On the evening of the 20th December, 1914, the 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers, commanded by Colonel A. M. Bent, were billeted in the outskirts of Bailleul. They were scattered about in the farm houses and barns, in the narrow, yellow-plastered châteaus, that let in all the draughts from all the corners of the country, and in the little villa houses on the threshold of Bailleul itself.

Up to that time Bailleul had escaped from the destruction of falling shells, and only the far-away boom of guns made war very strongly evident; that and the masses of British troops and the passing of motor transport, divorced it from its old dreaming quiet of a few months back. The weather was intensely cold; an icy west wind came over the frozen flats, and drove the tearing rain-storms out of the mist-covered fens.

The Regiment had been some weeks in billets, re-equipping and training, going steadily through the process by which freshly drafted youngsters are made into fine soldiers. Colonel Bent was unusually gifted with the quality that inspires men to realise the value of central control; his personality and indomitable will made for an influence that the hundreds of men under his command responded to instinctively. Many of those who fought with him at Ypres and elsewhere have testified to this.

Previous to December 20th the Battalion had been “standing by” ready to move at the shortest notice, but on the morning of December 20th a message was received from Brigade Headquarters to the effect that the Battalion need no longer be held in readiness; so normal, semi-peace conditions reigned. They were, however, not destined to enjoy these conditions for long, nor to turn their thoughts towards the completion of Christmas festivities, for at 5 p.m. an urgent message was received by Colonel Bent that the 3rd Brigade, to which the Battalion belonged, was to be ready to march “as soon as possible.”

It was quite dark when the order came, and though the men were scattered in their billets, at 6.15 p.m. the Munsters were in their place in the Brigade, and marching out into the stormy darkness. Behind them the dream of Christmas vanished like so many dreams. Reality took its place, a reality of a road ankle deep in mud, a tearing blizzard of rain and hail, and a black drenching tempest to face with bent heads.

For six hours the Battalion marched forward until at Merville a halt was called; and in an empty factory there was rest and shelter for the drenched and weary men.

There was no sign anywhere of any promise of day in the sky; it might have been the commencement of eternal night and of eternal darkness when the Munsters stood to arms. The men were heavy with their four hours’ sleep, heavy, too, with their load of ammunition and equipment. They left the factory behind them and took the sodden road, and at last the ashen grey dawn broke, and the landscape slowly cleared from the shadow of night, but the rain never ceased nor lessened; and the sound of the heavy guns told that the “business as usual” of the war had begun again.

At 8 a.m., outside Bethune, the Battalion halted again awaiting orders, the men sitting or lying in the mud along the roadside, keeping as cheerful as circumstances would permit. With his unwavering cheerfulness and energy, Colonel Bent worked against the conditions of the weather and the hardships his men were undergoing, affecting everyone with his own courage and dispelling the despondency of weariness, which is one of the hardest things a man can face. A battle itself calls up the human characteristics of dash and fight, but weariness and rain and mud are cruel adversaries, fought at a disadvantage. It is in those hours that most of all the magnetism of personality is of superb value. Afterwards, when the issue is no longer doubtful and the battle is over, and the definite, conspicuous end gained, it is easy for anyone to raise a cheer; but sitting in the liquid mud, weary and very cold, it takes a strong heart and the truest kind of pluck to rise above it all.

By 3 p.m. orders were received that the Battalion was to occupy the trenches at Festubert vacated by the Indian troops; the leading Brigade deployed for attack, and shortly after the Third Brigade were placed on the left of the First Guards Brigade. This Brigade consisted of the 2nd Welsh Regiment, the 1st Gloucesters, supported by the Munsters, the 1st South Wales Borderers, and the 4th Royal Welsh Fusiliers (Territorial). After the issue of these orders the Brigade resumed its march, through Gorre to Festubert, where the Battalion remained in reserve, but on the night of the 21st received orders that there was to be a general attack upon the German line.

All the night of the 21st the Munsters waited, and all the night of the 21st it rained and snowed and stormed.

The pitch darkness of a night of waiting is a memorable experience, even when there are many such to record. There is the curious feeling of loneliness common to all humans out in the night. The bright smoke of fires over the land behind the parapets of the German trenches made will-o’-the-wisp columns of misty light; sometimes a star shell shot up, lighting the place like day, and sometimes the crack of a rifle tore the dark and spattered in the mud of the trench. Life and death come much closer in the night than they do in the day time, and the whole almost intolerable mystery of war is intensified a thousandfold. Very slowly the sullen dawn broke, as if unwilling to reveal the sights that night clothed over, and the sodden fields and the barns and farmsteads stood out blackly against the grey. The green and yellowish water lying over the flats was frozen, and the dead were very visible, lying in pathetic heaps amid the refuse of a thousand unexpected things. The weary desolation of dawn over French Flanders passes all description.

Lieutenant-Colonel A. M. Bent, C.M.G.

2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers, dangerously wounded at Festubert, 22nd December, 1914

Record of Service:—South African War, 1902—Operations in the Transvaal, January to April, 1902. Queen’s Medal, with three clasps. North-West Frontier of India, 1908—Operations in Mohmand Country. Medal with clasp.

The noise grew with the morning light, and the boom and bang of heavy crashes grew fiercer, until the hour arrived when the Battalion, led by Colonel Bent, started to the attack.

The men swarmed over the parapets and raced across the fields, carrying their heavy equipment and following their officers over the shell-scarred, churned-up earth. Strands of barbed wire beset their way, and the ground was broken by great shell-holes. Before them, from the German trenches, the machine guns hammered out their deadly message of welcome; and the men went gamely on, most splendidly led by their officers.

Major Thomson, Second in Command, fell across the first German trench, but would not permit himself to be removed; continuing to issue orders from where he lay, he was wounded again, the second wound proving fatal. He met his death unvanquished and unappalled, and his name remains bound in with the great story of the Regiment. Colonel Bent fell in the earlier part of the charge, desperately wounded; Major Day was killed a little later, showing the greatest gallantry; and Captain Hugh