Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/132

 at the cost of 1 man killed, 1 officer, Lieutenant the Hon. H. A. V. Harmsworth, slightly wounded, and 7 men wounded.

On the 3rd August Lieutenant H. F. Law was sent out with a patrol to examine yet another mine-crater close to the two which the Battalion had occupied on its first night. He threw bombs into it, found it empty, and the companies began at once to dig up to it from two points and make it all their own. The enemy "interfered" with the working-parties for a while but was bombed off. At daybreak he retaliated with a methodical bombardment along the line of seven-inch minenwerfers—one every three minutes—for an hour and a half. These could be seen dropping perpendicularly ere they exploded but they did no great damage, and the rest of the day was peaceful till a sudden thunderstorm made everything and everybody abominably dirty. (Additional fatigues are always more resented than any additional risks of death.)

When they came up again on the 6th August they found that an enemy mine in the orchard had exploded, wounding several of the Grenadiers whom they were relieving, and done damage to some of our own work. While they were making good, the Mining Company overheard Germans at work in a gallery a few feet from one of ours. The men were withdrawn at once from the forward line till dawn, when our mine was sprung "to anticipate enemy action." It might have injured some of the enemy's work, but it certainly disorganized several of our own sap-heads which had to be re-dug.

Into the variegated activities of that morning dropped a staff officer of the First Army Corps anxious to get the C.O.'s notes and instructions on mining for new troops who might later have to hold that line "in accordance with the manner taught by experience." Captain J. H. T. Priestman of the Lincolnshires, a Sandhurst instructor, arrived with him and was attached to the sector for a few days "to see how things were carried on." As he was being taken round the trenches by the C.O. and the Adjutant, next morning, a private,