introduced him to Countess Hariaina Pacha, who was accompanied by her daughter. Dalton, who had an eye for attractive young women, was probably more interested in the daughter and he asked her to dance. As they took to the floor the young woman seemed to be mistaken about the identity of her dancing partner. She appeared to think Dalton was a French aristocrat, causing him some embarrassment by addressing him as ‘Monsieur le Duc’. However, he admits that he did not really mind the fact that she was labouring under a slight delusion ‘which my poor knowledge of French was unable to allay’.42 (It is also possible that the young woman was having some fun at Dalton’s expense.)
After his interesting break in Cairo, Dalton returned to El Arish. He resumed his instructor duties, and on 4 March, he mentioned in his diary his twentieth birthday. He felt ‘lonely’ but ‘busy’. He would remain busy over the following weeks, although he still found time to play golf from time to time. As he concentrated on work, the entries in his diary became shorter and less detailed. The topics covered in the courses he gave included observation; scouting; intelligence summaries and aerial photographs. The latter topic indicated a particular interest on Dalton’s part in air reconnaissance, and during the Irish Civil War he would show a particular interest in using aircraft to gain intelligence on opposing forces.
In an offensive in April, when the 6th Leinsters was tasked with taking a high peak area near the village of Kefr Ain, the battalion came under Turkish artillery and machine gun fire and suffered casualties. Among the injured were some of Dalton’s officer colleagues, Lieutenant Hogan, 2nd Lieutenant McDonnell and Captain Powell. Dalton’s sojourn at the school in El Arish meant that he missed out on these engagements with the enemy. While he probably would have wished to be where the action was, El Arish was a safer place in which to be located. Once again, from the point of view of survival, his luck had held out.
Dalton appears to have pleased his superiors in the way he performed as an instructor in the sniping school. A memorandum dated 22 May 1918 drawn up by Captain Percy H. Manbey on behalf of the Major commanding the El Arish School of Instruction, of which the sniping school was part, declared that Lieutenant Dalton has given ‘entire satisfaction’.43 The fourteen-week stint as a sniper instructor inspired Dalton to write a poem, The Sniper. He wrote it on 19 May, towards the end of the course during which he essentially taught men to stalk and kill the enemy. The poem is a grim reflection on the heavy responsibility on the shoulders of a marksman whose job it is to kill an enemy soldier. He knows that his shot will cause a woman’s tears, and that a mother’s heart will be torn apart. But he is also conscious that a comrade died at his side at dawn [at the hands of an enemy sniper], ‘died with a gasp and nothing more…’ He reflects that we are all marked with the hand of Cain. ‘Thus shall it be, a life for a life…’44 He closes with the Latin motto of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Spectamur Agendo – ‘Let us be judged by our acts.’
Return to France
The British Army decided that it needed the 6th Leinsters on the Western Front. On 23 May Dalton and his battalion boarded the vessel Ormonde at Port Said and sailed for France, arriving in Marseilles on 1 June. The battalion travelled by train to Aire in northern France, near the border with Belgium, and set up camp. The usual training and fatigue work was carried out, and anti-malaria quinine treatment was administered.45 One of the great advantages of the transfer of the 6th Leinsters to northern France was that all ranks became eligible for leave – some had been serving continuously abroad for three years.46 Dalton was promoted to Captain on 3 July, and was also given the opportunity to visit Ireland on leave.
