en only knows. As the land lay,
climbing into hell on an aeroplane seemed an easier proposition than
taking that hill."[1] It may be well to point out, for it bears upon
one of the popular fallacies about Irish character, that it is not
only in the desperate charge or the forlorn hope that Irish soldiers
have proved their worth in this or other wars. They have shown it
equally in the tenacity, grim yet cheerful, with which for days and
weeks and months difficult positions are held and bitter hardships
borne. Again, let it be noted what this whole young Tenth Division
proved itself fit for after its months at Gallipoli. When it was
decided to occupy Salonika and to march to the aid of the Serbian army
it was to the Irish Division, under their splendid Irish commander,
General Sir Bryan Mahon, that the place of honour for this desperate
enterprise was given. Coming straight from their hard service in the
Peninsula, they performed in the Serbian mountain passes above Lake
Doiran what General Sarrail, the eminent French Commander, the
vanquisher of the Crown Prince's Army at Verdun, has pronounced to be
one of the most striking feats of arms of the whole war. Acting as a
rearguard against an army ten times their number, they did what was
neither expected nor counted upon. But their instinctive military
genius, as well as their courage and determination, came into play,
and they held up the overwhelming enemy for so long and with such
skill that the entire French and British forces were able to withdraw
safely to their defensive positions without the loss of a single gun
or a single transport wagon.

One seems to be verging on exaggeration in these accounts, but the
thing is bare truth, and I am striving to bring out what has been done
for Ireland by the character of these troops. I have indicated their
martial quality. But they have brought another quality into the field
which is equally characteristic and therefore should at least be
mentioned here, and which, perhaps, in the circumstances of the time,
deserves a special reference. That is, their religious spirit.
Everybody has remarked it. The Irish soldier, with his limpid faith
and his unaffected piety, his rosary recited on the hillside, his Mass
in the ruined barn under shell-fire, his "act of contrition" in the
trench before facing the hail of the assault, his attitude to women,
has been mostly a singular impression. And his chaplain! The Irish
battalion must have i