Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/138

 among the craters and the tunnels of the past weeks came in the Commander-in-Chief's announcement:

,

The Commander-in-Chief has intimated that he has read with great interest and satisfaction the reports of the mining operations and crater fighting which have taken place in the Second Division Area during the last two months.

He desires that his high appreciation of the good work performed be conveyed to the troops, especially to the 170th and 176th Tunnelling Cos. R.E., the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards, the 1st Battalion K.R.R.C., and the 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment.

The G.O.C. Second Division has great pleasure in forwarding this announcement.

(Sd.) , Major-General, Commanding Second Division.

Second Division, 21.8.15.

They lay at Eperlecques for a day or two on their way to Thiembronne, a hot nineteen-mile march during which only five men fell out. It was at St. Pierre between Thiembronne and Acquin that they met and dined with the 2nd Battalion of the Regiment which had landed in France on the 18th August. There are few records of this historic meeting; for the youth and the strength that gathered by the cookers in that open sunlit field by St. Pierre has been several times wiped out and replaced. The two battalions conferred together, by rank and by age, on the methods and devices of the enemy; the veterans of the First enlightening the new hands of the Second with tales that could lose nothing in the telling, mixed with practical advice of the most grim. The First promptly christened the Second "The Irish Landsturm," and a young officer, who later rose to eminent heights and command of the 2nd Battalion sat upon a table under some trees, and delighted the world with joyous songs upon a concertina and a mouth-organ. Then they parted.