lying huddled close by, stirred with the uneasy movements of a man weak from pain and loss of blood on hearing the murmur of prayer, and, looking round in a dazed condition, the sight of the beads in the hands of his fellow in distress seemed to recall to his mind other times and different circ.u.mstances--family prayers at home somewhere in Bavaria, and Sunday evening devotions in church, for he made, in his own tongue, the response to the invocation: ”Holy Mary, Mother of G.o.d, pray for us sinners now at the hour of our death. Amen.” So the voices intermingled in address and prayer--the rapt e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of the Irishman, the deep guttural of the German--getting weaker and weaker, in the process of dissolution, until they were hushed on earth for evermore.

War has outwardly lost its romance, with its colour and pageantry. It is b.l.o.o.d.y, ugly and horrible. Yet romance is not dead. It still survives, radiant and glowing, in the heroic achievements of our soldiers, and in the tender impulses of their hearts.

THE END

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THE IRISH AT THE FRONT

By MICHAEL MacDONAGH

FROM THE REVIEWS OF THE FIRST SERIES

_Westminster Gazette._--”Mr. MacDonagh has crammed into a small volume an almost incredible number of thrilling stories of great deeds, whether of collective dash and daring and endurance or of individual heroism. He has found his material in the letters of officers and men and the conversation of those who have come home, as well as from the records compiled at regimental depots; and he has utilised it skilfully, avoiding too frequent quotation and giving his reader a connected and fluent narrative that is of absorbing interest. He gives us vivid pictures of the retreat from Mons--of the Irish Guards receiving their baptism of fire; of the Connaught Rangers' part in the first stand that was made ('It was a grand time we had,' one of them said, 'and I wouldn't have missed it for las.h.i.+n's of money!'); of the Dublins at Cambrai, where they went into the fray in a way that is well described as 'uproariously and outrageously Irish,' after singing all the Fenian songs for which they had time; and of the Munsters who harnessed themselves cheerfully, for lack of horses, to the guns they had captured from the Germans. He tells us of the green flag that Corporal Cunningham bought from a pedlar in London, and that the Irish Guards have since followed to the gates of death on a score of fields; of the Irish Rifles rallying to the 'view-hallo' that Lieutenant Graham gave them on a French newsboy's horn; of the glorious sacrifices of the Dublins and the Munsters at the Gallipoli landings; and of the desperate resistance at Loos, where, as the Brigadier said to his men when it was over, 'It was the London Irish who helped to save a whole British Army Corps.' From first to last it is a glorious story of almost incredible deeds.”

_Star._--”It is an amazing story of incredible gallantry and fantastic daring, gay with humour and poignant with pathos. I defy anybody except a tapeworm to read it without a lump in the throat and tears in the eyes.”--JAMES DOUGLAS.

Bound in cloth, 1s. 3d. net. Postage 4d. extra.

THE IRISH AT THE FRONT

SOME FURTHER REVIEWS

_The Times._--”'It is heroic deeds entering into their traditions that give life to nations,' writes Mr. John Redmond in his preface to Mr. Michael MacDonagh's _The Irish at the Front_. The phrase sums up the aim and temper of the book, which is designed to bring home to English, and especially to Irish, readers the magnificent service of Irish soldiers in the war and the sanct.i.ty of the cause for which they fight. It is an appeal to Irishmen not to let the national effort flag, for the sake of the highest interests both of humanity and of Ireland. In a vivid and earnest popular style Mr. MacDonagh puts flesh and blood on the dry bones of the official dispatches by drawing on regimental records and the narratives of officers and men. The letters of Irish soldiers give a lively impression of battle scenes, and add greatly to the spirit of the volume; but many of the most striking testimonies to the achievements of the Irish regiments come from comrades who are not Irish. It is indisputable that the traditional military valour of the Irish race has been brilliantly sustained in this war, not only by the old Regular battalions, but by the Irishmen of the New Army.”

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