line of transportation and then you’d pull yourself together and there was nothing on the road at all.26
Rudyard Kipling, in his book on the Irish Guards (his son lost his life serving with the Regiment, hence his interest) described a similar phenomenon four days into the retreat; four days of footsore exhaustion and sleepless nights.
By this time, the retreat, as one who took part in it says, had become ‘curiously normal’ – the effect, doubtless, of that continued over-exertion which reduces men to the state of sleep-walkers … At night, some of them began to see lights, like those of comfortable billets by the roadside which, for some curious reason or other, could never be reached. Others found themselves asleep, on their feet, and even when they lay down to snatch sleep, the march moved on, and wearied them in their dreams.27
‘Our minds and bodies shrieked for sleep’, wrote John Lucy of the trudge southwards undertaken by the Royal Irish Rifles. ‘In a short time our singing army was stricken dumb. Every cell in our bodies craved rest, and that one thought was the most persistent in the vague minds of the marching men.’ Men who could go no further dropped out. They seemed to Lucy to be mostly the bigger, stronger looking specimens. ‘The smaller men were hardier.’ Officers rode up and down the ranks on horseback encouraging and cajoling (which must have rankled with some) knowing that the best the stragglers could hope for was a POW camp. ‘The pained look in the troubled eyes of those who fell by the way will not be easily forgotten by those who saw it.’28 Food was scarce and living off the land could have unwelcome side effects. ‘There was a lot of orchards in that part of France and we’d dip into the orchards and fill our pockets as full of fruit as we could then we’d eat that stuff and the bowel movements weren’t that comfortable.’29
Some units almost allowed themselves to be outstripped by the advancing Germans. A private in the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles remembers his battalion getting too close to the enemy for comfort and disappearing one night into the sanctuary of a small forest.. ‘We got on like the Babes in the Wood, holding each others hands … so as not to lose touch with each other. We dare not light a match or make a sound that would betray our presence.’ The ploy worked, but only just.
Once when they were looking for us their searchlight played in the open just where we were, only we were in the shade, and if we had moved another inch our shadows would have been seen. We heard them talking and shouting to each other, but they gave no chase, thinking we had got away in another direction.30
One of the early 2nd RIR casualties in the chaos of those first weeks of conflict was Corporal Arthur Doran. Doran was a member of the Church of Ireland from West Belfast, but, despite his religious background, was a nationalist. He was also a prominent trade unionist and a member of the Independent Labour Party. His was one of the first deaths to be announced in Belfast papers at the time. A memorial notice from the Belfast city ILP membership in the Belfast Evening Telegraph celebrated the life of ‘Comrade Corporal Arthur Doran’.31
One man who got very little opportunity on that hectic retreat to display either the leadership qualities which would vault him to prominence in World War II or the edginess and arrogance which were to bring about his downfall in that conflict was 2nd Lieutenant Eric Dorman-Smith of the 1st Battalion, the Northumberland Fusiliers. He would be garlanded in 1942 after the first Battle of El Alamein. Subsequently bypassed for promotion and then humiliated, largely through unpopularity due to his prickly and overbearing manner, he would return to his Cavan home in the 1950s and become an active supporter of the IRA’s border campaign, changing his name to Dorman-O’Gowan.
But all that was in the future in August 1914, and a very uncertain future it looked indeed, on 22 August 1914, as ‘Chink’ – so called because of his resemblance to the regimental mascot, a Chinkara antelope – waited for the advancing Germans with his platoon at a bridge over the Mons canal near the town of Mariette. His orders were to hold the bridge for as long as possible and then withdraw. Many of the men in his platoon were, surprisingly enough, Irishmen also. Like a lot of other regular Army regiments the Northumberlands (also known as the Fifth Fusiliers) found the working classes of Dublin and Belfast easier to recruit than those in their own natural hinterland. In the tense moments preceding the arrival of the Germans two Dubliners in his platoon exasperated a nervous Dorman-Smith by asking him if they could keep their rifles after the war – we don’t know for what purpose.
German infantry arrived in force and allegedly used local children as cover to get close to the far side of the canal from Dorman-Smith’s B Company. By mid-afternoon a field gun had been brought up to the canal bank to shell the Northumberland’s positions. Unknown to the men of B company they were on their own, the rest of their battalion had withdrawn an hour before. Their signaller had been one of the first to die in the initial German assault. They held out, waiting for the order to blow up the bridge. Finally, after taking heavy casualties for an hour they withdrew. As they fell back towards the town of Frameries instructions arrived to destroy the bridge, which was now in German hands. The experience of the Northumberlands in Frameries was similar to that of B Company in Mariette. As the Germans attacked orders came to some battalions to pull back. The 1st Northumberlands were the last to receive such an order. By the time they joined the general retreat the town had been almost completely overrun, and the Germans were snapping at their heels.
Initial setbacks had been turned into defeat which, in turn, had become a rout by 24 August. Dorman-Smith became a part of the tired and exhausted column of soldiers which, outnumbered and outgunned, now wound it’s way southwards. But their retreat was not fast enough to elude the German advance. The first phase of Chink’s war ended near Inchy on 26 August when a German shell overshot the hastily prepared defences of General Smith-Dorrien’s retreating Corps and burst near Dorman-Smith in a reserve position. He suffered a shrapnel wound to his left arm and severe surface cuts. He was evacuated to the base hospital at Rouen and from there to England.32
The most spectacular rearguard action by an Irish battalion was also the most costly and led to the virtual annihilation of the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers (RMF) at Etreux on 27 August. The Battalion had been ordered to hold a position east of the Sambre-Oise canal (roughly fifty miles south of Mons) until instructed to withdraw. The move was designed to contain the advancing Germans while General Douglas Haig’s I Corps beat an orderly retreat. The Munsters, led by Major Paul Charrier, an excellent commander, described as a ‘hearty, genial Kerryman’,33 fulfilled their role superbly, fighting to hold off 7 battalions of German infantry, 3 artillery batteries, as well as cavalry. This was done with considerable panache and not a little black humour. A couple of hours after contact was first made with the advancing Germans, at about midday, the battalion cooks rapidly had to abandon operations and their base. Showing something of the same spirit which had prompted their colleagues to yoke themselves to artillery pieces and drag them for five miles the cooks were determined to bring their food with them. As they scampered across a lane, under heavy German fire, hefting large unwieldy dixies they were greeted by raucous and unsympathetic shouts of ‘Don’t be emptying all the tay down your trousers’, ‘Come out of that, Micky; what are you stopping in the middle of the road for.’34
An hour later and the 2nd RMF was still holding out. Gradually, however, the battalion’s position was chipped away until finally it became untenable. Charrier waited for the order to pull back, but none came. Finally;
To the meadow near the bridge where the Munsters were collected an orderly carrying a despatch 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.35
As they withdrew the odds were against any of the Munsters getting back to rejoin I Corps. By evening their retreat, along the road to Guise which lay a few miles to the south, had been cut off, their ammunition was running out and their guns were silent. ‘The last unwounded gunner met his fate struggling to carry an 18-pounder shell to the gun, standing on the road, surrounded by a small heap of huddled-up bodies.’36 ‘The enemy had