bayonets may have been the flash of
the lightning, but it was more suggestive of a glint of the flame of
love of country that glowed in their eyes. "It was all over in ten
minutes," writes Private H.P. Mulloney to his sweetheart in Ireland.
"They absolutely stood dumfounded, with white faces and knees
trembling. I shouldn't like to stand in front of that charge myself.
Our men were drenched to the skin, but we didn't care; it only made us
twice as wild. Such dare-devil pluck I was glad to see. 'Back for
those guns,' roared an officer, 'or I'll have every one of you
slaughtered.' The men didn't want telling twice. We proceeded to line
up the prisoners and collect the spoils, which amounted to about 150
prisoners, six Maxim guns, and 38,000 rounds of ammunition." Even in
these rude passages we find expressed the rapture of the Irish
Guardsmen with the tumult and the passion of the fight.

The hill was surmounted and the machine-guns taken. Afterwards the
advance was continued for five miles, over a country covered with dead
Germans and horses, and blazing homesteads. The Irish rested for a
time in a field, and then pushed on again until they reached the banks
of the Marne. They captured 600 Germans, including many officers and
eight machine-guns. But if the advance was swift, sure, and triumphant
a bitter price had to be paid for it, as is the way of war, for many a
fine and stalwart Irish youth found his grave between the rivers.

The man who produced the green flag was Corporal J.J. Cunningham from
Dublin. He bought it in London before the Irish Guards left for the
Front. It became a prized possession of the regiment. "You may be
surprised to hear that the Irish flag I bought from the pedlar before
parting with you I have still got," Cunningham, who was made a
sergeant, says in a letter to a friend in London. "It has been carried
through all our engagements, and with God's help I will carry it back
to England. Clay from the trenches has made the harp on it very dirty,
but, thank God, that is the only disgrace it has suffered. I did not
think when we were buying it that it would go through so much." I am
told, indeed, that in a far later stage of the war, at another
critical moment, it was flourished by the Earl of Cavan, an Irishman,
then in command of the Guards' Brigade, to egg on the Irish to an
enterprise before which other units had excusably quailed. He knew of
the episode between the Marne and the Aisne. He had