Tales of the Bright, the Dark & the Bizzare

by Maurice Connolly

  And look how the sun shines from under the trees,

  There’s no gas, no barbed wire, there’s no guns firing now.

  Billy O’Neill has just turned nineteen. He is a fit, strong, country youth who was born and reared in Ardfinnan, Co. Tipperary. Today is a big day in his young life. After conducting four weeks of initial training at the military barracks in Clonmel he was allowed home yesterday to bid farewell to his family. The month is March and the year is 1915. Billy has joined the Royal Irish Regiment. Tomorrow, with the rest of his battalion, he will be on his way to Aldershot in England. He finds the excitement of the whole adventure overwhelming. He was never very far from home in his whole life. Ken Ryan, from a small farm outside the village, enlisted the same time as himself. Billy is walking down the narrow lane to the road, where he is to meet up with Ken. Both will then be transported to Clonmel by ken’s father, in the pony and trap.

  The previous evening Billy had spent a few hours with his young sweetheart, Maggie Keane. She was a soft hearted, doe-eyed, innocent girl. She said she’d pray for him every day that he’d return safely to her. She gave him a special prayer, sealed in a little leather cover. She made him promise that he’d keep it with him always. It would protect him. They walked down by the river, stood under a tree, kissed and cuddled. He felt her soft tears against his cheeks. More tears as they kissed goodbye. She said she wouldn’t go to see him off tomorrow. She couldn’t bear that part of it.

  Billy’s mother Annie, his father, Pakie, and his six siblings join him, as he walks down the little lane. They are dressed in rags as the family is extremely poor. Billy’s father works as a farm labourer for a shilling and four pence a week All are talking excitedly now. They are proud of Billy, he looks such a fine cut of a lad in his smart uniform. They become aware of the pony and trap approaching in the distance.

  The mood changes. Tears well up in Annie’s eyes and she commences to sob, as do the two oldest girls. Pakie is overcome—he pats Billy on the shoulder a few times, turns round and walks back towards the house. He doesn’t want the others to see the tears running down his cheeks. The pony halts. Greetings are exchanged. Annie hugs Billy, as do the girls. All are crying openly now. The two older boys shake Billy’s hand, saying. “Good-luck, Billy.” The two little girls, with the pinched hungry faces, wrap their hands round Billy’s legs, not wanting him to go.

  “Take care of yourself, Billy boy,” Annie says, “and may God look after you.”

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Billy reassures them, “I’ll be home by Christmas.” He extricates the little ones’ hands and heaves himself up to the sanctuary of the trap.

  Billy is struggling hard to contain his emotions. But on no account could he cry in front of Ken or his father, Jim. Grown men don’t cry in public—especially soldiers.

  “Git up there, Jilly,” Jim says “And good-luck to you all.”

  Jilly sets off at a lively clip. All wave goodbye once more.

  “Parting is always the hardest,” Jim says.

  Billy looks back at the dishevelled, ragged appearance of the warm, closely knit family he loved so much.

  By pony and trap was a lovely way to travel. Scenery could be appreciated and admired at leisure. Jilly, the beautiful roan pony knew this road well. Jim allowed Jilly to travel at her own pace. He had a great fondness for this pony. Everyone had.

  “When will we travel this road again?” Ken wonders aloud.

  “Everyone says it should be over soon,” Billy replies.

  “I’d say it will; it won’t last too long more,” Jim says with conviction. “The British Empire, France, Russia—too many big powers on the one side.”

  “I hope it won’t be over before we get there,” Ken worries. “I just can’t wait.”

  “We’ll see a bit of the world. We’ll have some stories to tell when we get back,” Billy states with glee.

  “Learn to keep your heads down and don’t be acting the heroes, that’s my advice to you,” Jim warns.

  Halfway to Clonmel they halt to give the pony a brief rest. Jim has a nosebag with oats in the trap which he now drapes over Jilly’s head. She munches away on the oats. Ken opens a small parcel. He hands Billy a bottle of lemonade and takes one himself. Jim accepts and uncorks a bottle of stout. Ken passes around sandwiches. Billy thanks him, thinking to himself that this was a nice gesture.

