Salt Lake Tribune | 1914-09-26 | Page 4 | Irish and English Joke Firing Line

IRISH 10 ENGLISH ME ONRHl 11 Rev. James Molloy of New Jersey Describes Scenes I Witnessed in Battle. NEW YORK". Sept. 25. A tale of warfare from the British in France, varied with descriptions of the way th; English forces faced death on the battlefield, bat-tlefield, of the jokes cracked am the prayers they 'said with the bullets sweeping their ranks, was brought to New York today by the Kev. Jam.is Molloy, a native of Trenton. N. J., who served as chaplain for several weeks with uuo of the British regiments in, France and returned home today ou the j Mauretania. "In a modern battle there U an overpowering sense of unreality," he said. -'The business of seeing men kill each other seems mechanical be-caut'e be-caut'e of the preponderance of the machine ma-chine element m the affair; the human, cienient simply bleeds and dies but the machines continue, in thr Derlccliou of slaughter. The conduct of the English and Irish soldiers rm the trenches was surprising. sur-prising. There those men stood behind shoulder-high mounds oi dirt, lacing level sprays of death in front, yet. cracking .-jokes and singing snatches of ...l KallflH liPlllCPII vnllevs. .Stupendous bravery, I call it, or stupendous stu-pendous absence of nerves. 'I've heard men under the crashing crash-ing fire of the terrible Cierman guns, 3ud with comrades dropping all about , them, unite in roaring 'It's a Long Road to Tipperary.' as if they were in j the barracks. Sometimes I'd hear a, big Irishman call out to a neighbor in j the trenches. 'Well, I winged that Dutchman, all right.' The business of killing, with them, seemed personal and to pal take somewhat of a sporting j event. . "But how- the Germans did pound I that British line at Mons! They came j I on anil on, never stopping, never falter- ! j ing- The German commanders tnrewj J their men into the face of tt-e British I fire with absolute recklessness, count- I j ing on the sheer weight of numbers to ; overwhelnV us. "To see those German lines move forward through glasses was like watching watch-ing regiments of toy soldiers pushing across a table. You'd see a long row! of pale blue blocks. -topped with spiked 1 helmets, break from cover and come rushing at us. Then a British gun at ' vour elbow would speak, a shell would ! burst in the midst of that blue block. I a great hurling up of smoke and soil land the block would be gone. Noth- ing left but a few little men madly running run-ning back through the hae of powder I smoke. "The German sheila are terrible. I ; hnve seen one shell enter a little hill I and there explode, carrying away the I whole of the hill. I have seen a com-j com-j panv of British wiped out by the explosion ex-plosion of a single shell.' '