Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/160

 Christmas was coming, and, even had the weather allowed it, neither side was looking too earnestly for trouble.

A company of Welsh Fusiliers with their C.O. and Adjutant came up for eight days' instruction, and were distributed through the Battalion. The system in the front line at that moment was one of gangs of three, a digger, an armed man, and a bomber, relieving each other by shifts; and to each of these trios one Welshman was allotted.

The Welsh were small, keen and inquisitive. The large Irish praised their Saints aloud for sending them new boys to talk to through the long watches. It is related of one Welshman that, among a thousand questions, he demanded if his tutor had ever gone over the top. The Irishman admitted that he had. "And how often does one go over?" the Welshman continued. "I'll show you. Come with me," replied the other Celt, and, moving to a gap in the parapet, lifted the Welshman in his arms that he might the better see what remained, hung up in German wire, of a private of some ancient fight—withered wreckage, perhaps, of Neuve Chapelle. "He went over wanst," said the Irishman. The working-party resumed their labours and, men say, that that new boy put no more questions "for the full of the half an hour—an' that's as long as a week to a Welshman."

All four companies were held in the first line except for three posts—Picantin, Dead End, and Hougoumont—a few hundred yards behind that were manned with a platoon apiece, but on the 12th December rumours of a mine made it wise to evacuate a part of the right flank till one of our 9.2's should have searched for the suspected mine-shaft. Its investigations roused the enemy to mild retaliation, which ended next day in one of our men being wounded by our own 9.2, and three by the enemy's shrapnel—the first casualties in four days.

The wet kept the peace along the line, but it did not altogether damp the energies of our patrols. For