  They eventually get to Clonmel and cross the old bridge leading to the main section of the town. They hear rousing marching music and see people standing on the footpaths. They pull over to a little green patch, get out and go to have a look. The army is on parade and getting nearer. Billy’s nerves tingle with excitement. An officer mounted on a grey horse leads the parade, followed by the brass band, the colour party and the ranks of marching soldiers. It is an impressive and glorious sight. The onlookers applaud and clap their hands. Perhaps it was meant as a recruitment drive—whatever, it was a memory to cherish.

  Getting near their destination, Billy says he’ll hop out and give the others the privacy to say their goodbyes. He thanks Jim, who in turn wishes Billy the best of luck, telling him to take good care of himself. It isn’t long before the two friends are reunited and they enter the military barracks together. What an adventure awaits them now. The significance of it all is taking time to register. Going overseas. Going off to war. Isn’t it what the clergy and politicians are urging men like Billy to do? Go and fight for the freedom of small nations. Fight for little Catholic Belgium.

  On to Queenstown by rail, and then by boat to Liver-pool. Billy and Ken are fascinated by all the new things they are now experiencing. They were never on a ship before. A crewman tells them that there is always the danger of the ship being torpedoed. The German U-boats are creating havoc. Ken gets seasick. “Christ I’m dying,” he says, his face turning green. Then the final trek of their journey, on to Aldershot. Ardfinnan seems a long way off now. The masses of military men everywhere, all preparing to embark for France. The war is on everyone’s lips. Nobody speaks about anything else. Ken has a black eye. He had a fistfight with a Dubliner who called him a thick, ignorant, country bogman.

  The Sergeant Major is a tough nut. The physical training is turning out to be fierce, the hardest Billy ever endured. The drill on the square, the forced marching through the surrounding countryside weighed down with heavy kit, the endurance course, the crawling under barbed wire, everything to toughen the new recruits. Everything to toughen them for the inevitable apocalypse into which they would soon be heading. Billy and Ken enjoy the rifle training. Firing their .303 rifles at targets. This was more like it. Then the bayonet practice. Billy experiences a slight shiver as he feels the sharp, sleek, cold steel and realizes what it was actually meant to do. They scream as they charge at hanging bags of sand and plunge the bayonets home.

  “No mercy!” the Sergeant Major roars. “Show no mercy for no mercy will be shown to you. You will soon be on your way. We’ve done all we could to prepare you. I hope your bodies are hardened by now. I want your minds to be hardened too. The enemy you will soon be facing is a tough, dangerous foe. You will have to be just as tough and uncompromising as he is. For if you don’t,” he roars, “you will be a dead soldier. Remember that, always remember that.”

  Disturbing rumours are soon circulating: where the troops are going is no cakewalk. The Western Front is an awful place. If there was a hell on earth then it would be the nearest thing to it. Those readying themselves to go try to ignore these reports, convincing themselves that it couldn’t be that bad. The band play them off to war. The spectators cheer. Girls dash across and plant kisses on their cheeks and flowers in their buttonholes. They all feel like heroes.

  If Billy and Ken had any doubts, when they finally reach their destination their worst fears are confirmed. This, they quickly realize, is indeed an awful place. The first thing they notice on their way to the frontline is the smell—rotting bodies in shallow graves, men who haven’t washed for weeks because t
here are no facilities, overflowing cess pits, chloride of lime used to stave off infection, cordite, the stagnant mud everywhere. In the trenches they soon become aware that rats are a constant companion. They are there in millions, everywhere, gorging themselves on human remains. They grow to the size of cats. Lice become a big problem, breeding on dirty clothes. Then the constant wet and cold. They were warned that the mud and unsanitary conditions could cause trench foot which could turn gangrenous and require amputation. A sizable number of men appeared to be suffering from shell shock. It was brought starkly home to the new arrivals that death was everywhere in the trenches—at any time, day or night, it could be your body lying in the mud. Horrified at finding themselves in this hellhole, Billy and Ken resign themselves to the grim reality that they had no choice now.

  The days started off before dawn with ‘stand to.’ Men were roused from whatever fitful sleep they had got and ordered to the ‘fire step.’ Many raids were carried out at dawn. After ‘stand to’ there was an inspection of men and rifles by a senior officer.

