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.