Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/294

 spared. ("Every one is looking like the worst form of tramp—standing, walking, sleeping and eating mud.")

On the 19th they got it worse, and when No. 1 Company paraded in the dawn dark (they were in dug-outs below the rail embankment) to go to work, a shell which dropped at the entrance killed one (but he was the cook), wounded two of their number, and destroyed the whole cooking-outfit. Captain A. F. L. Gordon, M.C., was also slightly wounded on that date, but not enough to send him to hospital. He was riding into Arras with Captain Woodhouse, the M.O.—also a man of charmed lives—and just behind the railway embankment came in for a complete barrage of heavy stuff, intended for Battalion Headquarters. Neither he, nor any one else, ever understood why they were not blown to pieces. The doctor's horse wounded was the only other casualty.

On the 22nd January the relieved 2nd Grenadiers, having handed over news of the discovery of a German listening-post which seemed to be used only by night, a scheme was arranged to occupy it while it was empty, and astonish the enemy on their return. But the enemy never came, though 2nd Lieutenant Stacpoole and a party of seven, with blackened faces and smoked bayonets, lay out for them all night. It was the same with a German working-party, fifty strong, located by our patrols on the 22nd, sought on the 23rd, and found missing. The enemy were anxious not to give any chances just then, for identifications; and, though they raided generously in other directions, left the Guards' sector by the Scarpe unvisited. They delivered mortar bombardments when reliefs were due, and were attended to by our artillery at dusk with a desultory but at the same time steady shelling, just enough to keep the five principal offenders' crews in their dug-outs. It worked admirably, and the enemy mortars, as registered on the maps, were quiet for a whole evening. After one such treatment (the night of the 25th January) they drenched the Decauville