  After that there was a breakfast of sorts. The trenches came alive after dark as men fetched vital food and supplies from behind the lines. Canned corn beef was the staple diet. Six ounces of meat and six ounces of vegetables was the daily allowance. This was eventually replaced by pea soup and a few lumps of horse meat.

  Billy and Ken are getting conditioned to the rifle fire and shelling. Then the action slows somewhat. It appears as if the second battle of Ypres is about to end in stalemate. Suddenly a lot of activity is observed in the opposing trenches. The troops are put on full alert. The Germans made a habit of attacking in force when it was least expected. Being countrymen and familiar with horses, Billy and Ken are sent with a convoy to collect supplies from behind the lines. The area is subjected to a heavy barrage and they are forced to remain overnight, not returning to their position till the next day. As they approach they become aware of a strange, foul odour. They had already witnessed some atrocious sights but what confronts them now is the worst horror they have ever seen: The first poison gas attack of the war has taken place. Caught unawares, there are hundreds, thousands, of dead and dying soldiers all along the line. Ashen faced, shocked, they watch soldiers spitting, suffocating, twisted in mortal fear, their faces turning blue while they cough out mucus and blood from their tortured lungs.

  The war wages on seemingly unending. The gas is now the greatest dread. It was now a feared weapon on both sides. Billy finds it impossible to get used to the suffering and screams and blood of Flanders. Seeing the remains of men shattered by shell blast. Seeing the flower of youth sent to death and mutilation. Ken has been moved to a different sector and both hope the other will survive. Survival is all the soldiers have to aim for now.

  Word filters through about the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. The troops can’t believe it. It’s like a dagger to the heart. British and Irishmen shooting each other on the streets of Dublin! How could it happen? Then a couple of weeks later news leaks about the executions of the leaders of the Rebellion. Another mind numbing shock, tinged with anger now. Attitudes change. What are we doing here? a lot of men question.

  “How could the army be so stupid?” Dublin Danny fumes. “How could they?”

  Straight away, the comradeship between the soldiers from the North and South cools or, in some instances, evaporates completely. A month later Dublin Danny goes home on furlough. Eventually when he gets back he reports that everything has changed utterly at home:

  “You’d be despised now if you were seen wearing khaki. We’re not wanted back in Ireland anymore,” he sadly declares.

  “What are we going to do then?” Billy asks in total despair.

  “What are we going to do? We’ll have to stick this basterin’ nightmare out. What else can we do?”

  “They all urged us to join, to enlist, to come out here,” Tom Griffin from Wexford spits out. “They fuckin’ sent us out here. Now they don’t want us back.”

  “I’ll tell you what we are now—we’re the damned generation, that’s what we are,” Dublin Danny adds with a finality to his voice.

  Billy’s leave is due. He decides he won’t go home now. He might bring trouble down on the heads of his family. He’ll spend it somewhere in France. He’ll try and write a letter home later on. He does so, in his scrawly hand:

  Hallo Mam and Dad and everyone,

  I hope this finds you all well. Sorry I did not rite before now but I am not into letters. Do not worry about me at all as I will be al right. I think of you all the hole time. Maggie is always in my toughts. I am sending you six pound. Keep the fiver to buy someting for everyone when Xmas comes round. Give the pound to Maggie and tell her to buy someting nice to wear. I will not rite again. I am no good at it. I pray that I will see you all very soon. I love you all and miss you all very much. I think of you first thing at morning and last thing at night. Give my dearist love to Maggie.

  Your loving son,

  Billy.

  The war of attrition rumbles on. After seven months Ken is reunited with his old regiment. The psychological impact of the trench warfare is taking its toll on both Billy and Ken. Both look as if they have aged about a dozen years. Their faces have an intense, gaunt appearance. Ken relates a particularly bad experience he had about a month previous: a shell burst close and part of a comrade’s head and brains splashed onto his face. Billy too had a brush with sudden death, when a shell smashed into the wall of the trench close to where he was crouched. It didn’t explode but buried itself in the soft salient of Flanders earth. Some thirty per cent of the shells fired by both sides failed to explode.

