The Connaught Rangers — A Tale of the Crimean War — by John Augustus O'Shea in "Redpath's The Frinch and the Sardinians's Weekly"

Western News, Weekly Examiner, Oct 18th, 1884

L — In the Trenches

The story of the war with Russia in ancient history now. Since its occurrence, the aunals of Queen Victoria's peaceful reign have been checkered by many conflicts — some stubborn, some almost bloodless and that in the Crimea has well nigh dropped out of recollection. Yet, it has been so far the tiercast and most destructive, and is the only instance of a struggle with a European power. Out of the war it is hard to say who came best, Russia or the Allies. That it was strenuously contested on both sides and with equal valour, and that both sacrificed millions of treasure and thousands of lives cannot be denied.

What was it all about? Not one in a hundred of this generation can answer the question; nor is that to be marvelled at, for not one in ten of those who actually took part in it were a bit better informed.

And at present Russia is apparently none the worse, although Sebastopol was evacuated after a weary siege.

But that will not refill the coffers on either part with the expended money, which could be borne with, or bring the dead back to life, which is hard to bear with.

All which confirms me in an opinion I long have held, that modern warfare — save under very exceptional circumstances — is an absurdity duplicated with revolting cruelty, and a contrivance of the spirits of evil.

The Connaught Rangers arrived in the East on the 19th of April, 1854. There were other Irishmen in it besides those from the western provinces, for, being a distinctively Irish corps, there was a natural desire among Irishmen to enlist in its ranks. The Eighteenth was the only other Irish infantry corps — by name as well as by composition — which was present in the campaign.

There were plenty of volunteers from the militia in the Eighty—eight, eager young fellows who pressed forward to fill the gaps made by sickness and the foe, and one of the brightest, bravest, and most intelligent of these was Bob Fitzpatrick. The Constitutional force, as it is the fashion for the Parliamentary orators to call the militia, behaved well in that crisis, and wiped out the reproach Sheridan levelled at them in his farce of 'St Patrick's Day', when he makes the justices's daughter describe their officers as 'a set of dunghill cocks with spurs on — heroes scratched off a church door'. They and their men conducted themselves excellently — always from the bloodthirsty military point of view — and too often came up to the ideal the lady admired, 'bold up—right youths, who make love to—day, and have their heads shot off to—morrow'.

As this is but a story of Patrick's night, and not an account of the war, I will ask the reader to accompany me to the trenches on the 17th of March, 1855, merely promising for those who are interested in the doings of the corps, that the Rangers had a fare share of hard knocks and hardships, and that in the 'soldier's fight' at Inkerman. Those of the regiment in the field signalized themselves by taking three or four guns which had been captured on the extreme left, but at the forfeiture of four sergeants and thirty—four rank and file, and more than twice as many wounded.

The winter in the bleak Chersonese was terribly severe; cold winds and drifting snow sent many to their fate, who had been spared by the bullet, but still in spite of bad food and not enough of it at that, insufficient clothing and hats through whose crevices the cutting atmosphere penetrated, the men preserved their spirits remarkably well, when not prostrated by scurvy or fever, diarrhoea or that most appalling of scourges, cholera.

None of the investing troops were gayer or more full of fun for all their discomforts than the The 'devil's own Connaught boys', as they were called in the Peninsula, successors of the gallant fellows who fought so fiercely in the battle against Napoleon's lieutenants from Talavero to Toulouse, adding new chaplets to the thick crop of laurels gathered in Flanders, Egypt, Buenos Ayres and Monte Video.

They were not so smart to look upon, perhaps, as they had often appeared in home quarters in their trim parade uniforms, with well—polished brasses and buckles, and carefully pipeclayed belts, their yellow facings coming out in bright relief against their scarlet coatees, but they were unmistakably workmanlike as they moved down from their camp in the advanced parallels of the right attack to take their spell of trench duty.

The weather was fine and dry for the season, but raw, when the heavy sea fogs came rolling up the Inkerman heights as evening set in when the reliefs were assembled, and the working parties took their picks and shovels from the engineer's park.

They were suggestive of a column of stout phantoms as they marched steadily and silently along in their fur caps and sheepskin coats, rising in blurred outline on the dimly lit landscape. Many of them were very young, mere boys, with a premature fixedness in their features. There is nothing which hardens the lineaments so effectively, and gives such a set, compressed firmness to brow and eye and mouth as a few months in the presence of an active enemy.

