Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/119

 *holes, beaten down, as the other battalions had been before them, round the piled wreckage of Cour l'Avoine farm. In one trench, abandoned by the enemy, they fell into a neat German trap. Its parapet facing towards the British was bullet-proof enough, but the parados, though proof against the casual splinters of our shrapnel, which had no back-blast, had been pared thin enough to pass all bullets. Consequently, when the trench was occupied, accurately ranged machine-guns opened on the parados, and riddled the men to such an extent that one company had to get out and take refuge behind what had been the parapet. The greatest distance gained in all was about three hundred yards, and this with their left flank still in the air and protected by the one machine-gun which Lieutenant Straker, the unflinching enthusiast of the weapon, had brought into a communication-trench. At last they dug in where they were; the next brigade on the left linked up to the one machine-gun communication-trench, and with their old friends the Herts Battalion and the East Anglian Field Company, with whom they had tested mines together, they began to consolidate. The C.O. writes: "I tried to find out what officers I had left. Out of twenty-eight there were twelve, but four of these had been left behind with the transport a day or two before." Of the eight who had come through the affair on their feet, only two were absolutely untouched. Here is the list: Captain J. N. Guthrie and 2nd Lieutenant V. W. D. Fox, killed by shell-fire, while leading their company—No. 1—to reinforce the line; 11 officers were wounded, Major the Earl of Rosse very severely in the head by a piece of shell; Major Reid, concussion from the explosion of a shell; Captain G. E. S. Young, hand; Lieutenant H. T. A. H. Boyse, head; 2nd Lieutenant S. G. Tallents, thigh; 2nd Lieutenant J. R. Ralli, stomach; 2nd Lieutenant E. W. Campbell, head; 2nd Lieutenant Hon. W. S. P. Alexander, neck; 2nd Lieutenant R. S. G. Paget, arm; 2nd Lieutenant J. K. Greer, leg and hand; 2nd Lieutenant C. de Persse, head.