Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves — Read

IN the middle of December the cadet battalions were wound up, and the officers, after a few days' leave, sent back to their units. I had orders to rejoin the Royal Welch Third Battalion, now at the Castle Barracks, Limerick, but decided to overstay my leave until the baby was born. Nancy expected it early in January 1919, and her father took a house at Hove for the occasion. Jenny, born on Twelfth Night, was neither coal-black nor affected by the shocks of the previous months. Nancy had no foreknowledge of the experience - I assumed that she must have been given some sort of warning - and it took her years to recover from it I went over to Limerick, and there lied my way out of the overstaying of leave.

Limerick being a Sinn Fein stronghold, constant clashes occurred between the troops and the young men of the town, yet little ill-feeling; Welsh and Irish always got on well together, just as Welsh and Scottish were sure to disagree. The Royal Welch had the situation comfortably in hand; they made a joke of politics and turned their entrenching-tool handles into shillelaghs. Limerick looked like a war-ravaged town. The main streets were pitted with holes like shell-craters and many of the bigger houses seemed on the point of collapse. Old Reilly at the antique shop, who remembered my grandfather well, told me nobody built new houses at Limerick now; the birth-rate was declining and when one fell down the survivors moved into another. He also said that everyone thed of drink in Limerick except the Plymouth Brethren, who died of religious melancholia.