The veterans were martial in matted beards, and although they might not have elicited the admiration of a crowd or nursery maids or idlers at a march—past, they looked what they were, fit for any service, soldiers every inch of them, from spinal column to finger tips.

It was considered a downright shame by the Eighty—eight to have to go to the front that night of all the nights in the year, but there was no help for it. Duty must not be skirked. Communications had just been established between the extreme of the British right and the left of the French, in front of the Memelon Vert. This had been an arduous task, and had mostly to be carried on by night, as the extremely rocky nature of the ground rendered it difficult to throw up cover. The approaches were getting hazardously close to the enemy, and the casualties were consequently increasing at an unpleasant rate.

The British had escaped well so far, though they must have inflicted serious damage on the Muscovite, the big guns of the fleet and the artillery pounding away with destructive accuracy; but the French had provoked his particular wrath by their brilliant attack on the rifle pits, from which they drove him out to establish themselves there.

The Rangers had not even the immediate prospect of a fight to warm the fete, though there was always the possibility of one, so they trudged along to the edge of the zigzags in mood the reverse of satisfied. Still their natural buoyancy would occasionally break out, and it was none the less merry for being checked by the curb of military discipline.

The word 'Halt' was given quietly, and a ripple of whispered laughter ran along the lines as a muffled exclamation, in a disguised voice, was overheard: "Musha, 'tis aisy cry hault to a hungry army."

The officer in command pretended not to hear, and turned aside his face to conceal a laugh. The day guards were relieved in rotation, the senior engineer officer accompanying the working parties to the scene of their appointed labours. They went down the boyau to the various batteries and positions to which they were told off; the reserves lay down a few yards in front of the workers, the coverers one hundred yards in advance of them, under any shelter they could find or improvise, and the 'lost sentinels,' yet a hundred yards near to the places where the opposing forces were presumed to be pushing out their ambushed marksmen.

Our hero, Bob Fitzpatrick, who held rank of high private, was sitting with the rest of his comrades of the covering party which supplied the sentinels to the uttermost jutting angle of the works under the lee of a hep of gabions. They had lit an apology for a watch fire in the shadow of an awning of waterproofs, and were doing what they could to cultivate merriment, but it was a clear case of trying to make the best of a bad bargain.

"Sweet good luck to it for a war, say I," muttered one old soldier, grumbling. "I wisht it was over."
"Don't like the fighting, Tim?" asked Bob.
"Tisn't the fighting bothers me," answered Tim, "but the starving; and be my word, 'tis hardly fair to ax us, Irishmen, to have another turn at that. We had more nor our share of it in the hard times."
"I suppose," said Mickey Monahan, a bugler, "they think we're so used to it that we don't mind it."
"Yis, avie," added Tim, dryly, "they say eels get used to being skinned, and rather like it in the dogdays, it keeps 'em so cool; but it's so cowld here at this present that I could put up with something to warm me, suppose it was only a pig's head an' a bowlster of cabbage."
"Or a duck and green pays," added the bugler, laughing.
"You'd have to get a dispensation from the Pope before you could ate them," remarked Lance—Corporal Dan Dennahy.
"Arrah ! listen to his reverence," ironically exclaimed Tim, "Where did you larn that?"
"Do you mane to say you've forgotten 'tis the sacret and holy Lint, you hathen?" retorted the Lance—Corporal.
"Indeed, 'sisn't half likely we would here, anyhow. The devil a thing else it has been since we landed at Eupatoria," interposed Fitzpatrick.
"There for you, Bob," said Tim; "but, sure, any bosthoon ought to know that no dispensation is required on the blessed day that's in it for Irishmen. There's no fasting on St. Patrick's Day."
"By my troth, then, there's a good imitation, of it in the outskirts of the beautiful city of Sebastopol just now," said Bob Fitzpatrick.
"But are you really cold, Tim?"
"Cowld? The blood is freezing in my windpipe. I'll be a walkin' iceberg 'fore morning."
"There's a drop in my canteen," said Fitzpatrick; "have a pull at it?" proffering the vessel.
"Raki, you're my darling," cried Tom, eagerly grasping the canteen;
"'twas an angel spoke," and as he spluttered the contents he had gulped on the frosty soil, he added ruefully, "a fallen angel I mane."
There was a general laugh at his disappointment.
"'Twas the best I had, Tim, and, believe me, coffee is a much safer drink than that kill—tinker raki."
"Thank you for nothing, Bob," said the veteran; "but I never took to it kindly. Howsomdever, the parley—voos do make it grand; strong as Samson and hot as ould Nick. Talking of that, I wonder is it thrue he is dead?
"Some say the devil is dead and buried in Killarney. Some say he's rug again and listed in the army." Burst out Bugler Monaghan.
"Chup raho," cried Tim,
"you can't sing, bad's scran to you. You've a voice like a corn crake wid an onaisy conscience. 'Twasn't of your friend I was talking, but of his first cousin, the Imperor of Roosha."
"Well," said Fitzpatrick,
"I was up in Balaclava the other day on fatigue, and I heard it for a fact from a doctor of my acquaintance."
"One of our own doctors?"
"No, but the heart's blood of a daycent fellow, Dr Le Blanc, of the 'Holy Boy' — I believe he comes from Portarlington — and he asked after all the Queen's county men in the corps, and promised to come over and see us in our lines."
"The Ninth?" asked Sergeant Guiot. "What division is it in?"
"The Duke's, the Second brigade. It only landed three weeks after Inkerman," answered the well informed Fitzpatrick.
"Well, if Nicholas is really dead," interrupted Tim, "that ought to stop the war."
"Stop the war, indeed," retorted Bob, 'ndt this side of Tib's Eve, ma bouchal. For the matter of that, the war will last longer in my opinion than anybody bargains for, because why, you see, Sepastopol isn't properly invested, and it stands to reason—"
"How not properly invests man," came in a curt voice from a figure at the back of the group — a dapper figure in a buffalo robe girdled round the waist with a swordbelt of untanned leather. There was a shrewd, confident glimmer in the eyes under the newcomer's projecting fur cap, his face was clean shaven, and altogether he was singularly neat in his get—up considering the circumstances.

