Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/141

 Their work, as laid down, was to storm Auchy-La Bassée, Haisnes, capture the Hohenzollern redoubt to the south-west of it and the immensely fortified Mine-*head Pit 8 (with which it was connected), the Hulluch quarries, equally fortified, and the long strip of wood beside them, and the village of Cité St. Elie between Hulluch and Haisnes. South of the Vermelles-Hulluch road, the Fourth Army Corps was to occupy the high ground between Loos and Lens, including the redoubt on Hill 69; all the town of Loos, which was a museum of veiled deaths, the Double Crassier, the Chalk-Pit, the redoubt on Hill 70 on the Loos-Haisnes road, and the village of Cité St. Auguste. After which, doubtless, the way would be open to victory. The Eleventh Army Corps formed the main infantry reserve and included the newly formed Guards Division, the Twenty-first and Twenty-fourth Divisions of the New Army and the Twenty-eighth. The Twenty-first and Twenty-fourth were brought up between Beuvry and Nœux-les-Mines; the Twenty-eighth to Bailleul, while the Guards Division lay in reserve near Lillers, ten miles north-west or so from Souchez; the Third Cavalry Division near Sains-en-Gohelle, and the British Cavalry Corps at Bailleul-les-Pernes ten miles west of Nœux-les-Mines, in attendance on the expected break-through.

On the 21st September the Battalion was inspected by Lord Kitchener at Avroult, on the St. Omer road—the first time it was ever paraded before its Colonel-in-chief—who in a few brief words recalled what it had already done in the war and hinted at what lay before it. Lord Cavan commanding the Guards Division, in wishing the men God-speed on the eve of "the greatest battle in the world's history," reminded them that the fate of future generations hung on the issue and that great things were expected of the Guards Division. They knew it well enough.

By a piece of ill-luck, that might have been taken as an omen, the day before they moved from Thiembronne to the front, a bombing accident at practice