NOBLEST DEED OF THE WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 November 1915, Page 10 (Supplement)

NOBLEST DEED OF THE WAR.

A SPLENDID IRISHMAN. The London Press is enthusiastic over one feat which it regards as the noblest of the war. In the beginning of that terrible retreat from Mons, which the genius of Sir John French alone saved from being an absolute disaster, there came a time when a section of the Irish Guards were told to hold the road at all costs. Most of the officers had been killed, or were so badly wounded that they could no longer lead, and the charge fell on a grey-haired sergeantmajor, who swiftly seized a corner shop commanding two roads as an ideal place to hold the -Prussians until our rearguard was in safety. As he was about to place his two machine-guns, a woman stopped him, and said: "You cannot stay here, sergeant. There is a woman in labor in the room above." The sergeant told off ten of his men with stretchers and blankets to wait until the child was born, then to convey it and its mother to a place of safety, after that to return to their section, in the meantime, he advanced an eighth of a mile and fortified a weaker spot as well as he could, scolding his men the while, and telling them not to make too much noise else they would alarm the "babby." And 90, in a place which left them exposed to the full danger of a Prussian ] attack, those Irishmen fought until every man was either killed, wounded, or made prisoner, rather than disturb a woman in the crucial hour of maternity. The whole British Press agree that thi3 is one of the noblest stories told of a war. Even Thermopylae is insignificant beside it. Not even the least patriotic of us can imagine Germans paying so heroic a tribute of respect to womanhood when the fate of an army was at stake. The Outlook, in a tribute to the brave act, says: "We shall try to understand the Irish in future." This sounds like » candid admission of neglect in the past