Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/210

 *emy artillery began to scourge them. But some of our batteries had moved up in the night, and one little field-battery that the Irish thought very kindly of all that day, distracted their tormentors, so that, though they were shelled with H.E. and shrapnel as a matter of principle from dawn to dark, they could still make shift to hang on. The only orders they received from the Brigade that day were to maintain their positions and stand by to support an attack by the 3rd Brigade. That attack, however, never was launched. They lay still and watched, between bursts of shelling, a battalion on their left attacking some German trenches south of Gueudecourt. This happened once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Small stooping or crawling figures crept out for a while over the face of the landscape, drew the German guns, including those that were shelling the Irish trench, upon their advance, wavered forward into the smoke of it, spread out and disappeared—precisely as the watching Guards themselves had done the day before. The impression of unreality was as strong as in a cinema-show. Nothing seemed to happen that made any difference. Small shapes gesticulated a little, lay down and got up again, or having lain down, rose no more. Then the German guns returned to bombarding the brown-line trench, and the men lying closer realised that the lime-light of the show had shifted and was turned mercilessly upon themselves again. All they wanted was relief—relief from the noises and the stenches of the high explosives, the clinging horror of the sights nearest them and from the tension that lay at the back of the minds of the most unimaginative. The men were dumb—tired with mere work and suffering; the few officers doubly tired out by that and the responsibility of keeping awake and thinking consecutively, even when their words of command clotted on their tongues through shear weariness. The odds were heavily in favour of a German attack after dark; and a written warning from the rear said it would certainly come in the course of the night. A party of explorers sent to look for defences, found