Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/182

 and due north of Ypres, covering the Ypres-Pilckem road, with supports at Lancashire farm, and the Battalion Headquarters amid loose bricks and mud on the Canal bank. The trenches were bad; only one communication-trench (Skipton Road) was moderately dry, and the parapets were thin, low and badly gapped, which gave enemy snipers their chance. Two men were killed outright the first day; one died of wounds and four were wounded.

No Man's Land at this point was several hundred yards deep, and covered with long grass and weeds. The periscopes soon learned to know that poppies and thistles grew brightest and tallest round the edges of shell-holes, and since shell-holes meant cover, all patrols directed their belly-flat course to them.

On the 18th June officer patrols went out to look at the enemy's wire. Second Lieutenant F. H. N. Lee was wounded in the leg while close to it, and was carried back by No. 3836 Corporal Redmond; dying later of gangrene. Another officer, Lieutenant Hon. P. Ogilvy, ran by mistake into wire on his return journey, and had to fight his way back with his orderly. One man was killed and one wounded, besides the wounded officer.

On the 19th Lieutenant J. N. Marshall, while out with a working-party, was sniped in the arm, but finished his work before reporting it. A man was killed and two were wounded. "The day was normal—probably the quietest of the tour," says the Diary, but one may be certain that certain inconspicuous German snipers were congratulating themselves on their bag. The bulk of the trouble came from five old dug-outs known as the "Canadian dug-outs," some two or three hundred yards away, which had once been in our hands. These had been wired round collectively and individually, and their grass-grown irregular moundage made perfect snipers' nests.

The Battalion lay, from the 21st to the 23rd June, in shelters round and cellars beneath Elverdinghe Château, the trees of which were still standing, so that it was