The Lambs Read online

  THE

  LAMBS

  Peter James Cottrell

  Contents

  Title Page

  HISTORICAL NOTE:

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  EPILOGUE

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  HISTORICAL NOTE:

  The book’s title, The Lambs, is taken from one of the regimental nicknames of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and whilst the book, like its sequel England’s Janissary,1 is a work of fiction, its key events are firmly rooted in fact. Whilst Kevin Flynn is fictional, all of the officers and the majority of soldiers mentioned in the book actually served in the 9th Battalion, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. I took the liberty of basing one of the chapters on the DCM citation of my Irish great-uncle, Sergeant William Driscoll, but the majority of historical events are based on surviving records relating to the 9th Battalion’s activities between its formation in September 1914 and the attack on Ginchy two years later.

  Over 210,000 Irishmen served in the British armed forces between 1914-18, and although the 49,400 who died are remembered on the Irish National War Memorial in Dublin it is impossible to know how many more never recovered from the mental and physical scars of war. The majority were Irish Catholics, over 27,000 were former members of the pro-Home Rule National Volunteers and the majority saw the 1916 Easter Rising as a ‘stab in the back’. When they returned home they found a country utterly changed; a country that viewed them as an embarrassment to be effectively airbrushed out of Irish history. That is, until the Good Friday Agreement in 1997 made it possible for those in the Irish Republic to remember those who had fought and died in the Great War.

  1 Robert Hale 2012. See brief extract on page 219.

  PROLOGUE

  Sunday 26 July 1914, Bachelor’s Walk, Dublin

  If he lived, Private Tam Lennox of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers knew that today would be etched as firmly in his memory as the boot-print on his face. Blood and gritty fragments of tooth flooded his mouth as he sprawled on the wet cobbles beneath the rich, spleen-filled canopy of Dublin curses. He tried to rise. A boot slammed into his jaw, sending him reeling into darkness.

  ‘Quick! Grab the Jock bastard’s gun!’ someone shouted behind a flail of feet.

  ‘Get back!’ Lennox opened his eyes. A shadowy figure stood over him, rifle ready, bayonet fixed. It was Captain Hugh Cobden, his company commander. Others joined him: khaki-clad Jocks, bayonets glinting in the wet sunlight. ‘Back, I said!’ barked Cobden, cowing the mob momentarily as, sullen-eyed, they edged from the licking blades.

  Despite the adrenalin, Cobden felt tired, bone-weary even, as he eyed his fellow Dubliners circling like hyenas. It was days like this that reminded him why he’d left, why he’d joined a Scottish regiment – to get away from Ireland and its bloody politics! The country was a mess, teetering on the brink of civil war over Home Rule. Going to Howth had been a fool’s errand. If the Home Rulers wanted to land a load of obsolete old rifles to march around with, let them. The police should have turned a blind eye, like they did up in Ulster for the Unionists. Instead, he was stuck in the middle of a riot.

  ‘You all right, Lennox?’ he asked, keeping his eyes on the crowd. Something sailed towards him. He ducked. It brushed his cheek. There was blood.

  ‘Aye, sir, I’ve had worse,’ growled Lennox as Lance Corporal Finney pulled him to his feet. Cobden didn’t doubt it; his Jocks were hard men. The crowd had been dogging them all day, hurling insults and cobbles in equal measure, and Cobden prayed he could get them away before they did.

  ‘The bastards didn’t get my weapon, sir!’ Lennox added, grinning despite a swollen eye. His face was numb. The pain would come later.

  Major Haig, the second in command, had brought reinforcements: the entire understrength battalion crowded onto Bachelor’s Walk – a mere 200 men. They were outnumbered three to one. Lennox hawked up a gobbet of blood. There were people on Ha’Penny Bridge and Liffey Street. They would be cut off soon.

  ‘Tell them in Sparta,’ muttered Cobden, beginning to feel like Leonidas at Thermopylae. He shuddered. Thermopylae hadn’t ended well.

