The end of the six months' training at Woolwich being completed, I was appointed to a Garrison company, with its headquarters at Limerick--good old Limerick--which was then known as the paradise of hard-up subalterns. Limerick is a quaint town. There is Old Limerick and Modern Limerick. The old town is situated round the castle, which is on the banks of the Shannon, and where--across the river--stands the old Treaty Stone. It is difficult to describe Old Limerick. One must really see it and live in it to appreciate its dirty houses, poor tenements, its smells and other unhealthy attributes. Yet it is a characteristic little piece of old Ireland. This part of the old town reached down to the cathedral, past which the main street--George Street--runs through the modern town, practically parallel with the River Shannon. With the exception of the old castle, Limerick does not possess any buildings of very particular interest. The best residential part was across the river, Circular Row. Limerick itself has nothing to recommend it as regards picturesqueness, but there is much beauty in the country surrounding it. From just below the castle the River Shannon has some beautiful reaches, right away up to Castle Connell; while Tervoe on the river, Adare Abbey, and many other places are well known.
When I reported myself to my commanding officer at the castle I found that our company, which then consisted of about eighty all told, was doing duty from the very North to the South of Ireland. There was a detachment of some twenty-five men at a place called Green Castle, which was an old fort at the entrance of Lough Swilly, not far off the Giant's Causeway. Another detachment of some thirty-five men was on duty at Carlisle Fort, one of the forts guarding the entrance into Cork Harbour at Queenstown. This left us about twenty men at our headquarters at Limerick Castle. Our captain was not with the company. He was A.D.C. to a Colonial Governor, and, of course, was seconded. The two senior subalterns were in command of the detachments at Green Castle and Carlisle Fort, so that the commanding officer, our good major and myself, were left at our headquarters with the twenty men. By the time that we found the guard for the day, the major's two orderlies, my own orderly, the cook and cook's mate, the district gunner (who was busy keeping our three very old guns, mounted in the tower, polished up), the office clerk and the barrack sweeper, the morning parade consisted usually of the sergeant-major.