Derring do and death as WWI ends.

“Well, I’ve all but achieved one of my ambitions. I’ve met a Fokker and got the better of him. Yesterday I was escorting a B.E.C. on photography well the other side of our lines, and was very busy dodging Archies, when I suddenly heard a machine-gun going off behind and above me - my really vulnerable point, as I couldn’t see backwards. Glancing round, I saw wires flying right and left and my planes opening up under the shower of armour-piercing bullets; but I did not let this continue long.

“After manoeuvring round each other for a few seconds, I climbed up to him, holding my fire, but keeping so he could not fire at me. He had a synchronised gun firing through his propeller. At last I was able to outclimb him, and then, after a quick bit of turning, got in behind his tail. (I was simply chortling with glee - different to when the fight started.) Then I gave it him. I fired over 100 rounds into him, and, although he dodged, he couldn’t get me off his tail. Then suddenly he went down like a stone. I thought I had got him all right; but after going down about 7,000 feet he gradually flattened out and, I think, landed.

“It was the first encounter we have had with a Fokker; and the C.O. was very pleased with the result, not to mention the fellow I was escorting. They were some of the liveliest few minutes I have ever had. It’s grand to get a decent fight after doing hours and hours of beastly patrols in all kinds of d---d weather.

“My poor old machine is in hospital now - four main wing spars shot through, one tail boom blown away, two flying wires severed, and two rudder controls cut (lucky they are duplicated), not to mention several other bracing wires cut, and three axle ribs shot through. The under-carriage was also badly knocked about; but I got home after finishing the escort, and landed safely.”

Truly the life of a fighting airman is a precarious one; and even the cheerful statement that “I’ve got a new machine since, and a better one ” does not give one any extravagant notion of security. But the story only gains in excitement as the weeks pass. In the following month he is claiming, in his own charmingly modest way - with no idea that his words will ever appear in print - that “I have done what, so far as I know, nobody else has done - landed in ‘Germany’ and got back.”

“This is roughly what happened: I was on patrol the other morning about 10,000 feet up, when I saw an Aviatik about 2,000 feet up and five miles the other side of the line. I dived down. It took me under a minute to get down to 2,000 feet. I got fairly close to the Hun. He saw me, and his observer started shooting wildly; the pilot got complete ‘wind-up,’ and dived, twisted, and dodged, and finally, when he was about 50 feet up, I got about half a drum (twenty shots) into him, and he tried to land in a field, and crashed hopelessly, running through wire fences, and breaking his machine up in bits. I climbed up to about 300 feet, and then dived again and shot at the pilot and observer, who were running across the field to shelter in a house. I laid one of them out.

“I then found myself about 10 feet from the ground; and when I tried to switch my engine on I found the switch had jammed; so I was forced to land. In doing so, I hit a bump, and the jar loosened the spring, and I took off again with a roar, climbing to about 500 feet. I came home dodging like a snipe along the River S---, amidst a glorious fusillade of rifle, machine-gun, and artillery fire from the infuriated Huns in the second and first line trenches.”

It was not a bad day’s work for a boy of eighteen to have met two skilled German airmen and downed them, completely smashing their machine, and to be able to claim that he had actually made a forced landing behind the German lines and recovered safely. Once again the fearful risks of the life are suggested by the reassuring conclusion: “I got back to our aerodrome all right, but my poor machine (my new one) will have to get new wings, as two main spars were shot through.”

All this time his total of enemy machines and observers accounted for is steadily growing; and in the Fourth Army’s summary of its air victories during the first battle of the Somme, the name of Cowan appears more and more frequently as the victor of these audacious battles in the air.

By August, the development of the air forces on both sides was beginning to make itself felt, and the young Irishman was ever in the thick of the fighting:

“Things have been very lively round here lately, and the Huns have concentrated a lot of machines here from all places, and have been making strenuous efforts to get near the lines; and so we are kept busy, and have fights every day, unlike a few months ago.

