Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/296

 Carver joined, and 2nd Lieutenant A. W. G. Jamrack rejoined from the Reinforcement Battalion.

On the 1st February orders came that the line was to be held by all three brigades of the Guards Division instead of two; for it must be remembered that each brigade was short one battalion. The rearrangement drew more heavily on the working-parties in the forward area where a new, foul trench—Hyderabad Support—was under way. They supplied from two to four hundred men as need was, and lived in Arras prison in luxury—wire beds, and palliasses for every man!—till the 6th February, when they relieved the 2nd Coldstream in the front line. The support-trenches here were the best they had found, being deep, duck-boarded, well revetted and with plenty of dug-outs and an enviable system of cook-houses delivering hot meals in the actual trenches. They sent working-parties to the insatiable engineers and the brigade at large; for fresh trenches were being sketched out, if not built, against the impending German attack.

The front line from the 10th to the 13th February was remarkably quiet but not easy. Their patrols found no enemy, nor any sign of them in No Man's Land; a little wiring of nights was possible; and there were no casualties. But the trench-strength of the Battalion was weak—16 officers and 398 ranks, and every one had to work double-tides to keep the ways open.

They were relieved on St. Valentine's Day, two days after the 4th Guards Brigade, which took with them the 2nd Irish Guards, had been formed under Lord Ardee, and added to the Thirty-first Division.

Three days in Arras prison saw them back again in support just in time to get the full benefit of another day's thaw. It was a quiet tour. One man was killed by a trench-mortar, one badly wounded by a rifle-grenade, seven by shell-splinters outside a dug-out, and five men gassed. The enemy confined himself to long-range trench-mortars and an "increase in aerial activ