Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/190

 Sommeward rose and stretched unbroken along the Doullens-Albert pavé. Here the very tree-boles, before they began to be stripped and splintered by shell-*fire, were worn and rubbed beneath the touch of men's shoulders and gnawed by the halted horses.

The King came on the 9th August to visit the Division. Special arrangements were impossible, so bombing-assault practice went on, while the officers of the Battalion were presented to him "in the orchard where the messes were pitched." He made no orations, uttered no threats against his enemies, nor guaranteed the personal assistance of any tribal God. His regiments merely turned out and cheered the inconspicuous car as long as they could see it. But there is a story that a Frenchman, an old Royalist, in whose wood some officers had rigged a temporary hut of which he highly disapproved, withdrew every claim and complaint on the promise that the chair in which the King of England had sat should be handed over to him, duly certificated. Which was done.

On the 11th the Brigade moved over the open country via Louvencourt and Bertrancourt to the woods south of Mailly-Maillet, a six-mile march in hot and dusty weather, and the Brigade (2nd Grenadiers, 3rd Coldstream, 2nd Coldstream in reserve and 1st Irish Guards in support) took over trenches east of Englebelmer and "well within the shell area." Thiepval and the Schwaben redoubt across the Ancre were only a thousand yards away and unsubdued; and, for a while, it looked as though that weary corner of death was to be the Guards' objective. But, next day, orders came to move out of the line again, back to high and breezy Louvencourt in warm rain, taking over billets from the 2nd Sherwood Foresters and, by immense good luck, coming across a heaven-sent Expeditionary Force Canteen, a thing not often found in front-line billets. Upon this, pay was at once arranged for, and every one shopped at large. The incident stayed in their minds long after the details of mere battles were forgotten,