“I have been in several big scraps lately. We patrol in flights of six machines, ten miles over the lines, and as they cannot do anything against us in the way of fighting in the air, they have got a horrible lot of ‘Archies’ round here, and so give us little peace. The wind has been from the east lately, which gives us a bit of help when coming back with functionless engines.

“I was in one great scrap a few evenings ago - three of us to seven of them. We sent them all home quickly, though we didn’t get any down. My machine had to have new wings, etc. The next morning we were up again, and had a great scrap on and off for forty minutes. I had used up all my ammunition but one drum, forty-seven rounds - I carry five drums - so I climbed up 12,000 feet and preened my feathers, so to speak, and looked round. I then saw a Hun coming towards our line. Diving down, I manoeuvred round behind him, and got within 20 feet of him before he saw me. I then gave him my drum; and he only got a few into me; but they use explosive bullets; and, as I don’t wear goggles, my eyes got filled with oil out of my pulsator glasses, liquid from my compass, chips of wood, and aluminium; so I was temporarily blinded; and by the time I had got the blood, etc., out of my eyes he was nowhere to be seen; but when I landed I was told our anti-aircraft people had seen him crash down. That makes my third Hun, not counting others driven down and a good few Hun observers, to my credit. so I am very pleased. My old machine was a bit of a wreck, but has since been repaired, and is ready for my fourth. My personal damage is a small cut over my right eye from a bullet and several bits of explosive bullets in my right leg; but my shins are tough; and I am all healed up again.”

“It’s a great life, and beats foot-slogging hollow,” is the summary comment at the end of a long letter. There is an attractive sidelight on its relaxations in the postscript: “I had a three-legged puppy for a few days, he was a topper, but must have lost another leg, as he disappeared.”

In September the fighting in the air had attained still greater proportions, and the Germans, tackling the problem with more determination and thoroughness than British Government had yet realised or was prepared to meet, were rapidly building up an air service whose technical efficiency left the British airmen at a grave and ever-growing disadvantage. The airmen themselves were fully aware of the fact, but as the risks increased, they redoubled their own efforts.

“I have had a tremendous amount of scrapping, and got my fourth Hun two days ago,” writes the young Irish captain. “I’ll tell you what happened on that patrol; and it is much the same on all of them. I had gone out to do a defensive patrol - that is, to protect our Corps machines working on the lines. The day was very cloudy, there being two layers of clouds, one from 2,000 to 4,000 feet, the other a thin layer at 6,000. I was working between them.

“I saw two Huns diving on a Corps machine; so I hurried to his assistance, and drove them off, but was attacked by seven (!!) hostile aircraft, which came out of the top layer of clouds. I held my own against them for fifteen minutes, but was getting shot, about a bit and running out of ammunition, when two Nieuports came up; and together we drove them off.

“About twenty minutes later, I saw another Hun diving on two of our machines which were above me; but the Hun suddenly saw the De Haviland, and dived down east into the bottom layer of clouds. Then I had a great chase in and out of clouds, now getting a glimpse of him and now losing him; but at last I got into him in a gap, and gave him a drum, which sent him down home. By all the laws of gravity, etc., he should have crashed, but didn’t.

“Later I saw two more hostile aircraft coming west just below the top layer of clouds. I climbed up into them, and waited till the leader was directly below me. Then I dropped down like a ton of bricks on his neck, taking him by surprise. He dived east, pouring out smoke.

“I was then attacked by the other, and drove him off in time to see the first going down in flames - my fourth.”

One is left speechless by a description so tense, with the dire ring of tragedy in the final comment that “this sort of patrol is quite common nowadays, but we have got the

Hun well under control.” The unreserved intimacy of the letter, with its footnote saying that it is not to be shown around - such is the wonderful modesty of the young airman-reveals untold depths of courage and sheer nobility of self-sacrifice. There is no finer expression of the age-long chivalry of Ireland in any written document.