  In July 1917 a huge push is planned at Passendaele. This is to be the big breakthrough that will finally break the back of the German army. All the troops that can be mustered are rushed to the front—over a large area, close to the town of Passendaele. For days and nights the guns pound the enemy lines. Over four million shells blast the German positions. It starts to rain incessantly. For the soldiers waiting in the trenches, conditions couldn’t be much worse. The trenches start to fill with water. The clinging mud is everywhere. That, and the rats. The rats bore through corpses to get at the liver. Billy peers over the parapet at the bombardment.

  “How could the Germans survive that!” he murmurs to Ken in awe. “How could they?”

  But he knew that they would, the same as at the Somme and elsewhere. They’d dig deep underground.

  “The constant explosions must be driving them out of their minds,” Ken surmises. “It’s bound to drive men mad.”

  The bombardment goes on and on. At night the flames from the shells lights up the night sky. When the soldiers open their eyes at morning they feel paralysed with the wet and cold. When Billy looks down the line, what he sees is hulks of men moulded in mud from head to toe. He looks out at no man’s land, that zone of terror, that awful place where the moans of dying men never seem to cease. Billy knows what is coming next: the shelling will halt, the Germans will drag themselves up from the bowels of the earth, position their machine guns and destroy the oncoming waves of British infantry. He is well aware of the casual way the generals dispatch wave after wave of brave men on suicidal missions—mindless squandering of human life for negligible results. At last the fatal word comes through—the shelling will cease next morning.

  A long night stretches out—the long wait. Reinforcements arrive all along the frontline trenches. It will be a big assault—a crucial battle, maybe. Nerves are frayed all night as the troops wait for the dawn—the last dawn for a great number. With shaking hands some men scribble letters, some pray more than usual, all are secretly terrified. The shelling stops abruptly. The first advance will go over the top at 7am sharp. Billy and Ken keep close together.

  “Why the bloody wait?” Billy asks, with disgust “It’s only giving them more time to prepare. Look, feckin’ barbed-wire everywhere.”

  A nerve shattering stillness now engulfs the whole theatre of war.


  The rain has stopped pelting down. The men are at the ready. The order to fix bayonets is shouted out. The rum is being distributed. Father O’Mahony makes his way along through the mud administering a general absolution. The vast majority of the men, including Billy and Ken, remove their helmets and reverently bow their heads as he blesses them. Some don’t bother. Hell doesn’t worry them. They feel they have lived through it. The priest was a good one. He stuck with the men through thick and thin. He looked haggard and tired. A crazed looking officer with a revolver in his hand is pacing up and down the trench screaming, “Kill! Kill! Show no mercy!”

  Glancing left and right Billy notices a few men getting sick and vomiting. More are kissing some personal religious icon. Others are glancing down at faded photographs. All are aware that the next few minutes could be their last few minutes on this earth. Billy feels his heart pounding inside his chest. He glances down at his watch— he had taken the watch from a dead German’s wrist. It was the only item he ever took from a dead body. What difference, he reasoned at the time. It would be ruined anyway. It kept good time. One minute to go. Pale-faced, Ken reaches over saying, ‘Good-luck.’ Billy nods his head.

  The whistles sound. Screams and curses rent the air as the men scramble up the wooden ladders and over the top. They rush towards the enemy lines and straight away the deadly rattle of the German machine guns open up. Men start to drop like flies, like corn before the scythe. Everywhere the agonized screams of the wounded are heard as bullets thud home, the heavy machine gun bullets shattering flesh and bone.

  Keeping low and dodging in and out of shell holes, Billy gets close to the German line. The attacking soldiers are now starting to hurtle grenades at the defending Germans. Sheer force of numbers is forcing the Germans to retreat. In the smoke and confusion, Billy sees a figure come towards him. Instinctively he lunges forward and plunges his bayonet into the German’s chest. Straight away Billy realizes that the soldier is unarmed. Mortally wounded, he slumps to the ground. As Billy looks down in shock he can see that his victim is only a youth—a boy. The helmet comes off and the blond hair falls down over his forehead. He looks up at Billy as his life ebbs away. Billy tries to pull out the bayonet, but he can’t—it’s stuck in bone. He has to put his boot on the boy’s chest to yank out the weapon. As he does so blood oozes out of the corners of the boy’s mouth. Billy recoils in horror. He is shoved and pushed from behind and in a turbulent, shocked state of mind he stumbles forward and collapses into the now undefended trench.