Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/206

 or in fantastic attitudes, silent, with set absorbed faces, busily engaged in trying to tie up, staunch, or plug their own wounds—to save their own single lives with their own hands. When orders came to these they would shake their heads impatiently and go on with their urgent, horrible business. Others, beyond hope, but not consciousness, lamented themselves into death. The Diary covers these experiences of the three hours between 8 and 11  with the words: "In the meantime, despite rather heavy shelling, a certain amount of consolidation was done on the trench while the work of reorganization was continued." In the meantime, also, some of the Coldstream battalions, mixed with a few men of the Irish Guards, the latter commanded by Lieutenant W. Mumford, had rushed on into the wilderness beyond the trench towards the brown line, or what was supposed to be the brown line, three hundred yards or so ahead, and for the moment had been lost. About half-past eleven the Commanding Officer, the Adjutant, and 2nd Lieutenant G. V. Williams and Lieutenant L. C. Whitefoord of the 1st Guards Brigade Machine-gun Company, who represented all that was left of the officers, went forward with all that was left of the Irish Guards and all available, not too badly wounded Coldstreamers, towards the next objective. Every one was glad to step out from the sickening trench into the wire-trapped, shell-ploughed open whence the worst of the German barrage had lifted, though enemy machine-guns were cropping it irregularly. Their road lay uphill through a field of rank, unweeded stuff, and, when they had topped a little rise, they saw what seemed, by comparison, untouched country where houses had some roofs on them and trees some branches, all laid out ahead, in the hot sunshine between Flers and Lesbœufs. There were figures in the landscape too—Germans on the move with batteries and transport—an enemy in sight at last and, by the look of them, moving away. Then a German field-battery, also in the open, pulled up and methodically shelled them. They came upon a shallow