Nerves of iron could not have stood the strain which this endless exposure involved; and, what was worse, the British pilots were now faced by far stronger and swifter machines. Day by day the losses to the squadrons grew more severe; and in spite of their insurpassable .gallantry, a growing spirit of gloom made itself felt as one comrade after another failed to return. Captain Cowan, by this time a Flight Commander, was in his turn put on the list for a temporary period of home service; but the “good news ” never came true. One day in November eight machines were out on patrol, and as a German machine appeared, two or three dived at it together, and whether it was by collision or by the explosion of an unlucky anti-aircraft shell, disaster followed immediately.

It was but a few weeks since he had been able to claim his age as nineteen; yet in a time when all the youth of the world, and all the bravest idealism of every nation, was proving itself in the supreme test on the western front, he had won his own place proudly, yet without one boastful word, as a born leader whose supremacy the passing months could only have strengthened and intensified. Had he lived, his coming of age would, beyond all doubt, have found him universally acclaimed already as one of the greatest airmen in Europe. In his own modest way he must have known himself something of the immense power with which he had been gifted. But however that may be, he knew clearly what appalling odds he was being called upon to face in France, and he never flinched for a moment, but set an example of superb fidelity and courage to all who knew him. He was probably the youngest amongst them, but they all learned from him.

And when we mourn his loss to his own generation and to his own country, how shall we say what he had achieved? A boy, he had played more than a man’s part in defeating the most formidably organised force that has ever set out to subdue the rest of the world to its evil will. In days when that power seemed still to be unbreakable, he gave all that was in him to break it. And in the end, it is the supreme sacrifices of such men which have not only prevailed in liberating France today from the nightmare of German occupation, but have in the truest sense saved the whole world.

The Irish in the Retreat from Mons

By H. M. TOMLINSON. (Official War Correspondent on the Western Front, 1914-1917.)

One of a new draft going out now knows more or less what to expect - and that, perhaps, is to his honour. He is under no illusion. It is stern duty, not adventure, which takes him. But, anyhow, he knows that when he gets into the line he will have next to him comrades who know just what the business is like, and will see that he gets no surprises. But when the original British Expeditionary Force landed in France there was nobody to tell the men what war would be like when it opened. Nobody in Europe knew. The vast and complicated machinery of continental warfare had never been worked. What had happened previously had been little more than tentative experiments, Moreover, such an alarming legend had grown up around the Prussian name, and so much had been said of the astonishing size, equipment, organisation, and cold-drawn efficiency of the vast German Army, that the men of our little force, finding themselves in France on their way to fight such a foe, might have been expected to be somewhat serious at the thought of what was before them. They had good reasons for it.

Their private thoughts may have been, and no doubt were, inclined to be grave enough. But they sang, they looked with blithe and confident eyes at the French, who welcomed them with flowers; and one of their own countrymen who was watching, as I was, was entitled to some pride as he watched them go by - whether they were big, stiff Grenadiers, or a Highland battalion swinging along lithe and free, or a battalion of Irish boys, with a name that recalled stories of Busaco, Fuentes d’Onoro, Cuidad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria. Well, it was a small army; but for quality, comradeship, training, confidence and tradition, it was the best army that ever took the field. You could guess that easily enough, as you watched them move off into the unknown.

It was the mistake of the Germans that they did not know it; and would not have believed it if they had been told. But it was the sort of army which could hold on when the odds were ten to one against it - more than that, its officers never questioned that their men could meet such odds, and go on fighting, instead of retreating, when they knew they would be certainly wiped out if they stopped. And it was precisely that staying power, that casual indifference to the odds, that determination to make the other lot pay the full price, which turned many of the Peninsula battles and deflected the course of history at Waterloo, and that in the line at Mons, after the French had been forced across the Sambre, would not accept the verdict of numbers and guns; but turned the course of history again by preventing von Kluck developing his encircling movement, and at the very moment when the Kaiser was announcing to the world that the British Army was about to be destroyed.

