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                       THE STORY OF THE MUNSTERS




                             THE STORY OF
                             THE MUNSTERS

                                  AT

                          ETREUX, FESTUBERT,
                            RUE DU BOIS AND
                                HULLOCH

                                  BY

                          MRS. VICTOR RICKARD

         AUTHOR OF "DREGS," "THE LIGHT ABOVE THE CROSSROADS,"
            "THE FRANTIC BOAST," "THE FIRE OF GREEN BOUGHS"

                       _WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY_

                             LORD DUNRAVEN

            _Honorary Colonel, 5th Royal Munster Fusiliers_

                         HODDER AND STOUGHTON

                     LONDON    NEW YORK    TORONTO

                               MCMXVIII




                             DEDICATED TO
                            VICTOR RICKARD
                 AND HIS COMRADES IN ALL RANKS OF THE
                MUNSTER FUSILIERS, WHO FOUGHT AND FELL
                       IN THE GREAT WAR, 1914-15

       *       *       *       *       *

    "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
    Never doubted clouds would break,
    Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
    Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake."

       *       *       *       *       *

The shamrock, which forms part of the cap badge of the Royal Munster
Fusiliers, was first introduced, in February 1915, by Lieut.-Colonel
Rickard, in the Second Battalion, with the object of giving a
distinctively Irish emblem to all ranks of the Regiment. It is now worn
by all the battalions of the Munsters.




                                PREFACE


I should like to express my thanks to the officers of the Royal Munster
Fusiliers, and also to the friends and relatives who have helped me
to collect and arrange this book. In the following accounts of the
engagements of Etreux, Festubert, Rue du Bois and Hulloch, I do not
wish in any sense to appear as an historian; that task awaits far abler
and more qualified hands. What follows has been threaded together as a
little tribute to the men who gave their lives for an Ideal, and who
were brave soldiers in the Great War.

The first three chapters of this book appeared in _New Ireland_ during
the summer of 1915, and were shortly afterwards republished by that
paper, together with the supplementary letters, as _The Story of the
Munsters_. A second impression was sold out by the end of the year,
since when no copies of the book have been obtainable. The new features
of the present edition are the historical Introduction specially
written by Lord Dunraven, to whom my best thanks are due, and the four
pictures and the account of the Munsters at Hulloch which have already
appeared in _The Sphere_. Its Editor, Mr. Clement Shorter, has a
special claim to the lasting gratitude of the Munster Fusiliers for the
deep interest he has always shown in all records of the Regiment; and
it is by his permission that the illustrations, which add incalculably
to the slender story itself, are here reproduced. My thanks are also
offered to Mr. Geddes, who has designed the colour plate on the cover,
and brought into the book a sense of the traditions which surround the
regimental flags.

                                                            L. RICKARD.




                             INTRODUCTION


The origin of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, like that of those other
great Irish Regiments, the Dublins and the Leinsters, is inextricably
bound up with those great movements of Imperial expansion which took
place in the eighteenth century. Of the Leinsters one battalion
was originally raised in Canada and another in India. Both regular
battalions of the Dublins were raised in India. Like them, the
1st and 2nd Battalions of the Royal Munsters (before the Caldwell
reconstruction the 101st and 104th Foot) were originally regiments
in the army of the East India Company, raised out of British-born
volunteers in India and only taken over as part of the British Army
when the control of India