County Louth Archaeological and History Society

Powder and Ball Platoon: Memories of Service with the LDF in County Louth during theEmergencyAuthor(s): Frank MatthewsSource: Journal of the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, Vol. 23, No. 3(1995), pp. 336-339Published by: County Louth Archaeological and History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27729778 .

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Powder and Ball Platoon:

Memories of service with the LDF

in County Louth during the

Emergency By Frank Matthews

In the early nineteen-forties I was a very young LDF (Local Defence Force) volunteer with

Reaghstown Platoon, Ardee Company, Oriel Battalion of the Eastern Command. In fact when I was

formally enlisted, I was fifteen years old. The Ardee Company was formed in June 1940 and

disbanded in March 1946.

Louth being a border county, we were acutely aware of our unique position whenever Mr

Churchill thundered about the ports, and we knew only too well that in the event of an invasion from

Northern Ireland we would be the first to know. Bridges and the railway lines were mined, road

blocks were in position, but nobody was seriously suggesting that we could stop an attack, especially one backed up by armour and aircraft. At best we might slow it down a little. Our real value would

emerge after such an attack had moved south to Dublin, when our role would certainly become that of

guerillas, harassing enemy supply lines.

In the early days, while we waited for arms, we had to perform arms drill with wooden rifles,

made by Volunteer Jack Hoey, who was a sawmiller by trade. But early in 1941 one of our platoon leaders ? William Filgate, of Lisrenny

? made a gift to my platoon of sixty Brown Bess flintlock

muskets, two brass flintlock blunderbusses, and one nine-foot long naval blunderbuss. These were the

guns of the Louth Militia and were originally issued to the militia about 1798. After the militia were

disbanded, the guns were stored in Lisrenny.

Platoon leader Michael Matthews and Vol. Paddy Clarke recall the day on which the guns were

handed over to the Reaghstown Platoon:

The guns were brought from Lisrenny to Reaghstown in a horse-box. There were thirty-six

long-barrelled muskets with iron ramrods, twenty-four short carbine type, and the three

blunderbusses. A supply of black powder and ball was also delivered, in the form of brown

paper cartridges with tied-in lead ball. Each musket had a paper tag glued to its butt,

recording the name of the Louth Militiaman to whom it had been issued, and the date on

which he had handed it back. It appears that the militia were not happy with the browned

barrels of their muskets. The browning had been polished off, probably to create a more

glittering impression.

Fig. 1. Military flintlock musket, Model 1794, Great Britain. Overall length 1,397 mm (55 in.), barrel length 990 mm (39 in.), calibre 19 mm (.748 in. =

11-bore), weight 4,848 g (10 lb. 10 oz.).

336

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Powder and Ball Platoon 337

The Brown Bess musket first came into service with the British army about 1720. It was

officially described as the Long Land musket, had a barrel of 46 inches, of 11-bore or .75 inch calibre.

The thirty-six long muskets we got were almost certainly of this type. In 1768 the British army

adopted the Short Land musket with a 42-inch barrel, at first for marines and dragoons, but later for all

services. Our twenty-four muskets were of this pattern.

Arms drill and even target practice was now conducted using these muskets, and the local wags

immediately nicknamed us 'the Powder and Ball Platoon'. Firing the Brown Bess was very exciting,

especially for a teenage soldier such as myself. There was no rear sight on the musket, just a crude

square foresight, so to hit a man-sized target in a vital area at sixty yards was reasonably good

shooting. After the loading procedure of tearing the brown paper cartridge, pouring the black powder

A

Fig. 2. Paper cartridge with ball tied in, 17th/18th century.

down the barrel, and putting some on the pan, then ramming the ball and brown paper down the

barrel, the musket was ready to fire. On squeezing the trigger, the shooter would hear a loud click as

the flint-loaded hammer hit the pan cover, then the powder in the pan would flash, followed by the

detonation of the main charge in the barrel, and the ball and a dense cloud of smoke would emanate

from the muzzle. There was also a memorable kick, or recoil. The havoc created by the ball, however,

was really wondrous to behold. Weighing nearly an ounce and a half, these heavy balls made up in

weight for what they lacked in speed. Their sheer size and weight must have created massive wounds

in enemy ranks in the many wars in which they were used.

I have often wondered what the then chief of staff, or Coy. Sergeant McCaul, who was our

regular army mentor, might have thought of some of our training procedures.

As time went on, we were able to do more research on the Brown Bess musket, and we

developed a great affection and respect for it. Old and obsolescent it might be, but this was the gun which dominated the battlefields of Europe, America and India. The flintlock had revolutionised

Fig. 3. Stages in the working of a flintlock: 1. Cock in half-cock position, steel and pan-cover open,

priming-powder is dispensed into the pan. 2. Cock in full-cock position, steel and pan-cover down. 3. Upon

pressing the trigger, the cock strikes the steel and generates sparks, the combined pan-cover and steel are

simultaneously thrown back.

warfare by getting rid of the matchlock, with its paraphernalia of tripod and glowing match, and

providing instead a reliable ignitior system. All that was required was to keep the flint renewed, and

keep the barrel, pan, and touch-hole cleaned. It was used at Waterloo, and in the Crimean Wars.

