Michael O’leary

When forming one of a storming party which advanced against an
enemy’s barricade, O’Leary rushed to the front and himself killed
five Germans who were holding the first barricade, after which
he attacked the second barricade, about sixty yards further on,
which he captured after killing three of the enemy and making
prisoners of two more.

You may talk of the Rebels of Ulster
And the shindy we had to chuck;
But we don’t give a rap for a family scrap
Whin the Prooshuns is running amuck.

Did you hear how Lance Corporal O’Leary,
Mike O’Leary of the Guards,
Wid his own two mits, tore a forthress to bits
Like a blissed conthraption of cards.

He’d a shmile, had Mike, that ’ud span a dyke,
And a fist that ’ud fell a horse,
And he ripped through the mire of blood and barbed wire,
Like a bull through a bunch of gorse.

Whin he waded in, sure ’twas a sin,
The way that he bashed and bruk ’em;
He dropped on thim Huns like forty tons,
And they niver knew what had struck ’em.

“Poor dears,” says Mike, “I’m thinking belike
All the news they’ve been told is lies,
So it’s up to me, ’ere it’s kilt they be,
To put the poor divils wise.

“Thim Huns, I’m told, while outrageous bold
Is over a trifle dull.
Sure, if that’s a fact, ’tis a friendly act
To hammer it through their skull.

“So here’s for insulting old Erin,
By thinking a thraitor she’d be!
And here’s for your Imperor sneerin’!
‘Contemptible army,’ says he.

“Here’s one for the mothers whose pleadin’
You stopped with a shot and a curse,
And one for the girls dead and bleedin’
And the girls that you spared—for worse.

“For the churches you shelled and the priests you felled
Here’s one! And the women, too,
You held for a shield on the battle field,
And the innocent babes you slew.”

Whin O’Leary had done, there was divil a one
Left to tumble to what he said—
Barrin’ only ten, which I’m wrong again,
For eight av the ten was dead.