Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/259

 *termittently all day, with a few casualties, and Captain F. S. Law was slightly wounded. The evening, as pessimists prophesied, closed in heavy rain, and the ground began to go. They stayed where they were till the afternoon of the 1st August, when word came to take over the line held by the 3rd Grenadiers and the 1st Coldstream on the first, second, and third objectives.

They moved out in rain into the usual wilderness of shell-holes filling with water, but for the moment were not shelled. No. 4 Company went by daylight to its positions on the first objective—Cariboo Wood and some half-wiped-out German trench-systems in a partly destroyed wood. The other companies waited till dusk before distributing themselves on the Green line—the third objective—which was about a thousand yards this side the Steenbeek River. While the move was in progress, a brigade of the Thirty-eighth Division reported that they had been shelled out of their advanced positions on the river and were falling back, which, as far as could be seen, would leave the right flank of the Guards Division in the air. If this were so, and the dusk and the rain made it difficult to judge, it was imperative to put everything else aside and form a defensive flank along the railway line that separated the two divisions. The companies were diverted accordingly, hastily re-directed in the dark, and, when all was done, the brigade that had made the trouble went back to its original position on the further objective. There was small choice of sleeping-places that night. Such German blockhouses as came handiest were used for battalion and company headquarters while the companies lay out in the wet and talked about the prospect of hot meals. They were not very severely shelled, but when August 2 broke in heavy rain and the brigade on their right continued to send up SOS's at intervals, thereby obliging them to maintain their flank on the railway line, they felt that "conditions were becoming exceedingly trying," as the Diary says. Then came a relief, which was at least a