For though the story of Mons and of the subsequent retreat is largely of the heroic efforts of small units, now the cavalry, now the infantry, and now the guns, yet each time any portion of that little army was subjected to the highest possible strain - and each unit in it was repeatedly so tested - the men unfailingly responded like the heroes of the legends. This is not exaggeration or romance. It is the simple truth; and the fact that, wherever it was tested, and each time it was tested, that army behaved in a way which was far beyond any fair and just expectation, and saved Europe. We know now what General Joffre and Sir John French never suspected. While expecting the Germans to attack with forces no more than their own, the enemy had designed nothing less than a vast Sedan for the Allied Armies; and what Sir John French had to meet was not an attack of equal numbers from the north-east, but a great movement of superior forces striking on his flank from the north-west. The Kaiser, therefore, had good reason to suppose his generals would present him with a colossal victory. But the British regiments did not act by the book of war; they made war in their own peculiar way. It is true that for twelve hours from Sunday evening the 23rd August, 1914, the British Army was isolated, and partially surrounded by four German corps. Yet, had the Kaiser but known it, at the very moment when he was announcing the destruction of the British Army, that army, desperate, but cool, thinking it was “all up,” but striking back still, just for the sake of luck and good-bye - that army, even then, was engaged in a deed which had in it the beginning of downfall for the Hohenzollerns.

And the Irish Regiments in it - 2nd Royal Munsters, 2nd Connaught Rangers, 1st Irish Guards, 2nd Royal Irish Regiment, 2nd Royal Irish Rifles, 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers, 2nd Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, the North Irish Horse and the South Irish Horse - they contributed a full share for Ireland in that astonishing success which made the Marne reaction possible.

We did not hold the best of lines when conflict opened with the enemy. It ran east from about Conde along the Conde-Mons canal, round the loop made by the canal north of Mons, and then turned south-east in the direction of the Mons-Beaumont road. The attack came before it was expected. On Sunday, August 23rd, just after midday, our men were washing socks and shirts, and feeling generally that this was rather like manoeuvres. Word came that outposts were heavily engaged. The attack had begun, and at the most fragile part of the line - the loop of the canal about Mons, held by the famous 3rd Division, under General Haldane. Well, the Germans struck a pretty tough lot to begin with. It was a bad position, and the odds were hopeless, as it turned out. But among other regiments of the 3rd Division which returned more than full value to the traditions of their names, were the Royal Irish Regiment and the Irish Rifles. The Royal Irish were driven from their position, which they were holding with their comrades of the Middlesex, and were cut off; but they held on till relieved by the Gordon Highlanders. What the Highlanders saw when they arrived is best guessed from the words of one of them: “I dare not mention that place, and close my eyes. God, it was awful!”

But they held on, like all the others, till ordered to move; and the punishment they had given the enemy was terrific. Like all the British engaged, they had been trained on moving targets at 800 yards. They had never dreamed of such targets as the German masses offered. The enemy had calculated on the shock to the nerves produced by attacking in continuous masses; but the British had been trained to fire accurately fifteen rounds to the minute, and, finding such a target, took all the revenge they could for the death of their fellows by the previous shelling.

But the retreat had to be made; and from there to the Marne, dazed with fatigue, fighting incessantly, retiring, but stubbornly resisting, the Irish did their part in frustrating the out-flanking of the Allies. The Munsters at Etreux, on the Tuesday, cut off and surrounded, made an heroic stand, fighting alone for six hours, the survivors replenishing their ammunition from the pouches of the fallen. The remnant of the regiment were taken prisoners, but 400 were killed and wounded.

At Landrecies, the Guards Brigade, with that new regiment, the 1st Irish Guards, having arrived on Tuesday night, prepared for the rest they badly needed. They did not get it. The village was suddenly attacked - but luckily it had been prepared, and the houses were loopholed. The Guards turned out, improvised barricades, and there began an historic street fight of this war. It was an awful mix-up, in which we get one picture of an Irish Guardsman, rising suddenly in the firing line to flourish the green flag and shouting “Erin-go-Bragh!” The men ceased firing, and charged shouting down the street with the bayonet, sweeping it clear of the enemy.