  ‘Will you look at the arrogant English shite,’ hissed Martin Fallon, his desiccated features, cured beneath the harsh Indian sun, egging the mob on from the safety of its depths. Nine years in the British Army had taught him to make the best use of cover. It had also taught him to hate officers. He scowled at Lennox’s swollen face. By rights he shouldn’t have got back up. Next time he wouldn’t. Next time he’d get the Jock git’s rifle too. A .303 would do nicely; better than the German rubbish they’d landed at Howth that morning. He’d be a big man in the Volunteers with a .303. He hurled a cobblestone at Cobden. The captain’s cricketer instincts made him swerve. Fallon cursed. The cobble swept harmlessly by, then it struck Major Haig, sending him staggering. The crowd cheered. It was enough. The storm broke. The crowd surged like a tidal wave. Fallon lunged at Lennox’s rifle. The Scotsman twisted, jabbing hard, his solid fist crashing into the Irishman’s nose. It snapped.

  ‘Shit!’ cursed Fallon, his mouth suddenly coppery. He staggered.

  ‘You all right, Marty?’ asked a friendly voice, helping him to the rear. Fallon nodded, spitting blood. He stepped into a doorway, wiping snot and gore on his sleeve. The rifle would be good, but not worth dying for – he’d leave that to the amateurs, the ones crying out to be martyrs. The mob eased back; jeering, steeling itself for another rush.

  Major Haig summoned Cobden. He was pissed off. His uniform was ruined, stained with God knows what; utterly ruined. This wasn’t the Sunday he’d anticipated. He hated Dublin.

  ‘Hugh,’ Haig said, ‘take twenty men and form two ranks across the street. You’re the rearguard. I’ll stay with you. We’ll hold here until I give the order to fall back on Gilbert’s line.’ Down the street Second Lieutenant Gilbert Hammond was forming a second firing line near Ormond Quay. ‘We’ve got to be quick, Hugh, or we’ll never get out of here.’

  Cobden nodded then barked, ‘Corporal Ludlow. Twenty men. Two ranks. Here. Facing that way.’ Cobden gestured at the angry mob. ‘Quick as you can, please!’ The corporal shoved twenty men across the street in two ragged ranks. Lennox was with them along with his mucker Jimmy Porter. Porter was scared, new to all this, his face pale. He was shaking. Haig stepped out. Porter’s head was swimming. He’d been hit by a rock, blood stinging his eyes. He could see Major Haig waving his sword, shouting.

  ‘If you do not disperse at once I will order my men to open fire.’ Open fire! The words swirled through Porter’s befuddled mind. He raised his rifle. It thundered, kicking like a mule. He palmed the bolt, firing again; his senses flooded with cordite. Others joined in. Rioters fell. ‘Cease firing!’ Haig screamed. ‘For God’s sake, cease firing!’ His cry was taken up by Ludlow, leaving an ominous, ear-ringing silence echoing across the blood-soaked cobbles. Fallon crouched in a shop doorway, dusted with glass. The crowd had scattered. There were bodies everywhere; forty at least. A woman lay face down, a ragge
d, fist-sized hole in the small of her back.

  ‘B-but he said to open fire,’ mumbled Porter, red-eyed with fear and shock.

  ‘Yer murdering Brit bastards!’ someone screamed as the mob re‑formed and Lennox knew that today really would be etched as firmly in his memory as the boot-print was on his face.

  CHAPTER 1

  September 1914, Dublin, Ireland

  Kevin Flynn hated his job. In all his nineteen years he couldn’t remember being so bored, his mind listless behind his intelligent grey eyes. He kept thinking about the Sherlock Holmes story left half-read on his bedside cabinet. It was much more interesting than the papers stacked neatly on his desk. He wasn’t a very good shipping clerk. He could have gone to university – he had the brains, and besides, his parents were good for the fees. Instead he’d wasted his schooldays letting his laziness get the better of his intellect. His father had got him the job. It had prospects, he told him. It was the sort of job he could be proud of. The problem was he hated it. It was dull. Shifting uncomfortably in his chair, he listened to the martial music booming by, rattling the windows to strains of ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘It’s A Long Way To Tipperary’.