Bob stood to attention, and was not in the least abashed by the question. The truth is, his character as a great military authority was at stake before his comrades.

"Because, sir, we should have occupied the neck of the isthmus of Perekop so as to prevent the enemy from sending in reinforcements before we open the siege."
"Hump, ejaculated the officer; "you have served before?"
"Only in the Queen's County Rifles, sir."
"Where did you acquire your knowledge of geography?"
"In the Christian Brothers' schools at Maryboro."
"I congratulate your teachers. But recollect, a soldier's duty is to act, not to argue. Who's in command of the post."
"Captain Mahony," answered the sergeant.
"He must keep a bright lookout tonight, tell him," and the figure disappeared.
"Pillaleu, Bob, you've played ducks and drakes with the chance of the stripes. D'ye know who that is," said Tim.
"I don't," said Bob;
"only I hope for my own sake he is not a general, and for the army's sake I hope he is."
"Whoever he is, he's a smart officer, for I've seen him prowling about here every night I've been on trench duty. I fancy he's in the Engineer's." said sergeant Guiot. At that moment, Captain Mahony came up and inquired if Captain Wolseley of the Ninetieth had passed that way.

"An officer, that looked like an engineer officer, was here just now, sir, and left word for us to tell you to keep a bright lookout tonight.
"Come along with me Fitzpatrick," said the Captain, and he moved off rapidly after their passing visitor whom he overtook in a few instants."
"Ha ! Garnet, glad I caught you up, Are we likely to have a scrimmage?"
"Well, Mahony, they may attempt a surprise, and I thought it right to give a warning to your Irish boys. This is St. Patrick's night, and they're apt to break over the traces on the occasion I know of old."
"Oh ! no fear," laughed Mahony,
"they're well in hand, poor lads, and 'tis myself is thinking it would tax even their national ingenuity to drown the shamrock tonight."
"They may have to drown it in blood before morning," said Captain Wolseley.

At these words, Fitzpatrick surreptitiously crossed himself.

At that moment, as if to justify the previsions of Captain Wolseley, a deafening roar of artillery broke out from the enemy's guns in the Manelon Vert, and was followed by a sheet of flame from the rifle pits underneath, and the quick, noisy crepitation of a musketry fusillade.

Again and again the din of ordnance arose, and the rattle of small arms, in well sustained, independent fire, new came incessantly, proving that this, indeed, was not a feint but a vigorously intentioned attack.

"Ta—ta, Mahony, I'll see you to—morrow."
"God grant it," said Captain Mahony. And, as he turned on his heels to rejoin his command, he soliloquized:
"Deucedly clever fellow, that Wolseley. He has a future before him if he lives."
(To be Continued.)