WITH THE IRISH AT THE FRONT.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 69, 21 March 1916, Page 7

WITH THE IRISH AT THE FRONT.

MESSAGE OF THE FIFES. TO THE MEN AT HOME. "WEARING OF THE GREEN." s 3 (By PHILIP GIBBS, "Daily Chronicle" Special Correspondent.) BRITISH HEADQUARTERS, 3 January 19. J .The spirit of old Ireland was about mc yesterday, and I heard the plaint ol 8 her pipes, with the tears and the passion ' of her history in them. It is one of the queerest things in these battlefields of Flanders, where there is something to startle one at ' every cross-road, to find oneself in the . midst of so many nationalities and races and breeds of men belonging to that j British family of ours which is sending . its sons to the sacrifice. In these trenches , there are all the ways of speech, all the sentiment of place and history, all r . the creeds and local customs and songs of old tradition which belong to the ' mixture of our blood wherever it is , found about the world. The 6kirl of the Scottish bagpipes is beard over the Flemish marshlands, and • there are Highlanders and Lowlanders' ' with every dialect over the Border. In one line of trenches the German soldiers listen to part-songs sung in such trained harmony that they sound as it a battalion of opera-singers had come . into the firing-lint l . The Welshmen speak their own language. For a time . no officer received his command unless he spoke it as fluently as running water by Aberystwyth, and even orders were given in this tongue until a few Saxons, ' discovered in the ranks, failed to form ! j fours and know their left hand from ' i their right in Welsh. | OLD FIGHTING SPIRIT. M 1 heard an Australian one day imitate • J the laughing jackass in thr darkness ot 'la Flemish night, with a weird and wondorful effect. The French Canadians do ; not need to learn the language of the ! peasants in these market towns. Sol- ' j diers from Somerset use many old Saxon (words which puzzle their Cockney i friends, and the Lancashire men have brought the Northern burr with them and the grit of the Northern spirit. And Ireland, though she will not have conscription, has sent the bravest of her iboys out here, and in all the bloodiest battles since that day at Mons the old lighting qualities of the Irish race have shone very brightly again, and the blood of her race has been poured out upon these tragic fields. I One of the villages behind the lines . is so crowded with Irish boys that 1 i found it hard not to believe yesterday I j that a part of old Ireland itself had I found its way to Flanders. .I in one old outhouse the cattle had not been evicted. Twelve Flemish cows lay cuddled up together on the ground , floor in damp straw, which gave out a sweet sickly 6tcnch. while the Irislf sol- , diers lived upstairs in the loft, to which . they climbed up a tall ladder with , broken rungs. - GOD SAVE IRELAND." I went up the ladder after them—it linns very shaky in the middle—and put- . i ting my head through the loft gave n II greeting to a number of dark figures ,!lying in the same kind of straw that 1 . I bad smelt downstairs. One boy wns '(flitting with his back to the beams play- .. ing a penny whistle very softly to hiiii- • j self or perhaps to the rats under the : straw. :| "The craytures are that bold." said a ''. boy from County Cork, "that when we ■ first came in they sat up smilin' and I sang 'God Save Ireland.' Bcdad. and > it's the truth I'm after tell in' ye!" The billets arc not very dry and not 1 very clean. What can you expect in time of war? And anyhow it's good to • be away from the shells, even if the ' rain docs come through the beams of a - broken roof, and soak through the i plaster of wattle walk. The Irish bo.\s • are good at making wood fires in these • old barns and pigsties, if there arc a few bricks about to make a hearth, and, ' tn re, a baked potato is no Protestant • with a grudge against the Pope. ' There were no such luxuries in the trenches when the Dublin* and the Mun- " sters were up in the firing line. The 1 shelling was so violent that it was diffi- " cult to get up the supplies, and some of the boys had to fall back on their iron " rations. It was the only complaint ' which one of them made when I asked : him that he thought of his first cxperi- ' encc under fire. "It was all right, sorr, and not so 1 bad as I'd been after thinking, if only ' my appetite had not been bigger than my belt, at all." IN THE DANGER ZONE. The spirit of these young Irishmen is shown by some who had just come out from the Old Country to join their comrades in the firing line. When the Germans put over a number of shells, doing some damage to the trenches and wounding one or two men, the temper of the > lads broke out, and they wanted to get over the parapet and make a dash for the enemy. "Twould taye'h him a lesson," they told their officers, who had ■ some trouble in restraining them. These new-oomers had to take part in , the digging which goes on behind the [ lines at night—out in the open, without ' the shelter of a trench. It was nervous work, especially when the German flares went up, silhouetting their figures on , the sky-line, and when one of the. \ enemy's machine-guns began to chatter. I But the Irish boys found the heart for , a jest, and one of them, resting on his . 6padc a moment, stared over to the , enemy's lines and said, "May the old \ devil take the spalpeen who works that , typewriter!" , It was an uncommon hot time for \ those who had come fresh to the , trenches, 6omc of those bore who had I not guessed the realities of war until . then. But they came out proudly— , "with their tails up," said one of their . officers—after their baptism of fire. I THE DITCHES OF DEATH. '■ Down the high street of one of the > villages, "high street" is a good name 1 for the mud track between the hovels — 1 met an Irish captain, whose face 86 he ! came up 6ecmed to ring a little bell in my memory. Why, yes, last time I had 'jinet him there was a bell ringing and | ringing, in the smoking room of the , House of Commons, and down the lob--1 jbies of that House. 'I It was an Irish politician with whom 1 on that afternoon at Westminster 1 | had sat eating toasted muffin, before the world went mad, talking of Irish Land ': Acts and Home Rule and other subjects | which seemed of grea.t importance then. : Since then he has sat in the ditches of t \ death—and haG slept in them for six ; hours of terrific bombardment, which is > a proof of nerve—and has seen the sun I . | r'i6e over barbed wire mid dead bodies land the barren fields of battle. i

