World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Let me tell first the happenings of the Irish troops on the right, the
Catholic Irish, whose own right was on the Roulers railway, going up to
the Potsdam Redoubt. An hour or so before the attack the enemy, as
though knowing what was about to come, flung down a tremendous and
destructive barrage, answered by our own drum-fire, which gave the
signal for the Irish to advance. The Dublin Fusiliers and the Royal
Irish Rifles went forward on the right and the Inniskillings on the
left. In front of them were numbers of German strong points, the now
famous pill-boxes, or concrete blockhouses, which the enemy has built as
his new means of defence to take the place of trench systems. They were
Beck House, Borry Farm, and the Bremen Redoubt--sinister names which
will never be forgotten in Irish history. There were also odd bits of
trench here and there for the use of snipers and small advanced posts.
As the first wave of the Irish assaulting troops advanced Germans rose
from those ditches and ran back to the shelter of the concrete works,
and immediately from those emplacements and from other machine-gun
positions echeloned in depth behind them swept a fierce enfilade fire of
machine-gun bullets, even through the barrage of our shell-fire, which
went ahead of the Irish line. Many men in the first wave dropped, but
the others kept going, and reached almost as far as they had been asked
to go. The Royal Irish Rifles worked up the Roulers railway to the level
crossing, and captured two German officers and thirty prisoners. The
Dublin Fusiliers, on their left, were held up by machine-guns from the
Bremen Redoubt, and later a message came down from that small party. It
was from a young Irish subaltern. "I am lying out here in a shell-hole.
All officers and men killed or wounded." Other men joined him, but were
cut off and taken prisoners. On the left the Inniskillings, who had
crossed over the Zonnebeke river, made good and rapid progress,
capturing two strong redoubts and seizing an important little hill--Hill
37--which was one of the keys of the position. The success of the day
would have been gained if the centre had been carried, and if the
supporting troops could have come up. But neither of these things
happened. The supporting waves were caught by the cross-fire of
machine-guns, and they could make hardly any headway. The Borry Farm
Redoubt gave most trouble. It contained five machine-guns and a garrison
of sixty expert and determined gunners, and never fell all day. It broke
the centre of the Irish attack, and was the cause of heroic but deadly
efforts by the Irish Rifles, followed by Inniskillings. The Royal Irish
Fusiliers attacked it by direct assault, knowing that everything was
staked on their success. They went for it like tigers, but without
avail. One of the battalion officers, seeing this failure, but knowing
how all depended upon the capture of that fort, thereupon led another
attack by a company of the Royal Irish Rifles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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