y are buried close to where
they fell in France and Flanders, gallantly leading their men as
company officers (the thought of it is enough to make one weep), and
they played the game on these different fields, according to their
separate national characteristics--equally clean-handed and
chivalrous, both, as sportsmen, incapable of a mean trick or taking an
opponent at an unfair advantage; disciplined, resourceful, dexterous,
and deft the English; light-hearted, frank, ardent, and dare-devilled
the Irish. So, too, at Loos the London Irish dashed forward with the
same rapture in the game that they used to display in a match on their
grounds at Forest Hill, shouting their slogan, "On the ball, London
Irish!" They kicked the ball before them, not this time in the face of
an opposing English, Welsh, or Scottish pack, but against unceasing
volleys of shrapnel and rifle fire which brought many of them down,
dead or disabled.

One man who was in the charge told me that at first he had a confused
sense of a clamorous hubbub and of comrades falling around him.
Afterwards he saw dimly--as if still in a bad dream--the football
being kicked, and there came vaguely back to his mind the talk in the
trenches as they waited for the whistle. Then he had a shock of
surprise which brought everything into sharp reality; and the
exhilaration of the episode restoring him to normality and confidence,
he followed the ball with the others until it was kicked right into
the enemy's trench with a joyous shout of "Goal!" Thus this exhibition
of cool audacity--unparalleled, perhaps, in the annals of war--instead
of retarding the advance added immensely to its go. It will be
historic, that game of football amid the thunders and the lightnings
of the field of battle, with the German trenches for the goal; and
soaring up from the very depths of the awful tumult of the fight will
ever be heard, "On the ball, London Irish!"

So the first line of German trenches was reached. The barbed wire
entanglements had been blown to pieces by shell fire before the
attack. Another effect of that terrific bombardment, which lasted
nineteen days, was the cowed and dazed condition of the Germans. They
were so easily and quickly disposed of by the first line of London
Irish that the other lines pressed forward, scrambling across the
trench over the bodies of killed and wounded enemies; and, as they did
so, catching glimpses through the smoke of the haggard and frighte