Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/253

 Château, in the rear of which the aid-post and headquarters of No. 1 Company lay. Battalion Headquarters were shelled for half an hour separately. No. 3 Company's Headquarters in the support-line were wrecked by direct hits, and the entire company shelled out, while the whole of the back lines were worked over, up and down. All repairs had to be built up with sand-bags, for the ground was too marshy to give useful dirt, and the labour was unending.

On the 12th July they were shelled more heavily than the previous two days on exactly the same places, and their transport, which till now had had reasonable luck, was caught fetching up water and rations. The four company quartermaster-sergeants and the mess-sergeant were wounded, a horse and groom killed, and, later on, the transport officer was slightly gassed. ("'Tis the Transport, ye'll understand, that has to take all Jerry's back-chat after dhark, an' no chance of replyin'.") By night they found carrying-parties to fill dumps—five of them—each dump seeming to those serving it more exposed and undesirable than the other four put together.

On the 14th of July there was a German raid, preceded by an hour's "box" barrage of trench mortars, .77's, and machine-guns, on two platoons of No. 4 Company then in the front line behind the canal. A shrapnel-barrage fell also on the supports. A "box" barrage is a square horror of descending fire cutting off all help, and ranks high among demoralising experiences. Luckily, the line was lightly held, and the men had more or less of cover in dug-outs and tunnels in the canal bank. A Lewis-gun post in a covered emplacement, almost on the bed of the canal itself, was first aware, through the infernal racket, of Germans crossing the canal, and fired at them straight down the line of its bed. They broke and disappeared in the rank weed-growth, but there was another rush over the parapet of the line between two sentry groups in the firing-bays. The trenches were alive by then with scattered parties stumbling through the black dark, and mistak