O’Brien, a young Irish officer beloved by his men, and who had been proved in the South African War to possess unusual dash and coolness, fell as he shouted to his company, “Get a bit of your own back, boys.” Not twenty yards from where Captain O’Brien fell Captain Durand met his death. He had joined the 3rd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers in 1906, having served through the Matabeleland and Mashonaland campaigns in the Rhodesian Horse; he died most nobly, leading at the extreme point of the advance made by C Company, under fierce enfilading fire. The sorrow and the heroism of such death is touched by the great enduring light of glory.

Men fell on the right and left, and again and again they rallied and stumbled over the broken ground, holding steadily on under the wail of tearing shrapnel, and at last the Munsters reached their goal, the given point; and in the fierce counter attack they did not lose an inch of what they had taken.

So the day passed, and the wounded lay out under the cruel lash of the sleet and the bitter wind. Not one man returned to Headquarters, except some wounded who straggled in, dazed and bleeding. The chorus of the field guns, and the detonation of the great guns, and the crack, crack of rifle fire went on persistently. Lyddite and high explosives rained through the murky evening, and still no orders were issued that reached the Munster Fusiliers. They had gone out, as is their way, to do their bit, and had disappeared into the vast nothingness behind the night.

Darkness fell, and great flashes lit the dark; those pale, awful gleams of super-civilisation swept over the ghastly land. The enemy’s search-lights were feeling after the mutilated and wounded, showing up the stretcher bearers and Red Cross dressers, and as each slow beam swung in its deadly course, a hail of lead followed it, bearing death on its coming.

In a big yawning gap of bog and dyke and mud the Munsters held on, unassisted, supports having failed. The Companies were lying out under fire, pinned to the ground, and with nearly all their officers killed or wounded, they still held on.

Lieutenant-Colonel G. J. Ryan, D.S.O.

2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers, killed near Festubert, January 23rd, 1915

Record of Service:—South African War, 1899-1901—Employed with the Mounted Infantry, advance on Kimberley, including actions at Belmont and Modder River; operations in the Transvaal from June to 29th November, 1900; operations in Cape Colony, operations in the Transvaal, 30th November, 1900, to March, 1901; operations in Orange River Colony, March to June, 1901. Despatches, London Gazette, 10th September, 1901—Vaal, June to 29th November, 1900; operations in Cape Colony. Queen’s Medal and five clasps, D.S.O. Soudan, 1905—Operations against the Nyam-Nyam tribes in Bahr-el-Gazel Province; Despatches, London Gazette, 18th May, 1906. Egyptian Medal Clasp. Soudan, 1906—Operations at Talodi in Southern Kordofan—Clasp to Egyptian Medal. Soudan, 1906—Operations in Blue Nile Province. Promoted Temporary Lieutenant-Colonel, London Gazette, 22nd January, 1915.

Major Julian Ryan, D.S.O., who had gone back to Brigade Headquarters on the morning of the 22nd, to arrange about ammunition and transport, as he put it himself in a letter, “sized up trouble” when “the Regiment disappeared into nothingness.” It was he who left a record of the work done by the six men of the search party to whose efforts, as to his own, the safe return of a single man of the Munster Fusiliers is chiefly due.

Having reported at Brigade Headquarters, and having received the reply that no help could be given, Major Ryan split his men into patrols of two and sent them out. At 8 p.m., when it was very dark and the enemy’s fire unceasing, the men, whose names, unfortunately, are not recorded, came back reporting: “Very few officers left; many casualties; Colonel wounded; two senior Majors killed. Send orders.” Major Ryan, fully aware that daybreak would see the end of the gallant Battalion if nothing were done, redoubled his efforts.

“It was 10 o’clock before the Brigadier’s orders got to me to get orders out to the Battalion to retire, and even by then I had not a single unwounded man left of all the four companies that had gone out at 7 a.m. to show me where they had got to. Once more I called on my trusty six who had located them at dusk, and sent them out in three parties, again with definite orders to come back to me at a certain point where I was alone but for a few stray men and no officers. By midnight, to my relief, I got the remnant of the four companies in, worn out and starved, as their officers had fallen and many men, in the advance. All they could do was to follow my guides in. I called for volunteers and took a party out with stretchers and got some wounded in, but drew blank for the Colonel and Major Thomson. The Adjutant had come in unwounded, but dead beat, and could not say where the Colonel was.

“At 2 a.m., or nearly 3, I went round and collected the exhausted non-commissioned officers who had come in, called for volunteers again, and put the machine-gun officer in charge. The party returned carrying the Colonel wounded. All the rescue work was done under fire.... The Regiment did all, and more than all, that men could do; they played up splendidly. I have never known men do so much. I am very proud of them.”

A few weeks later Major Ryan, an officer of the most brilliant promise and striking personality, was killed by a sniper, to the great sorrow of the Battalion.

THE MUNSTERS AT RUE DU BOIS

May 9th, 1915.