"She, beyond shelter or station,
She beyond limit or bar,
Urges to slumberless speed
Armies that famish and bleed,
Giving their lives for her seed.
That their dust may re-build her a Nation,
That their souls may re-light her a star."
A. C. Swinburne.
About a mile from the market-place of Neuve Chapelle, and above Festubert and Givenchy, is the Rue du Bois, a street lying east and west, some 500 yards behind the British trenches. Last year the bells of Neuve Chapelle sent the sound swinging over the little distance, but the pounding of the shells.
of friend and enemy alike, silenced the bells, when war let loose the great stream of human blood and human tears. The Rue was once a thoroughfare for early carts and other traffic going towards the Distillery on the Violaines Road, and had been built according to the Roman system—one straight line of houses all built together. Along this street the carts used to pass, coming up from Richebourg St. Vaast and Richebourg l'Avoue, and going on by the road that leads to distant Lille. The Rue du Bois is now a sad place, for the chimney-stacks have fallen, and the roofs and walls gape desolately. Changed times for France since the early carts went by, and a changed world for many of us. On the evening of Saturday, May 8th, 1915, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers, commanded by Colonel Victor Rickard, were on their way to take.
their place in the trenches in front of Rue du Bois ; with them was Father Francis Gleeson, whose name is known throughout the whole of Munster. It was a clear spring evening, dark under a green sky, the orchards through the country heavy with blossom, their scent recalling manifold recollections. The poplar trees, many of them shellscarred and broken, were very still in the windless twilight, dark spires against the clear clean sky. At the entrance to the Rue du Bois there stands a broken shrine, and within the shrine is a crucifix.
When the Munsters came up the road, Colonel Rickard halted the Battalion. The men were ranged in three sides of a square, their green flags, embroidered with the Irish harp and the word " Munster," a gift from Lady Gordon, placed before each Company. Father Gleeson mounted, Colonel Rickard and Captain Filgate, the Adjutant on their chargers, were in the centre, and in that wonderful twilight Father Gleeson gave a General Absolution. To some present, very certainly, the "vitam aeternam" was intensely and beautifully manifest, the day-spring of Eternity very near." Miseratur vestri Omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis vestris, perducat vos ad vitam aeternam." The whole Regiment with their heads bared, sang the Te Deum, the great thanksgiving,the "Sursum Corda " of all the earth.
There are many journeys and many stopping-places in the strange pilgrimage we call life, but there is no other such journey in the world as the journey up a road on the eve of battle, and no stopping-place more holy than a wayside shrine.
The men who prayed there were, very few of them, the men of the original Battalion. Gaps had been filled again and again, and most of the Munsters who fought next day were newly come from Ireland and new to the life. Lads from Kerry and Cork, who, a year before, had never dreamed of marching in the ranks of the British Army.
The Regiment moved on, and darkness fell as the skirl of the Irish pipes broke out, playing a marching tune. The Munsters were wild with enthusiasm, they were strong with the invincible strength of faith and high hope, for they had with them the vital conviction of success, the inspiration that scorns danger—which is the lasting heritage of the Irish ; theirs still and theirs to remain when great armaments and armies and empires shall be swept away, because it is immovable as the eternal stars.
On the morning of May the 9th, 1915, the Third Infantry Brigade were ordered to attack. Their right was on the Cinder Track, and their left on the Orchard Redoubt. The Munster Fusiliers were the assaulting Battalion, with the 4th Royal Welsh Fusiliers ; the Gloucesters and South Wales Borderers in reserve.
The morning of the 9th broke incredibly still and fair, touching the land with the strange suggestion of unreality, which is part of the mystery of early dawn ; and the Rue du Bois, for all its desolation, was for a moment beautiful with the spaciousness of peace. Night dews were still in the air, and the first coming of the sun was not far distant when sustained thunder pervaded the whole world. The bombardment of the enemy's trenches had begun, and the noise grew to the dimensions of intensest force, crashing and roaring with the rage of a storm at sea. The object of the bombardment was to cut gaps in the barbed wire in front of the Battahon, and for seven minutes the torrent of sound tore and rent the air. Only for thirty minutes the guns spoke, and on the amazed instant of silence Colonel Rickard gave the order for attack. Cheering wildly the men followed him over the breastworks, with a rush that swept them across the open under deadly fire to a little ditch, some half-way between the British and German lines. There they were to lie down and take cover while the Artillery again bombarded, only continuing the rush when the fire lifted.