In the meantime Dalton’s skills as an instructor were called on once again – in July he gave a Lewis gun course to newly-arrived American troops at the Samer Training Area near Boulogne.47 They were part of the rapidly expanding American Expeditionary Force preparing to fight on the Western Front. It was decided that those American units deployed on the British front would use certain British weapons, such as the Vickers and Lewis machine guns, as opposed to their own American-supplied weapons. As a result, American officers and non-commissioned officers needed instruction in the British weapons so that they could, in turn, instruct their own men. Captain Dalton, ever conscious of his American birth, was clearly very pleased to meet the American military men he instructed. To ease them into combat conditions, American units were sent for further training with British forces in front line positions, and there is an indication that Dalton was in action with American troops around this period. In a letter to his American cousin, Frances O’Brien he said that he had the opportunity of fighting alongside United States troops, and in a tribute to their bravery said it was ‘glorious’ to see how the American soldiers fought.48 On 29 June 1918, the Commandant of the VII Corps Lewis Gun School recommended Dalton as ‘a good instructor’.49
In his 4 August letter to his cousin, Dalton wrote that he had received two weeks leave to go home to Ireland, and that he was about to transfer to the Royal Air Force (RAF), as he believed nothing could equal the difficulties and dreadfulness of an infantry soldier’s life. As indicated above, while stationed in Palestine, two of his fellow officers had transferred to the air force, and he may have considered following in their footsteps. Flying also probably appealed to his spirit of adventure. It is unclear if Dalton pressed ahead with an attempt to transfer to the RAF – certainly, he remained in the infantry until demobilized, but in his later army service in Ireland, he would show a keen interest in military aviation and have an appreciation of the value of air support in military operations.
On 10 August, word came through that the 6th Leinsters battalion was to be disbanded. Later in the year, officers and men would go to other regiments such as the Connaught Rangers, while others, including Captain Dalton, transferred to the 2nd Battalion of the Leinsters. Meanwhile, in the latter part of August, Dalton went home to Ireland for a badly-needed two-week break. On 1 October, Dalton officially joined50 the 2nd Leinsters who were in Belgium at this period, taking part in combat operations as the war ground to a close. Once again, Dalton was deployed with a fighting unit. Lieutenant Francis C. Hitchcock of the 2nd Leinsters recorded in his diary for 4 October that heavy rain fell all day and a new draft of officers arrived.’51 It is likely that Dalton was part of this draft. (Hitchcock would later turn his diary into a book, Stand To: A Diary of the Trenches, 1915–1918.52 It remains one of the best memoirs to emerge from the Great War, written with humour and empathy, and giving a most vivid day-to-day account of life as a junior officer in a time of war.)
The battalion moved to Ypres on 5 October. The British II Corps, in alliance with French and Belgian forces, was preparing a major assault on the German lines. The 2nd Leinsters were now part of the 88th Brigade of the 29th Division of II Corps. Hitchcock noted in his diary for 5 October: ‘At 5 p.m. the battalion paraded and moved off for Ypres for another offensive. It was raining heavily when they paraded and marched off.’53 On 13 October the battalion moved into position in trenches for the attack the following day. There was a heavy fog as the attack went in. Dalton’s battalion, 2nd Leinsters, was deployed among the advance troops of the 88th Brigade, fighting in the Ledeghem sector near Courtrai. Details are unavailable of Dalton’s role in the attack. During the fighting on 14 October, two members of the battalion carried out actions that would later win them the Victoria Cross, the highest British award for valour. They were men who Dalton would get to know quite well: Scots-born Sergeant John O’Neill, from Airdrie, Lanarkshire, and Private Martin Moffat, from Sligo. The liberation of the village of Ledeghem by the 2nd Leinsters and other elements of the 29th Division was still being commemorated annually in recent years by local dignitaries and members of the Leinster Regiment Association.
Deployment to Germany
Dalton went on sick leave for the first three weeks of November 1918.54 Meanwhile, after four long years the war was finally drawing to a close. Lieutenant Hitchcock recorded in his diary for 10 November that he and men of the 2nd Leinsters were marching to a rendezvous at the village of Arc-Anière when the Brigadier came galloping up to call out: ‘The War is over! The Kaiser has abdicated.’55 On the following day, 11 November, the Armistice came into force. As the war ended, all over Europe and further afield, one can imagine how parents and loved ones of combatants experienced an enormous sense of relief. Among many there was probably also a sense of anti-climax, as they wondered what had been achieved by such carnage.