History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0471/04717.txt

Text File | 1992-10-12 | 12KB | 245 lines

$Unique_ID{how04717}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{True Stories Of The Great War
How Sergeant O'Leary Won His Victoria Cross}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Anonymous}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{o'leary
germans
sergeant
british
irish
eight
war
bravery
how
killed}
$Date{1914}
$Log{}
Title:       True Stories Of The Great War
Book:        How Sergeant O'Leary Won His Victoria Cross
Author:      Anonymous
Date:        1914
Translation: Freedman, Julian Bindley

How Sergeant O'Leary Won His Victoria Cross

I - Who Is The Bravest Man In The War?

Story Of The First Battalion Of The Irish Guards

[He shot eight Germans in eight seconds, captured a machine gun, took two
barricades single handed, and saved his whole company from being exterminated.
The story is told in the New York American as dispatched from London.]

     Who is the bravest man that the war has produced?

     It would probably be impossible to answer this question with any
approach to accuracy and impartiality.  But it is interesting to compare
some of the incidents reported and see how modern courage compares with
that of past history.

     It is generally admitted that all the nations engaged have fought
with remarkable bravery and steadiness, so that a man must have done some
extraordinary daring action to make himself notable.  Thousands and
thousands of acts of bravery have been performed by many among the
millions of soldiers engaged.  Doubtless some of the most heroic have died
without having their acts mentioned.

     Of the innumerable feats of bravery reported the one that has
impressed the British public most is that of Sergeant Michael O'Leary, of
the Irish Guards, who is a native of Ireland, as his name suggests.

     He has received the coveted Victoria Cross, been promoted Sergeant
and a long description of his deeds has been given him on the official
records - a very great honor.  He has also been offered a commission, but
will not take it at present because he does not want to leave the Irish
Guards, and there is no place for him there as an officer.

     The cold official record says that O'Leary won his Victoria Cross
"for conspicuous bravery at Cuinchy.  When forming one of the storming
party which advanced against the enemy's barricades he rushed to the front
and himself killed five Germans who were behind the first barricade, after
which he attacked a second barricade, about sixty yards further on, which
he captured, after killing three of the enemy and making prisoners of two
more.  Lance Corporal O'Leary thus practically captured the enemy's
position by himself and prevented the rest of the attacking party from
being fired on."

     Further details of O'Leary's wonderful exploit were given by Company
Quartermaster Sergeant J. G. Lowry, of the Irish Guards, who was engaged
in the fight.

     "Our First Battalion," he said, "had been holding trenches near the
La Bassee brickfield, and our losses were heavy.  The Germans had
excellent cover, both in trenches and behind stacks of bricks.

     "We were all delighted when the order came that the brickfield had to
be taken by assault next day.

     "Lance Corporal O'Leary never looked to see if his mates were coming,
and he must have done pretty near even time over that patch of ground.
When he got near the end of one of the German trenches he dropped, and so
did many others a long way behind him.  The enemy had discovered what was
up.

     "A machine-gun was O'Leary's mark.  Before the Germans could manage
to slew it around and meet the charging men O'Leary picked off the whole
of the five of the machine crew, and leaving some of his mates to come up
and capture the gun, he dashed forward to the second barricade, which the
Germans were quitting in a hurry and shot three more.

     "O'Leary came back from his killing as cool as if he had been for a
walk in the park and accompanied by two prisoners he had taken.  He
probably saved the lives of a whole company.

     "Had that machine gun got slewed round, No. 1 Company might have been
nearly wiped out."

II - Story Of The Young Irish Guard

     What impresses people in O'Leary's deed is not only his bravery but
the triumphant success with which he carried out the whole act.  Other
soldiers may have displayed more self-sacrifice and endurance, but not one
of them appears to have done more for his side by one individual act of
bravery than O'Leary.

     It is the dashing quality of his deed that wins admiration and this
quality, it is to be noted, is peculiarly Irish.  He is credited by his
admirers with having shot eight men in eight seconds.  His quickness must
have been phenomenal, and here again he showed a peculiarly Irish trait.

     How one man could have shot eight soldiers, when all eight of them
were armed and many of their comrades were only a few yards away, must
appear a mystery to many.  The Germans were perhaps retiring hastily from
their positions, but they had magazine rifles in their hands and fired
many shots at the British.

     Why did they not get O'Leary, who was running out alone ahead of his
companions?  He must have been amazingly lucky, as well as amazingly
quick.

     Then it is almost equally astonishing that he could have shot eight
men in a few moments while running.  The best explanation of this is that
the British soldier has a rifle carrying more bullets than that of any
other army.

     The Lee Enfield rifle now used in the British army carries ten
bullets in the magazine and one in the barrel.  O'Leary, of course, fired
all his eleven bullets, and he is credited with making eight of them kill
a man apiece.  That is an amazing shooting record, said to be unequalled
for a soldier.