Further south, in the valley of the Oise, the Connaught Rangers, outnumbered five to one, and keeping back the advance of the enemy, were suddenly called on by their Colonel to charge with the steel. The astonished enemy broke, and ran. Yet these deeds have to be paid for. The Connaughts were in the Landrecies affair; and to show what happens in fightin,g, though heroically, against such odds, one double company of the Rangers had 28 present out of a roll-call of 205. In a week the Rangers, who began on August 23rd 1,100 strong, had lost 514 men and 7 officers.

The “Dublins,” like every regiment in that retreat, had its own heroic story. But one unknown private deserves special record. The West Yorkshire Regiment, in a village near to Rheims, were marching through a long, narrow street, expecting no evil there,

They saw a man dash out of a building ahead, and to the right; and immediately rifle fire began, and the man, who was making for the Yorkshires, fell. That man was a private of the “Dublins.” He was dead. His name is unknown. But he had been a prisoner, held by the enemy in that building, where they were in ambush. He was not ,going to see the Tommies caught. When he heard them coming, he broke away, knowing quite well what would happen to him, but not caring so it did not happen to his unknown comrades. He was buried next day with military honours; and because his identification disc and everything else was missing, all his grateful friends the English could put over his grave was the quotation: “He saved others, Himself He could not save.”

A Night Raid by the Royal Irish Rifles

By the late Lieutenant R. M. Marriott-Watson, M.C., 2nd R.I.R.

I pass over the weary week of preparation, the organisation of parties, the allotment of duties, the equipment, da capo ad lib. Suffice it to say there were eighteen parties, and each one had to be trained separately. Suffice it also to say that the Day, or rather the Night had arrived, and there we found ourselves, four officers and 105 “other ranks,” speeding for the scene of action in motor lorries, singing at the top of our voices.

Eventually arrived on the scene of action, we are squatting down in the fire trench.

Never have the Verey flares seemed brighter or the Hun artillery so active. At last the word is passed down the line, and we troop off.

Up over the parapet past a still leaking defective gas cylinder (we gave them a gas display the other day. Who says we’re not considerate?) and along an old iron fence-relic of the palmy days when No Man’s Land was not such - along we scuttle, bending low, and finally drop plunk! into the road - which is to be our base of operation. It is to here that we have a telephone run out.

We now wait for the start of our bombardment - we look anxiously at our watches. Nearly time! Ah, here it begins! Boom! Boom! C-r-rump Ker-rump! We lie down, pressing close to the bank for fear of blow-backs. Our gunners are using heavy stuff. I half lie, half sit, and chat to the man next to me - one of my own platoon.

Whizzzzzzzzz ! chunk! A huge bit of shell lands within precisely six inches of our heads - a blowback from our own guns. We laugh. Ah, here’s the “lift” now, and forward go the wire-cutting party to see it all’s clear.

All reported clear - enemy wire completely cut. The report goes down on the telephone to the major anxiously waiting at Battalion Headquarters in the trenches. Five minutes more bombardment and then a permanent “lift.” Right-the five minutes are up, and away we go, stumbling in the dark and racing up.

The first parties have reached the Boche trenches, and are entering. Soon my party will be in, and then, of course, the inevitable happens; I stumble in a shell hole, and my tin hat falls off. I scramble desperately in the mud, jam it on again somehow, and scuttle into the Boche trenches after my party.

Of course the trenches have been blown out of all recognition by our artillery. But the main thing is to push on. Our job is on the right, so we shove on down to the right. I hear myself whooping out the most astonishing oaths of encouragement, and brandish a huge service Webley in one hand, an electric torch in- the other.

Soon I hear the great booming voice of my lance-corporal. I go up round a, corner. “Sir, we’ve got some of ‘em here, sir,” he says, panting and pale with excitement, as two wretched, trembling Wurttembergers emerge from an unbelievably deep dug-out. I shove my huge Webley under their noses, and pack them off down the trench under a guard to the prisoner-conducting party. There is really no need for a guard. They are only too anxious to go and help my men up over the rough bits of ground, running in front and removing pieces of barbed wire; etc., from their path.

