The Regiments on the left and right being unable to get near the line where the Munsters were fighting, the position became that of a forlorn hope; but the fighting stuff of which the Munster Fusiliers are made, does not break. Their dash and coolness drew words of admiration from the Artillery officers who were observing, and the men, almost entirely without officers or N.C.O.'s, rallied and fought with unabated courage.
Only 300 yards away was the safety of the British trenches, but between that point and where the Battalion fought the gulf might as well have been as wide as eternity.
The hail of shells and the rain of bullets never ceased, and as the time went on and the Battalion was unsupported, Major Gorham, then in command and wounded in the arm, sent a message back that the assault was held up by the great breaking superiority of the enemy's forces.
Once again the heavy guns boomed out, pitching shell after shell into the German lines, and under cover of this protective fire the Battalion withdrew. Incidents of great self-sacrifice were many during the retirement. Sergeant Gannon carried one officer and four wounded comrades out under fire; Private Barry, himself mortally wounded, and only a slight slip of a boy from Cork, brought in Captain Hawkes, one of the biggest officers in the Battalion. Captain Hawkes was severely wounded in three places, and could not move, and as he carried his officer to safety, Private Barry fell, dying heroically, his death a tribute to the feeling that so strongly existed between officers and men.
So the Munsters came back after their day's work; they formed up again in the Rue du Bois, numbering 200 men and three officers. It seems almost superfluous to make any further comment.
In a garden near a place called Windy Corner, Colonel Rickard is buried at the head of a line of graves. As Father Gleeson wrote: "The Munsters who gave their lives so heroically and cheerfully, have, even in death, at their head, their kindly and loving leader, who so much inspired them and cheered us all."
Honest and brave soldiers, the world must go on without you, and those who are left to mourn you must face what remains in life with a little of your own fine spirit. But your lives and your great deaths have enriched the story of the world, the story of Ireland and the story of the Battalion, even though, through all the voices and all the sounds of life, we listen for your voices, and will listen still in vain.