Far Away On
Some Hill Upon The Skyline There Hangs The Least Gauzy Veil Of Thin
Smoke To Indicate Whence The Six Men Who Have Just All Fallen
Together, As If It Were Some Grim Drill, Met Their Death.
Into such
a hell-storm as this it was that the soldiers have again and again
advanced in the course of this war, but it may be questioned
whether they will not prove to be among the last of mortals to be
asked to endure such an ordeal.
Other methods of attack must be
found or attacks must be abandoned, for smokeless powder,
quick-firing guns, and modern rifles make it all odds on the
defence!
The gallant Irishmen pushed on, flushed with battle and careless
for their losses, the four regiments clubbed into one, with all
military organisation rapidly disappearing, and nothing left but
their gallant spirit and their furious desire to come to hand-grips
with the enemy. Rolling on in a broad wave of shouting angry men,
they never winced from the fire until they had swept up to the bank
of the river. Northern Inniskilling and Southern man of Connaught,
orange and green, Protestant and Catholic, Celt and Saxon, their
only rivalry now was who could shed his blood most freely for the
common cause. How hateful seem those provincial politics and narrow
sectarian creeds which can hold such men apart!
The bank of the river had been gained, but where was the ford? The
water swept broad and unruffled in front of them, with no
indication of shallows.
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