It is really pathetic, their fear, and one’s only feeling is of pity for them; we throw a couple of bombs down that dug-out to make sure that it’s clear, and then carryon to the next. After treating several more in this way we come to the limit of our sphere of activities, and turn back, bombing and wrecking everything as we go. I personally seem to spend the whole of my time falling down and picking myself up again.

Suddenly there is a commotion round a traverse, and a man rushes up to me, shouting my name, “Mr. Blank, Mr. Blank, I’m bleedin’ to death.” He is obviously very upset, and the whole of the left side of his jaw and neck have a scarlet veil over them. It is as if he had a crimson scarf on. He is quite incoherent, but I manage to elicit that he was exploring a dugout somewhere and a German or some-one threw a grenade or something, when or where I cannot find out. I pack him off to the prisoner-conducting party to be patched up, when another man rushes round. This one has been blinded, poor devil, and close on him a fellow who has been hit in the stomach by a bit of spent shell. The latter is very much frightened, but little the worse.

I manage to soothe them all and straighten things out a bit - I have a hundred things to attend to at once, and my temper is, in consequence, none too sweet; nor is my language. Eventually we arrive back at the point of entry and meet the “left” party, who have been luckier than we have. They have an officer among their prisoners. However, we are all immensely braced, and it has been very successful.

Now ,the runners run round to collect up stragglers; party leaders count their parties; everyone is accounted for; the ladders are pulled up; and away we go down to the road.

This is, however, where our trouble begins. The Boche artillery has by this time been put thoroughly au courant as to what has been happening. Earlier I saw someone sending up red flares from somewhere, but couldn’t make out from where, and this is the result. There is an absolute curtain of fire between us and our trenches, through which we cannot hope to get.

I am standing talking over the situation with the other officers when there is a blinding flash of fire in my eyes and a hot flame sears my cheek just as a fearful explosion sounds right in my ears. I am precipitated head-long, losing thereby my automatic, which I held grasped in my right hand. I pick myself up, and feel the right side of my face gingerly, expecting to find myself devoid of a lower jaw or something. I am delighted to find everything is apparently still there, bar my hearing. But on looking round I see three limp, crumpled bodies all within a few feet.

The only thing to do is to work our way to the left down the road, where perhaps we may manage to effect an entry into our trenches lower down. The officers walk up and down the long line of men crouched under the bank and encourage them, talking quite calmly and undisturbedly. Gradually we work everyone - including all the dead and wounded (it takes four men to carry a dead man, one to each arm and leg if he is any size of a man at all) down the road. The scout officer dodges on ahead, and, after long searching, partly owing to luck and partly to his familiarity with No Man’s Land, finds a way in for them a little less shrapnel-sprinkled than most.

What an intense relief! All in, not a dead or wounded man left outside. And only just in time, for dawn is breaking. A deadly tiredness comes over all of us, and an infinite satisfaction. We have done everything that was required of us, and although it has cost us dear in the lives of fine fellows, they have not died in vain, But how many people would imagine all this when they see: “On the Western front nothing of importance to report. A successful raid was carried out by the Blankshires on the German trenches last night; twenty-one prisoners, including an officer and a sergeant, were taken.”?

HOW THE MUNSTERS ANSWERED GERMAN PROPAGANDA.

The rebellion in Dublin during Easter Week, 1916, was hailed with acclamation in Germany as a real proof that the essential unity of interests between Ireland and England during the war had at last been broken. And the disappointment of the German Government at the failure of the few irresponsible fanatics who, having obtained sufficient arms to defy the police, seized the chief buildings in Dublin and refused to surrender until the city was laid in ruins, was due to no feelings of sympathy for the disaster which had been brought upon the country by German intrigue.

