retiring towards Etreux, about sixty men of the Battalion, under Captain Emerson, took up their position, hoping to hold the road. They were here reinforced by the Coldstream Guards, who were endeavouring to get into touch with the Munsters, now separated from them by five miles of road, upon which the enemy were advancing rapidly.

To the meadow near the bridge where the Munsters were collected an orderly carrying a dispatch came up at about three o’clock in the afternoon. The time of the dispatch was not marked upon the message, which was to order the Munsters to retire “at once.” The orderly who carried the message had, he said, been chased by the enemy, and after lying hidden for a time under the nearest cover, believed that it was not possible for him to bring the message through to Major Charrier. Upon this incident the tragedy of the whole day turned. Time had been lost, time too precious ever to regain; the exclusive supremacy is nearly always a question of minutes.

Colonel Ponsonby decided that it was best to retire the Coldstreams and the handful of Munsters who were with them, and these were joined some miles back by Captain Woods and seventy men, who had fallen back to the Guise road.

The river Sambre is full of curves, and winds past Fesmy and Etreux. Just along the right bank there runs a railway line, turning through a deep cutting into the station of Etreux. From there, the old you or I who lived before the war could have travelled comfortably across three frontiers in a few short hours. In this pastoral country, surrounded at evening by the softness of rising damp, stands Etreux, but none of the wandering fortunes of life will ever carry anyone back to look at the same picture any more.

When the Munsters marched onwards the early evening was bright again, and the heavy clouds had rolled to westward. The little environs stretched out along the road; a few houses, a cabaret, an orchard bright with cider apples, some already collected in piles under the trees; further again another proud house, bigger than the rest, and then streets, a palisade of trees and a spire. All this seen at a glance, where the road passed the railway cutting; for in the month of August war had not yet made France hag-ridden and desolate. Near to the railway cutting, and on the rise of ground a cross marked a turn to a side road, and a number of tiny lath crosses stuck into the grass signified that the good folk of Etreux carried their dead that way. Beneath the high cross was written “Ave Crux Spes Unica,” and its shadow fell over the road, dividing the Munsters from the village like the boundary of a frontier.

Within a few yards of the outlying buildings, a sudden burst of rifle and artillery fire swept through the ranks of the Regiment, informing them finally and terribly that they were cut off. The men rallied magnificently, and B Company extended at once. Led by Captain Simms, they went forward to attack the enemy’s main position, which was in the loopholed house that dominated the road. The railway cutting was held in force by the Germans, and D Company, commanded by Captain Jervis, and covered by the steady rifle fire of the men in position by one of the fields on the side of the road, rushed the railway cutting. Every man save two were shot down in the attempt; Lieutenant Crozier, showing the greatest gallantry, crossed a narrow lane, and exposing himself recklessly to the enemy’s fire, shouted, “There they are; come on, men,” and fell, killed instantaneously. The rattle of musketry, the booming of guns speaking terribly, was everywhere; the air itself vibrated and the ghastly transformation which men call war, continued. Everywhere the dead lay in huddled heaps, and the wounded with grey faces tried to rise, or crawled in maimed agony a little further on to die.

Bit by bit the shattered remnant of the Battalion fell back into the orchard, where Captain Chute brought the machine guns along the road under a hail of lead, and placed them in position. He was wounded in the side, and immediately afterwards was killed by another bullet.

Led by Major Charrier, the Munsters charged and charged again, against the enveloping force which now circled them around with a ring of fire, dropping shells and bullets. Major Charrier, who was twice wounded, steadily continued the direction of the action. He was standing by one of the guns which had been put out of action when Lieutenant Gower came and reported to him, just about sunset. Once more he rallied the men to the charge, and mortally wounded, he fell as they crossed the road.

Incident by incident the later stages of the heroic stand developed as the hours passed on, and ammunition could only be renewed by taking what was left on the dead and dying, and moment after moment gave fresh hostages to death.

Slowly and dreadfully the twilight came as the German onslaught gathered force, and the many sounds of battle rose and rose around the men who, with the Battalion thinned to less than half their fighting forces, still resisted the massed battalions of German soldiers; but the Munsters gave themselves with courage and lavishness, strong and unconsciously splendid. Once more they charged, and the great seas of uncounted enemy’s troops crushed and broke them and forced those who were left to surrender.

So the bitterest hour of all was the last.

It is told that the German officers said that men had never fought more bravely; it is also said that they sent back to their headquarters for a chaplain to bury the Irish dead.

Major Charrier and eight officers of the Munsters were buried near the trench where the men were laid to rest, under the shadow of the trees where they had fought their great fight. But though we call them dead, we know that the spirit that is strong and cheerful, and that has added to the page of a nation’s history, outlives all so-called untimely endings. The finished work, the completed undertaking, is not for many in the story of this great war, and it is not a little thing but a fine deed, to have left a record that betters the honourable traditions of the Royal Munster Fusiliers.

“Dying ye shall die greatly with a glory that shall surpass the glories of the past.”

The Munsters at Festubert
December 22nd, 1914

Drawn by Philip Dadd.

THE MUNSTERS AT FESTUBERT

December 22nd, 1914.