As they crossed the first hundred and fifty yards to the given point. Colonel Rickard fell, killed by a bullet that struck the spinal column of the neck. No one who knew him could ever doubt that he would have chosen any other end than to die leading the Regiment he so loved all his life ; he gained the perfect death that takes no thought of self, and which, in all truth, is swallowed up in victory.
Captain Campbell Dick, leading with magnificent dash, carried on B Company with 5 and 6 Platoons, led to admiration by Lieutenant Price and Lieutenant Horsfall ; by this time the close-range fire of the Germans poured like rain from thunder-clouds. Caring nothing at all for the enemy's bullets. Captain Dick swept on, followed by his men, his great buoyant spirit lifted to the very heights by the joy of the charge. If life may truly be measured by its intensity, the Munsters lived well and dangerously in those moments. Captain Dick, gifted, as has been said of another very brave officer, " with a certain devilry of spirit" and " a ceaseless militancy in life and death," was well known to be a man of unshaken nerve and flame-like attributes ; as he reached the second hne of the German trenches he stood on the enemy's breastworks, quite indifferent to the danger which lay on every side, and standing as he often stood cheering a winner in the old days in Ireland, he waved his cap and shouted to his men, " Come on, the Munsters !" A moment after, he fell into the German trenches, and the Company he commanded dashed onwards with Lieutenant Price and Lieutenant Horsfall, and were enveloped in the very heart of the grey enemy forces. Lieutenant Carrigan and Lieutenant Harcourt brought the machine guns over the parapet of the German first line, and there faced an enfilading fire that beat and battered upon the men, who, without wavering, held grimly to the trenches ; a little further up the line Lieutenant Sealy King died most gallantly as he dashed to a renewed attack.
The Regiments on the left and right being unable to get near the line where the Munsters were fighting, the position became that of a forlorn hope ; but the fighting stuff of which the Munster Fusiliers are made, does not break. Their dash and coolness drew words of admiration from the Artillery officers who were observing, and the men, almost entirely without officers or N.C.O.'s, rallied and fought with unabated courage.
Only 300 yards away was the safety of the British trenches, but between that point and where the Battalion fought the gulf might as well have been as wide as eternity.
The hail of shells and the rain of bullets never ceased, and as the time went on and the Battalion was unsupported. Major Gorham, then in command and wounded in the arm, sent a message back that the assault was held up by the great breaking superiority of the enemy's forces.
Once again the heavy guns boomed out, pitching shell after shell into the German lines, and under cover of this protective fire the Battalion withdrew. Incidents of great self-sacrifice were many during the retirement. Sergeant Gannon carried one officer and four wounded comrades out under fire; Private Barry, himself mortally wounded, and only a slight slip of a boy from Cork, brought in Captain Hawkes, one of the biggest officers in the Battalion. Captain Hawkes was severely wounded in three places, and could not move, and as he carried his officer to safety, Private Barry fell, dying heroically, his death a tribute to the feeling that so strongly existed between officers and men. So the Munsters came back after their day's work ; they formed up again in the Rue du Bois, numbering 200 men and three officers. It seems almost superfluous to make any further comment.
In a garden near a place called Windy Corner, Colonel Rickard is buried at the head of a line of graves. As Father Gleeson wrote:
"The Munsters who gave their lives so heroically and cheerfully, have, even in death, at their head, their kindly and loving leader, who so much inspired them and cheered us all."
Honest and brave soldiers, the world must go on without you, and those who are left to mourn you must face what remains in life with a little of your own fine spirit. But your lives and your great deaths have enriched the story of the world, the story of Ireland and the story of the Battalion, even though, through all the voices and all the sounds of life, we listen for your voices, and will listen still in vain.
From page 32 to 44 of The Story of the Munsters, published 1918 - Free book download
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