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My dear ones,

We have been in action for the first time now! - just returned from a week's Brigade training. It was a capital week, too; packed with interest and not a dull moment from cover to cover, as the reviewers say.

We and the Rangers (Brown Force) were opposed to the Royal Irish and the Munster's (White Force).On the first day we marched out with our allies to the theatre of war, 19 miles from here among the mountains and bogs. We were a most imposing column on the road: first the band fifes, drums and pipes - then the signallers, then the scouts, then the main body: four full companies of very dusty Tommies in full marching order(packs, straps, bandoliers, water-bottles, greatcoats, mess-tins and rifles and bayonets: the whole Christmas tree); then the machine-gun section with their spidery little guns and spidery little officer, then the transport - three majestic great G.S. wagons with four horses and a driver apiece, and a couple of little limbered wagons with officers' transport and rations - and finally the baggage-guard and stretcher-bearers. We took up about three-quarters of a mile all told. A state of war did not exist till midnight, so we had no need to adopt precautions on the line of march.

At 6 o'clock in the evening we reached the bivouac-ground: an open field in the middle of heathery waste, at the top of a slope. For half a mile the ground dropped away southward, down to a little stream with wooded banks (THE BRIDE),and rose again on the other side to a ridge of hills.(Imagine us camped above the Quarry behind the Anchorage, with the ground falling away past the railway-bridge over the STAITHES road to the beck, and then rising again through OAKRIDGE Wood up to the moorland ridge beyond, and you have some idea of the position.) A road ran down out of the bivouac to the river, and made a T-piece with the road that ran along the river bank. Half a mile west of this T-piece was a bridge over the river.

The battalion closed up into mass-formation in the field, and the order was sleep where you stand. (The Connaughts were there before us, and had their arrangements already complete.) The men took off their packs and rolled out their blankets and got ready their sleeping arrangements, and then fell out for the evening. The cooks arrived with their field-kitchen smoking, and supper was soon going round. Fires were lit, and in the twilight we began to look quite like the picturesque idea of an army round its camp-fires.

Headquarters were under a couple of pine trees just outside the field, where the two colonels and their staff were quartered. That was my place, of course, as I was responsible for the communications. I had a detachment of 25 signallers under me, whom I told off four to each company, and eight to headquarters with their sergeant and myself. I had also four cyclist orderlies whom I kept in my own hands. These, and my 8 headquarter section, I brought over to where I could lay my hands on them in the night; the rest slept with the battalion.

After I had made these arrangements and seen the men get their supper, and got my own, and explained to them just where every company officer, adjutant, colonel, etc., was to be found in the dark, it was 11 o'clock, and most people had turned in except the sentries. Hostilities didn't commence till midnight, so I rolled into my flea-bag for an hour's sleep. It was raining softly at the time, so I was thankful for it ( the flea-bag).

At 12 o'clock the outposts moved off to take up their positions: two companies of the Rangers. I went with them. We put piquets along the river front wherever the enemy might cross, and a sentry-post at the bridge. For communication, we laid a cable from the headquarters at the bivouac down the road to the T-piece and along the river bank to the headquarters of the O.C Outposts. Between him and the units of his command (piquets, etc.) we had a chain of order- lies on root or cycles, as the roads were good and the woods too thick for any sort of visual signalling.

By the time the piquets were all posted and communication established from end to end of the outpost line, it was close on three o'clock, and the reliefs were not due till six; so I walked back to the sleeping camp and had another two hours in the flea-bag. At five the reliefs paraded, and I went down again to the river with them. This time they were A and D Coys of the Leinsters.

After they were in position the regiments breakfasted, packed up their transport, and got ready to move. About seven o'clock the enemy who made no sign up to now, got into touch with the outposts, and we heard a few scattered shots down by the river. Then the messages began to come in over the wire. They had come down in strength and forced the passage of the river; the outposts were being driven in; supports needed, etc. (This, by the way, was all part of the general idea; we were to fight a rearguard action as we retired; the G.O.C. wanted to test White Force's offensive and Brown Force's defensive powers.)

So we threw out three companies widely to hold the enemy all along his line (his front was then about a mile and a half), and the outposts fell back through them and had their breakfast behind the firing-line.

By the time we had fallen back clear of the woods along the river, and all the signalling staff were working at high pressure, with flags twinkling all over the landscape from behind hedges and walls and houses and everything. I had a steadily-mounting sheaf of message-forms under my hand, and the C.O. was licking 'em up like a cat lapping milk and asking for more. We had reeled in the cables as the firing-line withdrew, and there wasn't much more than a quarter of a mile of it out now. The sappers and their wire laid back to the G.O.C., a mile or so further away in the rear, and I think he kept it fairly hot too, with messages to the C.O.

All that day we retired and fought , clinging to every hill or ridge that could be held, and tramping doggedly along the roads when there weren't any, with shots going on behind us where our firing-line was holding up the enemy's advance to let us get back safely to the next position. It was beastly hot, too. The signalling was rather difficult, what with every unit on the move all the time.

At nightfall we halted about five or six miles to the rear of our previous bivouac. We were amongst mountains by this time; little hills and kopjes all over the shop. Battalion Headquarters were in a deserted cottage that night, and I was on the roof working the lamp-key to the outposts on the hills around. There was what the paper's call a certain liveliness all night, but on the whole we scored. Plenty of messages came through. Enemy attempted to rush piquet here; we captured three, my operator at No.1 Outpost Coy would say from a hill a quarter of a mile away to the left ;and just as his flash died out in the dark, another would blaze out on the right, Cheero, nine more prisoners!, trying to send it in such a hurry that his letters tumbled over each other like an excited messenger stammering. Lamps and telegraphs are very human; they respond in an awfully sensitive way to the man behind them. I could tell from my cottage-roof every time the operator was relieved at the other end, just from the difference in the sending.