  The clerk opposite, Terry Gallagher, looked equally bored. He seemed oddly out of place in the office, thickset like a navvy with dark-brown eyes and a mop of unruly brown hair, barely contained by liberal applications of pomade. He came from Bridgefoot Street, down by the Liffey, and sat awkwardly scratching entries into a weighty ledger. He seemed a simple soul, always playing the fool, but behind the buffoonery lay a quick wit and a dry sense of humour. Flynn liked him. He liked Gallagher’s sister Mary even more! Gallagher put down his pen, glancing at their ageing senior clerk, Mr Byrne, who sat perched behind his desk billowing pipe-smoke like an idling steam engine in a siding. Gallagher rolled his eyes theatrically, cracking a toothy grin in Flynn’s direction.

  ‘Mr Byrne,’ said Gallagher, ‘they say this war’ll be done by Christmas.’

  Byrne harrumphed from behind his smokescreen. ‘Do you not have enough work to be getting on with, Mr Gallagher, to stop you wasting the firm’s time with your gossip?’ he asked, before deigning to peer over the rims of his half-moon glasses. There was still a hint of Kerry in his voice despite twenty or so years living in Dublin.

  ‘That I have, Mr Byrne,’ replied Gallagher, beaming angelically. Byrne eyed him suspiciously, reminding Flynn of a sour old school-ma’am. ‘I’ve a brother in the Irish Guards,’ Gallagher added. ‘He’s in France banjaxing the Hun. He says they’ll all be home soon.’

  ‘Does he now?’ said Byrne from behind his spectacles.

  ‘It’s terrible what the Germans are doing in Belgium, Mr Byrne; says so in the papers. Even Mr Redmond says we must do something. If we don’t it’ll be Ireland next.’ Byrne didn’t look convinced. ‘Will you be joining up, Mr Byrne?’

  Byrne frowned. He was obviously too old for the army. ‘Did he now? Mr Redmond may have got Home Rule through parliament for us but the old fool stopped talking sense the moment he started backing the war. People should know better than to encourage young eejits like you to go running off playing soldiers. Besides, I wouldn’t go believing everything you read in the papers,’ grumbled Byrne sourly.

  ‘But the world is passing us by whilst we pore over manifests and drink tea!’ persisted Gallagher.

  Byrne put down his pen, tugging at his walrus moustache. He sat back, suddenly feeling every minute of his fifty years. He needed a drink but resisted the temptation of the brandy flask in his top drawer. He could almost feel the fiery liquid pooling in his gut. The noise of the band grew louder.

  Gallagher raced to the window as it passed below belting out ‘A Nation Once Again’. ‘That’ll be more lads off over the water whilst we’re stuck here!’ he cried.

  Byrne ignored him, his eyes resting on Flynn. ‘And would the firm be paying you to daydream, Mr Flynn?’ he asked. Flynn blushed. Gallagher grinned. Byrne harrumphed again.

  ‘I was thinking …’ Gallagher said.

  ‘Lord help us!’ snorted Byrne. Gallagher was just about to speak when the door flew open, crashing into the wall, sending papers flying. It was John Riley, their skinny fourteen-year-old office boy.

  ‘In the name of God, Master Riley!’ spluttered Byrne.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Byrne, but will you not be coming to see the band?’ he gabbled, hopping from one foot to the other like a desperate man in a toilet queue. ‘There are soldiers and everything!’

  ‘Ach, isn’t it all brass bands and soldiers these days!’ snapped Byrne. They were looking at him, like puppies. He had little time for soldiers, unlike his brother Martin, but he was long gone, buried beneath South Africa’s red dirt; killed at Colenso. ‘Black Week’ they’d called it. The telegram had come just before Christmas. It had broken his mother’s heart and he hated the army for it. ‘Away with you then if you must,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll be expecting you back by three or I’ll be docking your wages!’ he called after them but they’d already vanished. Byrne reached into his desk for his flask, unscrewing the cap slowly. Outside, the autumn sun shone down on the crowded street packed with enthusiastic well-wishers cheering the soldiers on their way. ‘Eejits,’ he muttered before taking a long pull on the flask’s contents.

  Flynn smoothed his wavy dark hair and cocked his straw boater at what he thought a rakish angle before striding off after Gallagher, who had a fearsome pace for a short fella. Thankfully, his own loping gait closed the gap in a few steps.

