Our cart had not completely blocked the road when the first motor sped by—we did not intend it to. Another dash to pull the cart right across the road and the second car is upon us. From every position held by our little party our concentrated attack opens and the air is rent with rapid revolver fire and bursting bombs and hand grenades. But it is by no means a one-sided battle. The enemy has his machine-gun and rifles in action, and there we stand a target for him on the roadside while we still pour volley after volley into car No. 2. The three of us near the cart are now in a double peril. The enemy’s bullets whistle round us and his grenades burst at our feet, but so close are we to our objective that we must also run the gauntlet from the bombs which our own men are hurling from the ditch. With our smoking guns still spitting fire at the occupants of the car we back behind the cart, seeking what little cover it affords from the enemy’s hail of bullets. Another second and the cart is being riddled and the splinters from its shafts are flying round us. But our work must be accomplished and the fight must be kept up. Suddenly to our dismay another enemy car is rushing towards us from the opposite direction. We are now in greater danger than ever for we are trapped between two fires. I felt a bullet pierce my left leg, but I had no time to examine the wound though I reckoned the bullet had passed through. The British had by this time about a dozen rifles and a machine gun in action; but the marksmen’s nerves must have failed them, otherwise we could never have stood up so long against them. One man, however, gets his mark and poor Martin Savage falls into my arms, shot through the body. Poor chap! How light-heartedly he had been singing and reciting poems about Ireland and the glory of dying for one’s country, as we rode out to Ashtown only an hour ago. And he is breathing his last in my arms, dying as he would have wished to die—by an English bullet. All the time the bullets were whizzing by and the enemy’s fire seemed to be growing more intense. I laid my dying comrade down on the roadside. His lips were moving as if he had a last message to give me. I stooped and put my ear to his face and catch the words spoken slowly and painfully but distinctly: “I’m done, Dan, but carry on!” Never can I forget that picture of my bleeding pallid comrade as he lay on the road at Ashtown that December day while bullets hopped around like hailstones striking everything but me at whom they were aimed. But it was no time for weeping over the dead. Martin Savage had given his life in the cause for which he had lived—the cause for which he had shouldered his gun three years before when as a lad of eighteen he had done his bit in Easter Week, 1916. But for the rest of us the duty was to live for Ireland—to carry on.