Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/153

 *ceded by bombardments that in some cases cut wire and in some did not, accompanied by gas and smoke, which affected both sides equally; it was carried through by men in smoke-helmets, half-blinding them among blinding accompaniments of fumes and flying earth, through trenches to which there was no clue, over the wrecks of streets of miners' cottages, cellars and underground machine-gun nests, and round the concreted flanks of unsuspected artillery emplacements. Among these obstacles, too, it died out with the dead battalions of Regulars and Territorials caught, as the chances of war smote them, either in bulk across open ground or in detail among bombs and machine-gun posts.

There was here, as many times before, and very many times after, heroism beyond belief, and every form of bravery that the spirit of man can make good. The net result of all, between the 27th of September and the 15th of October, when the last groundswell of the long fight smoothed itself out over the unburied dead, was a loss to us of 50,000 men and 2000 officers, and a gain of a salient seven thousand yards long and three thousand two hundred yards deep. For practical purposes, a good deal of this depth ranked as "No Man's Land" from that date till the final breakup of the German hosts in 1918. The public were informed that the valour of the new Territorial Divisions had justified their training, which seemed expensive; and that our armies, whatever else they lacked at that time—and it was not a little—had gained in confidence: which seemed superfluous.

But the Battalion lay at Verquin, cleaning up after its ten days' filth, and there was Mass on the morning of the 14th, when Father S. Knapp came over from the 2nd Battalion and "spoke to the men on the subject of Father Gwynne's death," for now that the two battalions were next-door neighbours, Father Knapp served both. No written record remains of the priest's