At some point in 1942, William Filgate presented us with some of the socket bayonets for the Brown Bess. These were seventeen-inches long, and when fitted to the Long Land model gave us

effectively a seventy-six inch pike! In the event of hand-to-hand, or fighting with the bayonet, we

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338 County Louth Archaeological and Historical Journal

n>

Fig. 4. Socket bayonet, beginning of 18th century.

would have a clear advantage over an enemy using a short modern rifle and bayonet. It was the

combination of Long Land musket and the seventeen-inch bayonet which ended pikemen in the

eighteenth-century British army, as an infantryman could now be both a pikeman and a musketeer.

Naturally, we experimented. We reasoned that buckshot would be more effective than ball,

especially in a night fight. So we melted some lead, and made something approximating to buckshot, which was very effective.

In practice, the British army used the Brown Bess for volley firing, at close range, usually about

sixty yards, and then relying on their bayonets if their initial volley failed to stop the charge. In this

connection, I have often wondered if that old Errol Flynn clich?, 'Don't shoot until you see the whites

of their eyes', was, in fact, a standard fire order, since the white parts in the human eye become

visible at about that range. In later times, the British developed the famous British square, where three

ranks were involved in firing, reloading, and moving forward to fire again, thus pouring continuous

fire into the enemy ranks.

But in Louth we had to look at a different scenario. Our muskets would give us a chance of

shooting an enemy soldier and getting his modern rifle. But there were lots of 12-bore shotguns

available, with alas! no cartridges. Vol. Paddy Murphy, who had served in the Volunteer Army in the

thirties, had a remarkable ballistic knowledge. He loaded 12-gauge cartridges with our black powder and DIY primers. Empty brass cartridge cases from Lisrenny were used, again courtesy of William

Filgate, who also loaned the handloading equipment to Paddy Murphy. The shotguns were more grist to our mill.

Our modern rifles were still in the pipeline somewhere, but we were now introduced to the

Molotov Cocktail, a very potent incendiary device which was invented by the Finns and designed for use against tanks and armoured cars, or anything that could be destroyed by fire. We filled large

whiskey bottles with petrol, creosote, and naptha, and tied a petrol-soaked cotton wool wick to the

bottle neck, which was securely corked. We practised throwing these incendiaries at old walls on the

range. The wick had to be ignited before throwing, and when the bottle broke on impact the contents

burst into flames, and would burn fiercely for perhaps fifteen minutes, generating enough heat to roast

any tank and its crew.

Frank Sullivan and Eddie Cox were our instructors with the Molotov Cocktails. In the

Finnish-Russian war of the late thirties, the Finns had discovered that tank machine-gun barrels could

not be depressed sufficiently to hit targets inside a forty-foot radius from the tank, so our procedure

would be to wait in slit trenches along roads until a tank came within forty feet of our position, hurl our Molotov Cocktails, and incinerate the tank and its crew.

Although we made and threw many Molotov Cocktails and had a high respect for their

destructive potential, we never practised digging slit trenches. Too easy, we thought. In retrospect this

may have been a mistake. But all of us felt that the Molotov Cocktail would be one of our best

weapons in the event of an invasion. Our biggest problem might be in getting the materials to make

them!

Finally, our long-awaited Springfield .300 rifles arrived, and were issued to us, with a niggardly

forty rounds of ammunition each. Somebody felt it would be a short war! I personally hated the

Springfield, with its aperture rear sight, and thought it a heavy and cumbersome weapon. These

feelings were modified when our platoon scored very well with it in target practice.

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Powder and Ball Platoon 339

Being equipped with modern rifles gave us a new status, and we could now take part in exercises

with the Regular Army, and guard strategic road junctions and buildings. About this time, we were

shown how to block roads by felling trees, using dynamite. William (Billy) Filgate, of Lisrenny, who had given us the Brown Bess muskets, was a noted

horseman, shotgunner, and rifle shot. He came to our weekly drill sessions on horseback.

The sight of his horse ? a fine chestnut hunter ? tied up outside the old house which we used as

a drill hall raised the tone of the place, and of our unit as well. He was a man of great personal courage, and a crack shot. I have seen him shoot rabbits with a heavy .22 Mauser rifle at ranges in

excess of 200 yards. The rabbits were always shot through the head. He fired from the reclining

position so popular at Bisley, where he was a competitor in pre-war days. Our platoon had at least one

formidable sniper.

And so the World War II years (our Emergency) passed, and we managed to survive, despite demands for the ports, sabre-rattling, and the famous American note. I often think of how fortunate

we were.

My comrades and I in the (nicknamed) Powder and Ball Platoon frequently speculated about

enemy reaction to our antique guns, especially if the invaders were Germans. We visualised them as

falling about, laughing hysterically, and resolved in that event to grab their Mausers and machine

pistols during those few seconds. We were, we felt, the most badly-armed group in Europe. Imagine my surprise, then, to read in the Spectator of 8 April 1995 that our counterpart in the UK ? the Home

Guard ? possessed a total of only 70,000 rifles in 1940 (only later did more arrive from America).

The Home Guard totalled a couple of million men. Those without rifles were equipped with pikes. You read that word correctly. Pikes.

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