Once again the Germans had miscalculated wildly in their estimate of the Irish character. Already in a dozen battles earlier in the war Irish regiments had filled gaps in the Allied line in France and Flanders, where their heroic resistance had irreparably shattered the German plan of campaign. And in the German prison camps, Irishmen, maimed and desperate with starvation, were teaching the same lesson to their captors, valiantly defying every effort to seduce them, by promises of food, and of money, from the cause in which they had offered their lives and given their liberty.

In Easter Week the Germans started to wreak their vengeance on the Irish troops in Flanders, hoping that a simultaneous offensive there and in Ireland might forever drive Ireland out of the war. On April 27th they launched a furious attack, preceded by a dense discharge of gas and a violent bombardment, against the 16th Division, who had not long arrived. in France, and were then holding the sector around Loos and Hulluch, from which the German Armies have to-day retreated in all haste. But the Irish regiments splendidly held their own; and though they suffered many casualties then, they had their revenge later in the summer, in the battle of the Somme.

Failing there, the Germans tried another method, which it fell to the Munster Fusiliers to combat in a manner worthy of the best fi,ghting traditions of the immortal Irish Brigades. On the 10th May, 1916, when they took over trenches from another battalion in the Loos-Hulluch sector, just north of Lens, the 8th Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers found, as daylight broke, that the Germans had put out placards from the trenches opposite to them. Reading the placards through field glasses, they could see that they referred to the Sinn Fein rising in Dublin, of which at that time only the first vague news had come through to the Irishmen in France. It was the first direct attempt at propaganda by the enemy among the Irish troops in the line.

But the Munsters had their own views on the Sinn Fein rising; and they determined at once that the insulting German notices should not be allowed to remain where they were. While daylight lasted nothing could be done to remove them; but they became the targets for the Munstermen’s rifles throughout the day. Meanwhile Lieutenant-Colonel M. Williamson, who commanded the Battalion, and Major Larry Roche had been preparing the plan by which they were to be seized and brought back to the Irish trenches.

When dusk came, the raiding party, led by Lieutenant J. F. Biggane, from Cork, and Corporal Kemp, from Lismore, crept out across No Man’s Land, crawling among the shell holes till they reached the German wire. If their errand was to meet with success they could not avoid being discovered, and when they reached the two posters and tore them down, they were at once subjected to violent machine-gun and shrapnel fire.

But they carried back their prize unscathed through a murderous barrage, and the placards are to-day among the proudest trophies of the Royal Munster Fusiliers. They had also shown once and for all, to the Germans, in what way Irish soldiers will always meet proposals that reflect upon their honour.

Colonel Williamson brought the two placards home with him later, on leave, and was summoned to a special audience with His Majesty the King at Buckingham Palace on June 22nd. He presented the two trophies, on behalf of the regiment, to His Majesty, and they are now in the War Museum at Buckingham Palace. The following message from the King was subsequently published in Battalion Orders on Colonel Williamson’s return to France:

His Majesty commanded Colonel Williamson to convey to all ranks his appreciation of their loyalty, gallantry, and hard work, his thanks for the placards, his sorrow for our losses, and the affectionate interest with which he has followed and will follow our career. His Majesty added: “The oft-repeated gallantries of the Munsters, Col. Williamson, will never be forgotteln by me or those who follow me.”

DUCHESS OF CONNAUGHT’S OWN IRISH-CANADIAN REGIMENT.

By PTE. J. A. HOLLAND. (Canadian Infantry.)

“You can’t stop the Irish from volunteering,” ruefully admitted an agitator who sought to tamper with recruits for Canada’s first contingent. “There’s going to be the devil of a scrap over in Europe, and they are bound to be in it. And anyway, the Irish never did have any use for the Germans - the breeds can’t mix.” He then proceeded to prove the truth of his own words by joining the army.

But there was more than mere “love of a shindy” behind the Irish-Canadians’ determination to bear their fair share of the burden of Canada’s war effort. They were roused to a mighty anger by the fate of Belgium and the trails of ruin, death and dishonour left by the Huns in their barbarian sweep through France. They realised that the future of Canada, the land of their adoption, would be fought out on the battlefields of Europe, and they faced the issue squarely. “For the sake of the world’s liberty, Germany must not be allowed to win.”

