rable engagement at Cuinchy, on February 1st, 1915, when Michael
O'Leary won the Victoria Cross. What a moving picture of piety it
presents! The task of the Irish was to retake positions in the
brickfields captured by the Germans from the Coldstream Guards. Eager
to retrieve the position the Coldstreams first advanced, but being met
by a heavy fire from the enemy, they showed signs of wavering. Then a
company of the Irish Guards were ordered out. They had received
absolution and Communion behind the trenches, a few days before, from
Father Gwynn, and their chaplain was still with them at the supreme
moment. Now, before advancing, they knelt in silent prayer for a
minute. Then, each man making the sign of the Cross, they sprang to
their feet, and dashing in wide open order across the exposed ground,
swept by the enemy's fire, they hunted the Germans from the
brick-fields. We all know that when the story of Michael O'Leary's
achievement that day became known, half the world stood up bare-headed
in acknowledgment of his gallantry. I have been told that the incident
which was most talked of from end to end of the British lines was that
of the Guardsmen kneeling down in prayer before the charge. Nothing
like it ever occurred before. At least it is unprecedented in the
history of the English Army of modern times. Those who saw them say
that, as the Irish Guards dashed across the plain, they had an
expression of absolute happiness and joy on their faces. Surely an
episode that will live in the crowded annals of this war. It was then
that Father Gwynn was wounded. He said the last thing he remembered
was seeing the Irish Guards get to the top of their trench when a
lurid blaze seemed to flash into his eyes with a deafening crash. He
was hurled back five yards or so and lay unconscious for some minutes.
When he came to he felt his face all streaming with blood and his leg
paining him. He was suffocated, too, with a thick, warmy, vile gas,
which came from the shell. "A doctor bandaged me up," he goes on, "and
I found I was not so bad--splinters of the shell just grazed my face,
cutting it; a bit, too, struck me an inch or so above the knee and
lodged inside, but in an hour's time, when everything was washed and
bandaged, I was able to join and give Extreme Unction to a poor Irish
Guardsman who had been badly hit."

I have before me a number of letters written by Father Gwynn. They are
all most interesting. In every one of them he