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I thought then that the lads who still stayed back in Ireland, and the
old people there, would have been glad to stand with me outside that
Flemish barn and to hear the old tunes of their race played by the
boys who were out there fighting.
I think they would have wept a little, as I saw tears in the eyes of
an Irish soldier by my side, for it was the spirit of Ireland herself,
with all her poetry, and her valor, and her faith in liberty, which
came crying from those pipes, and I wished that the sound of them
could carry across the sea.
That was a year before I saw the Irish battalions come out of Guichy,
a poor remnant of the strength that had gone in, all tattered and
torn, and caked with the filth of battle, and hardly able to stagger
along. But they pulled themselves up a little, and turned eyes left
when they passed their brigadier, who called out words of praise to
them.
It was more than a year later than that when I saw the last of them,
after a battle in Flanders, when they were massacred, and lay in heaps
round German redoubts, up there in the swamps.


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