The Dragoons also went to the assistance of a man of the Irish Rifles who, wounded himself, was yet kneeling beside a fallen comrade of the Gloucester Regiment, and gamely firing to keep the enemy off.  The Dragoons found both men thoroughly worn out, but urgency required the regiment to take up another position, and the wounded men had to be left to the chance of being picked up by the Red Cross corps.  “They knew that,” says the trooper who relates the incident, “and weren’t the men to expect the general safety to be risked for them.  ‘Never mind,’ said the young Irishman, ’shure the sisters ‘ll pick us up all right, an’ if they don’t—­well, we’ve only once to die, an’ it’s the grand fight we’ve had annyhow.’”

One of the most stirring exploits of the war—­equaled only by the devotion and self-sacrifice of the Royal Engineers in the fight for the bridge—­is that of the Irish Fusiliers in saving another regiment from annihilation.  The regiment was in a distant and exposed position, and a message had to be sent ordering its retirement.  This could only be accomplished by despatching a messenger, and the fusiliers were asked for volunteers.  Every man offered himself, though all knew what it meant to cross that stretch of open country raked with rifle fire.  They tossed for the honor, and the first man to start-off with the message was an awkward shock-headed chap who, the narrator says, didn’t impress by his appearance.  Into the blinding hail of bullets he dashed, and cleared the first hundred yards without mishap.  In the second lap he fell wounded, but struggled to his feet and rushed on till he was hit a second time and collapsed.  One man rushed to his assistance and another to bear the message.  The first reached the wounded man and started to carry him in, but when nearing the trenches and their cheering comrades, both fell dead.  The third man had by this time got well on his way, and was almost within reach of the endangered regiment when he, too, was hit.  Half-a-dozen men ran out to bring him in, and the whole lot of this rescuing party were shot down, but the wounded fusilier managed to crawl to the trenches and deliver the order.  The regiment fell back into safety and the situation was saved, but the message arrived none too soon, and the gallant Irish Fusiliers certainly saved one battalion from extinction.

In one fierce little fight the Munster Fusiliers (the “Dirty Shirts”) had to prevent themselves from being cut off, and in a desperate effort to capture the whole regiment the Germans launched cavalry, infantry and artillery upon them.  “The air was thick with noises,” says one of the Munsters in telling the story, “men shouting, waving swords, and blazing away at us like blue murder.  But our lads stood up to them without the least taste of fear, and gave them the bayonet and the bullet in fine style.  They crowded upon us in tremendous numbers, but though it was hell’s own work we wouldn’t surrender,