"There are no poiliitics out here," he said. "We are soldSei-s facing the common enemy." He has seen more-than a world away from the lobbies of ithe House of Commons, but docs not regret his journey, 'because he believes in a full life, and the adventure of knowledge, and ungrudging service to ideals which are vital and eternoil. Ini this faith he has brought up his son, the youngest officer in the British Army:, who is with him now in Flanders, taking the same risks, though while I was with him his thoughts and words went back to Ireland, and he hoped that the young farmers of the Old Country would join -the Army in greater numbers, because, as he said, those who hold the land should light for the land. IRISH MELODIES IN FLANDERS. It wag with this officer that I heard the Irish pipes. The drum and fife band oi the Munsters was practising in an old barn on the wayside, and presently, in 'honour of visitors, who were myselt and another, the pipers were sent for. They were five tall lads, who came striding down the street -of Flemish cottages', with the windbags under their arms, and then, with the fife men sitting on the straw around them and the drummers standing with their sticks ready, they took their -breath for "the good old Irish tune" demanded by the captain. It was a tune which men could not sing very safely in Irish yesterdays, and it held the passion of many rebellious hearts, and the yearning of them. Oh: Paddy dear, and did you hear the news that's troin? round? The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on j Irish ground. She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen.; They're hanging men and women tnere lor wearing ot the green. Then the pipere played the "March of O'Neill," a wild old air as shrill and fierce as the-spirit of the men who came with their Irish battle-cries against Elizabeth's pike-men and Cromwell's Ironsides. I think the lads -who still stay back in Ireland, and the old people there, would have been glad to stand with mc outside this Flemish barn and to hear the old tunes of their race played by the iboys who are out bene fighting for themI think they would have wept a little, as 1 saw tears in the eyes of an Irish soldier by my side, for it was the spirit of Ireland herself, with all her poetry, and her valour, and her faith in liberty, which came crying from those pipes, and 1 wished that the sound of them could carry across the sea.