The Irish transcribed their determination in the books of every recruiting office from Halifax to Vancouver, and five thousand men of Irish birth or parentage helped to swell the ranks of Canada’s first glorious contingent, which blocked the German drive for the Channel Ports during the second battle of Ypres, “the ordeal of the poison gas,” in April, 1915.

A similar contribution of Irish manhood was made to the 2nd Canadian Division; but emigrants from the “ould sod” were to do more yet, An insistent demand arose throughout the country for the formation of a purely Irish Battalion. Three big cities, Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver, enthusiastically claimed the privilege, and it was left to the Government to decide which should have the honour. Montreal was chosen, and in February, 1916, a; whirlwind recruiting campaign began for the Irish-Canadian Rangers. Country-wide interest was aroused in the effort, and when H.R.H. the late Duchess of Connaught graciously gave her name and patronage to the Battalion, and became its Honorary Colonel, success was assured.

The organisation of the unit was given into the hands of prominent Irish sportsmen, and the first hundred volunteers were athletes with international reputations. They set a standard of physique which was maintained until the last man was enrolled, and when the Rangers sailed for England in December, trained and ready, they looked, as they were, fighting men of a fighting race, capable of upholding the proudest traditions of the “little Green Isle” which so many among them still called “home.”

It is hardly necessary to dwell upon the Rangers’ triumphal progress through Ireland in January and February, 1917, when they were feted and acclaimed in all the principal cities, and treated to a display of lavish hospitality that has become a regimental tradition. Suffice it to say, that Ireland was proud of her khaki-clad, emigrant sons, and all classes of opinion united to prove to them that the chivalry of their great race still lived.

The Rangers regretfully closed their tour at Limerick, and once more took up the burden of duty, encouraged and inspired by the vision of Ireland - the homeland - as one of the Allies, forgetting internal dissension, to take a worthy part in the greatest struggle for liberty which the world had ever known.

Training was resumed with renewed ardour when the Rangers returned to England. The men were eager to get to France, and their chance soon came, though unfortunately not in the way they wished. Heavy losses had depleted the Canadian Divisions, and there was an urgent call for reinforcements. Regretfully it was decided by the military authorities that the Rangers should be one of the units called upon to fill the gaps. Volunteers were called for, and practically the entire Battalion answered Colonel O’Donohue’s moving appeal; an appeal that wrung the hearts of these Irish lads who had so ardently longed to go to France as a unit.

Whole platoons of the Rangers, with their officers, were drafted to Quebec units, and though they lost their identity in the new formations, they succeeded in holding their individuality by supreme courage and splendid gallantry in action.

During the terrific fighting around Lens early in 1917, when the Canadians pressed the Boche without pause, and wrested position after position from his best regiments, men of the Rangers carried the glory of Ireland on their bayonet points, with which they were terribly efficient. Again at Passchendaele, where the grimmest struggles of the entire war was fought, and where the British had to wade through mud up to the armpits in order to come to grips with the enemy, these Irish-Canadians, by sheer fighting ability, obtained laudatory recognition from their new commanders, one of whom, in asking for reinforcements, wrote as follows: “If it is possible to obtain any more men from the Irish-Canadian Rangers, I would like to have them. Finer fighting men I can never hope to get.”

It was primarily due to the glorious reputation which the Irish drafts made for themselves that the Canadian authorities decided to perpetuate the name of the regiment by making it a Reserve Battalion, supplying reinforcements to the 14th and 24th Battalions, which were raised in the same city, Montreal. Both these units have won imperishable glory, to which not a little was contributed by the drafts from the Duchess of Connaught’s Own Irish Canadian Rangers.

One V.C., five D.C.M.’s, and thirty-six Military Medals have been won by original members of the I.C.R. ‘s, all but four of whom were born in Ireland.