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Updated: May 2, 2025
Every once in a while the signalers' sergeant would shout for a man, go across to the line and rouse one of the sleepers; then the awakened man would sit up and blink, rise and listen to his instructions, nod and say, "Yes, Sergeant!
And he must be a man who can keep his head, observe intelligently, and plan for himself and his regiment. Those in charge of the recruiting for the Eaton Battery expressed themselves as well pleased with the type of men secured. Many had seen service before; there were several expert telegraphers, several expert signalers, and one an ex-lieutenant in the British navy.
Then, the matter of maintaining communication with our supports and the headquarters in the rear was of the utmost importance and our signalers waged a continuous fight, against heavy odds, to keep the wires connected up. It would not be fair to others to specify any particular branch as being better. All who serve in the front line at a time like this are equally entitled to credit.
Of course we had a fight on our hands a little later but, by a compromise which let the signalers and scouts come in with us, we were enabled to hang on to the best part of the place.
Now and then, in the course of that eventful trip, Tom looked enviously at the young wireless operators, and more particularly at the marine signalers, who moved their arms with such jerky and mechanical precision and sometimes, perhaps, he thought wistfully of certain fortunate young heroes of fiction who made bounding leaps to the top of the ladder of fame.
In the signalers' room all the fluctuations of the fight were translated from the pulsing fever, the human living tragedies and heroisms, the violent hopes and fears and anxieties of the battle line, to curt cold words, to scribbled letters on a message form. At times these messages were almost meaningless to them, or at least their red tragedy was unheeded.
Outside it had been raining hard for the greater part of the day, and now, getting on towards midnight, the drizzle still held and the trenches and fields about the signalers' quarters were running wet, churned into a mass of gluey chalk-and-clay mud.
My friends and I on more than one occasion narrowly escaped disaster by prying into the affairs of these signalers. I take it that the squads have been operating in the south and were brought together last night by means of the fires. Doubtless they have some big project of their own sort on foot."
The other signalers were shuffling their feet anxiously and looking about them. "Are we going to stick it here?" said one. "Didn't the sergeant say something about 'opping it?" "If he did," said the other, "he hasn't given any orders that I've heard. I suppose he'll come back and do that, and we've just got to carry on till then."
There were despatch riders, signalers, transport men, all in readiness, besides the ordinary infantry volunteers, who were pledged by all means in their power to keep Ireland under the flag of the Union. I was in a little country church one Sunday morning. A roll of a drum and the skirl of a fife came wafting across the valley on the April breeze. The minister paused a moment in his sermon.
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