19 Nov. 1915 With the Tyrone battalion Commendation of the Regulars
In a letter to a friend in Omagh, an officer of the (Service) Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (County Tyrone Volunteers) says - The boys of the 9th were glad of the opportunity of getting into the firing line, and when there they behaved in such a way as to win the commendation of the "line” men who had been out from the beginning of the war. The men have got on splendidly with all the troops they have been quartered with, whether English, Irish, or Scotch. They have, moreover, earned a reputation for themselves from the highest military commanders on their conduct in the trenches. They are already noted as cool, willing workers, ready without a murmur to do their spell of sentry duty, or fatigues in keeping the trenches in order. We were never better fed in our lives. We lived in the mud and seemed to thrive on it. Bombardments had no terrors for us. If the enemy had snipers on the look-out, we tried to pot them, and we gave far more than we got. You begin to take it as matter of course to have bullets whizzing round you and you watch the shells burst with no little interest. It does not take a quiver out of you once you have experienced a bit of it, and can still hold your trench. Of course, we cannot expect to give and not get, and we were sorry to lose poor Sam DONNELL, of No. 2 Company, who was one of the first to come up and joined at Omagh, although he belonged to Derry. He was never afraid of danger. Perhaps he showed too little fear. At any rate, out at the soldiers’ cemetery at __ (left blank) there now stands a little cross bearing the name and number - 10842 Private S. DONNELL 9th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers - and the grave will be carefully tended. The brigade chaplains have already seen to that. At any time the grave can identified, as it has been registered by a society which tends to all soldiers’ graves. transcribed by Teena from the Belfast Newsletter -- www.cotyrone.com http://lists.cotyrone.com/mailman/listinfo/ulsterancestry https://www.facebook.com/groups/CoTyroneIrelandGenealogy/ _______________________________________________ [email protected] UlsterAncestry Mailing List Searchable Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ http://lists.cotyrone.com/mailman/listinfo/ulsterancestry Website: https://cotyrone.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CoTyroneIrelandGenealogy/