  ‘Some of us are thinking of joining up,’ said Gallagher, meaning the members of the Gaelic football team he played in. Flynn didn’t play football – of any sort; he preferred reading. ‘Will you be coming with us?’ The band struck up another chorus of ‘It’s A Long Way To Tipperary’. People sang; girls darted from the pavement to plant kisses on unsuspecting soldiers’ cheeks who swaggered towards the docks. Only months before, rioters had been gunned down by soldiers on the same streets, the country sliding into civil war, yet now everything seemed forgotten, subsumed beneath the carnival façade of bands and billowing bunting. ‘C’mon, Kev, do you want to be the one who misses it?’

  ‘It’s all right for you, Terry, your family’s full of soldiers. My parents gave my cousin enough stick when he joined the Volunteers. God knows what they’d do if they saw me in a red coat!’ replied Flynn, unconvinced.

  ‘Are your folks Fenians then, Kev?’ asked Gallagher.

  ‘It’s not that, it’s just that, well, soldiering isn’t respectable, that’s all,’ said Flynn awkwardly.

  ‘Jaysus, Kev, have you never wanted to shake the world? This is different. It’s not like we’d be regulars like our Mickey or me Uncle John, it’d only be for the duration! Let’s face it, you’re as bored as I am, it’s all over your face. Besides, it’ll be a laugh. Think of it as one of those adventures you keep reading about. Do you really want to end up like Byrne, eh? Done nothing, seen nothing, been nowhere? Christ, it’ll be over by Christmas – if we don’t join up now we’ll miss everything!’

  ‘You’re bloody serious?’ spluttered Flynn.

  ‘Look.’ Gallagher pulled a leaflet from his pocket. ‘It says here that if you join up with your pals the army will keep you together. We’d be together and, besides, the colleens love a fella in uniform! Isn’t that why half them fellas joined the Volunteers in the first place? They won’t get a look-in now. Who knows, even our Mary might give you a kiss too! Everyone knows you’re soft on her.’

  Flynn flushed pink, his ears glowing as the band faded into the distance as they headed over the Liffey into town.

  ‘You’re late!’ snapped Rory Gallagher suddenly from the shade of King William III’s imposing equestrian statue on College Green. Gallagher grunted something as his younger brother fell in beside him. They were like chalk and cheese. Rory was Gallagher’s exact opposite: tall, fair, lanky and thin-faced. ‘Will you be coming with us, Kev?’ asked Rory.

  ‘Terry seems to think so,’ replied
Flynn. In truth, he didn’t know what he would do when they reached the recruiting office.

  ‘I’m up for it!’ squeaked Riley, the young office boy.

  ‘They’ll never take you, you’re a kid!’ said Flynn but Riley puffed up his sallow chest indignantly.

  ‘I’m tall for my age and I’ll tell ’em I’m nineteen, so I will. You’ll back me up, won’t you, fellas?’ Riley implored, looking at Gallagher for support.

  ‘Does the wee fella here not put you to shame, Kev?’ laughed Gallagher.

  ‘My old man’ll kill me if I join up,’ said Flynn.

  ‘Well, you’ll be the only fella left if you don’t cos they was queuing round the block up at City Hall when I left so we best get a spurt on!’ declared Rory, leading the way.

  ‘There’s thousands of the beggars,’ gasped Flynn as they rounded the corner revealing City Hall in all its neoclassical glory. The queue of recruits was massive. It was as if every man in the British Empire’s second city was there: rich and poor. Here and there National Volunteers in green uniforms helped the police marshal the babbling crowd. The city had already raised two battalions for the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Dubs, and now it looked like she would easily raise a few more.

  ‘You, lad, will you answer your king and country’s call?’ barked a nicotine-stained voice with the merest tint of Mayo in it. Flynn could see a white-whiskered Irish Guards sergeant, a recalled reservist, brandishing a cane like a sideshow barker at a group of what looked like Trinity College students. A scarlet sash added a splash of colour to the man’s immaculate khaki uniform. ‘Will you let them Boches get away with attacking poor little Belgium?’

  ‘No!’ chorused hundreds of cheering voices.

  ‘Over there!’ shouted Rory, pointing out a tall man who Flynn recognized as Gallagher’s next-door neighbour, Joe Carolan. He was tall, sparsely built with sensitive green eyes, with a shock of bright red hair that contrasted starkly with his pale skin, making him look a bit like a lit match.