     Sergeant O'Leary is not a particularly fierce looking soldier, as
might be expected, but a tall, slender, fair-haired young fellow.  He is
only twenty-five years old.

     "A quiet, easy-going young fellow O'Leary is," said his friend,
Sergeant Daly, of the Second Battalion of the Irish Guards.  "But he is
remarkably quick on his feet."

     O'Leary was born in the little village of Inchigeelach, in the County
Cork.  His father and mother still live there.  He has an older brother
and four sisters, who are now in America.

     He served for several years in the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police,
but went back and joined the British Army in order to be nearer home.

     After the fight in which he won his decoration he wrote home:

     "Dear Parents: I guess you will be glad to hear that I was promoted
full sergeant on the field on account of distinguished conduct on February
1, when we charged the Huns and routed them in disorder.

     "You bet the Irish Guards are getting back now."

     Mrs. O'Leary, the old mother of the hero, has been interviewed at her
home in Ireland.  As might be expected her words were very simple.

     "It's proud I am of Mike," said Mrs. O'Leary, "but I wish he was home
instead of being in that cruel war.

     "When that telegram came for me, I thought sure Mike was dead, but
when I opened it I found that he had been promoted.  Sure I was better
pleased to know that he was alive than promoted.

     "Mike is a good boy.  He never gave me a moment's uneasiness since he
was in the cradle, except when he went away on his foreign adventures.  I
suppose he had to leave me.  There's little enough chance for a boy here,
with only the pigs to look after and his father and me."

     We have been inclined to think that the days were over when a mighty
warrior could rush in among the foe and slay many with his own hands but
O'Leary and many others in this war have proved that that is not the case.

III - Tale Of A Gordon Highlander

     Many of the famous deeds of antiquity have been curiously paralleled
in the war.  For instance, one of the ancient feats that everybody
mentions occasionally was how the brave Horatius held the bridge across
the Tiber with two companions against the whole Etruscan army.

     Now we find again and again that a bridge has been the scene of deeds
of conspicuous heroism in this war.  The British were defending a river
bank and bridge against a fierce German attack.  The crew of a British
Maxim gun had all been killed.  Then Angus MacLeod, of the Gordon
Highlanders, rose from cover, seized the Maxim gun and all alone carried
it, under fire, to the far side of the bridge, where he played it on the
advancing Germans.

     He is credited with having killed sixty Germans.  Finally he fell
dead and thirty bullets were counted in his body.  The delay enabled the
British to rally and repel their opponents.

     An extraordinary act of heroism was reported of an unnamed French
soldier during the disastrous retreat of the French from the Belgian
frontier and the Meuse River early in the war.

     This man had been taken prisoner with some companions.  The Germans,
according to the report, drove their prisoners before them when attempting
to cross a strongly defended bridge, to make the French think it was a
party of their own men returning.  As the French prisoners stepped on the
bridge, one of them, a big and strong-voiced man, yelled:

     "Fire, nom de Dieu, or you will be wiped out."

     His own act made his death certain.  He fell riddled with bullets
from both sides.

     Lieutenant Leach and Sergeant Hogan of the British Army each received
the Victoria Cross for an extraordinarily daring and ingenious action.
The two men killed two Germans, took sixteen unwounded prisoners and
twenty wounded men.  Leach and Hogan with ten men crawled unobserved to a
section of trench that had been captured by the Germans earlier in the
day.  Leach and Hogan dropped into the trench unnoticed and the ten men
lay in wait to shoot any Germans who showed themselves.

     A trench is built in zigzags so that there is only a straight section
of about twenty yards along which an enemy could shoot.  The Germans in
the first section were taken by surprise and all killed or wounded.  Then
the two men hurried on to the next turning.  As they walked Hogan put his
cap on his rifle and held it above the trench to show their men outside
where they were.

     Lieutenant Leach poked his automatic revolver round the corner of the
trench and began shooting at the Germans from cover.  The German soldiers
with their big clumsy rifles could not hit the deadly hand that was the
only object to aim at.  While the Lieutenant was shooting, Hogan watched
over the top of the trench to shoot any German who tried to get out or
attack them in the rear.  Thus all the men in each section were killed,
wounded or captured.

     How do these and the many other brave men who have been reported in
the present war compare with the heroes of antiquity?  Achilles is the
foremost of Greek warriors.  He personified the Greek ideal of bravery,
manly beauty and fiery enthusiasm.  The "Iliad" contains pages and pages
about his deeds, his speeches, how he sulked in his tent, and his quarrel
with Agamemnon, but it does not seem after all that he did a vast amount
of harm to the enemy.  Of course, he killed Hector, but that was not
amazing, and he acted with considerable brutality about it.

     Achilles was undoubtedly a fine orator, but in achievement he
appeared to compare badly with modest Sergeant O'Leary.