hack, hack and stab, with the Irish in the trenches and the
Germans above; and, in the end, it was the Germans running away and
the Irish speeding their departure with rifle fire. "We did not think
there was anything very wonderful about what we did," says the
sergeant modestly, "but everyone went wild about it. One staff officer
said we ought all to have two Victoria Crosses each, and we had the
satisfaction of being splendidly praised by the General in Command."

"Nothing," says Napier in his "Peninsular War," "so startled the
French soldiery as the wild yell with which the Irish regiments sprang
to the charge." We are also told by Napier that at Barrosa and Bussaco
the heroes of Marengo and Austerlitz reeled before the thunder shout
of _Faugh-a-Ballagh_ ("Clear the Way") raised by the Royal Irish
Fusiliers and the Connaught Rangers. What is more likely is that the
French gave way before the irresistible bayonet charge that swept like
a flame in the thunder of that haughty battle-cry. The Great War shows
that both these historic regiments maintain the ancient tradition of
raising a wild, terrific yell when they dash forward, a yell which
sends the creeps down the back, and impels the foe irresistibly to
turn and fly for fear of what is to follow.

The Irish Fusiliers were the first to enter Armentieres (on the
occasion that the Leinsters impetuously pushed forward to Premesque),
and they did so shouting their old Irish slogan, _Faugh-a-Ballagh_,
and enforcing it by driving the enemy from their positions behind
every tree and at every turn on the road leading into the town.
Private H. Dawson, a West port boy in the 1st Connaught Rangers, tells
how a company of the battalion frightened a big force of Germans out
of their trenches, and out of their senses also, no doubt, by the
blood-curdling yells they gave vent to as they advanced with the
bayonet. It was on the night of November 4th, 1914, in the
neighbourhood of Neuve Chapelle. The company was ordered to attack the
German trenches, two platoons to do the fighting and the two others to
follow after with shovels, to fill in the trenches, if they were
taken. "At midnight," writes Private Dawson, "we moved forward with
such cheers, shouts, and cries that the Germans, thinking that a whole
brigade was advancing, evacuated the trenches and fled. The moon was
shining, and when the Germans afterwards saw the handful of men that
routed them they returned in greatly increase