It was a long night, and rather cold, but two incidents broke it agreeably. Once when a sergeant brought me hot tea and biscuits - that was about one o'clock - and again about an hour later when an orderly came back from the outposts to me with a captured signalling-lamp and telephone set of the enemy's, which made a valuable addition to our equipment. It seemed the subaltern of that particular piquet had got tired of sitting in the dark, so he took out a patrol and went skirmishing on his own among the enemy's lines. The first thing he stumbled on was their advanced signal station, busily signalling back progress to their headquarters; and when they looked up from their work, behold, they were prisoners! They said it was not playing the game for an outpost, which is essentially a thing that sits still on the defensive, to turn itself into a dangerous wandering thing like a patrol, which bloweth where it listeth.

Altogether that night we got 68 rank and file, 5 non-coms, and 2 officers prisoners, all for meddling with our piquets.

From that time on, we retired slowly all day and every day, disputing every inch of the way (the retreat from Mons was nothing to us.) At night we slept for an hour or two in ditches, and generally woke up to retire some more at about two in the morning. And retiring a battalion with all its gear across trackless hills in the dark is a fairly good test of soldiering. There were three incidents, from my point of view, during the show. One was when the transport mules, picketed just behind my ditch, stampeded from their lines at midnight and came gambolling round me with flaming eyes in the dark. They were more clumsy and inquisitive even than Kipling's commisariat camels.

The second was when we came across White Force's cable laid across the field and tapped into it with a buzzer which translated several of their messages for us. Later they spotted this somehow, and we had to content ourselves with putting wet fingers on the line and reading the long and short shocks; which sounds awfully Boys'Friendish, but is quite commonplace really.

Well, the end of it all was beautiful. We were retiring at two in the morning slowly across the hills, with the enemy about half a mile after us; and we fell back into a lovely little cup in a hill: just a tiny round amphitheatre with heather-covered sides. We were posted here, on the far slope, in three successive tires like the pit, balcony and gallery in a theatre, each tier well under cover in a ditch; so:

• A. Connaught Rangers company digging trenches.
• B. Leinsters posted in concealed trenches.
• C. Three companies of Connaught Rangers retiring across Leinsters' Front.
• D. Enemy advancing in pursuit.

Then we put one company of the Rangers on top of a hill well to the right of our position. They were to be seen as the sun rose (about three o'clock) hurriedly digging themselves into trenches as though to make a last stand on that hill. The other three companies of the Rangers, who were contesting the enemy's advance, were to retire obliquely across our front, from left to right, as if falling back on their comrades on the hill - taking no notice whatever of us as they passed across our lines, and drawing on the pursuing enemy right under our rifles.

Well, for some God-given reason it fell out just so. We juked down in our heather ditched before dawn, and you could have walked right over us and sworn there wasn't a sign of life for miles around. Then, as the dawn broke, we saw the little black figures of the Rangers silhouetted against the sky, digging for dear life. It was really very theatrical, just like a recruiting poster. We lay close, and the shots in front of us got nearer and nearer, and then over the skyline to our left came a little stream of tumbling, running toy soldiers in pell-mell retreat. And oh, they did it beautifully! Right across our front they passed, while not a man moved an eyelash as they ran by under our very muzzles. A little pause, and then after them came the enemy: wee white-capped figures pouring down the slope after them. It was awfully difficult to keep our men's heads down in their excitement, but they behaved splendidly, and not a man showed up or loosed off a single round before the moment.

We let them get right down to the bottom of the cup, about 30 yards from the muzzles of our front rank, absolutely unsuspecting, and then there came three great blasts from the Colonel's whistle and the whole hillside burst into flame. Three tiers, one above the other - 1,000 rifles - ten rounds of rapid fire from each man - and the enemy huddled up not fifty yards away. It wasn't battle, it was massacre. Not one of them had an earthy chance, of course.

After it we fraternised, and marched our nineteen miles back again, and arrived home at lunch-time. And that's all. We all enjoyed it immensely and learned a lot.

The signalling course is now over, and I'm back at Kilworth starting another to-day for sixteen new recruits. They believe in one earning one's pay, I think. However. the C.O. told me to-day my second star has received the General's approval, so it's only a day or two before it's published in Orders now; and that's cheerful news.

Oh I forgot to say we spoofed a flag-message through to the Munsters on the second day (some spark discovered their code-call) ordering them to suspend operations till the arrival of the umpires; which they did, and got several kinds of particular hell for it. That was rather funny.

I'm getting another officer as second- in-command for signalling. The humorous thing is that he's really my senior officer otherwise, and doesn't like it a bit.

I'm sorry this letter is all about myself, but there's nothing else here to talk about.

What do you think of the enclosed ?

All my love,

(Copy of Enclosure)

Sir, owing to letters received by me for the past month I see that it is impossible for me to get on here any longer as I cannot leave my mind to the work I have to do.

So I ask you sir if you could possibly get me a pass if it was but for three days to take my wife from the party that is trying to separate us and leave her in another town as her mother and the remainder of her friends are doing their best against me for enlisting.

Sir if possible kindly oblige

Your obedient servant

James Kerrigan

Sir if you can grant me this favour I promise to repay you as far as it is in my power and if need be even on the battlefield.

The post script proved to be irresistible. I got it from him.