Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/303

 Ayette and Boisleux-St. Marc, the Brigade answered with unbroken musketry and Lewis-guns. It was an almost satisfactory slaughter, dealt out by tired, but resolute, men with their backs to the wall. Except for occasional rushes of the enemy, cut down ere they reached the wire, there was nothing spectacular in that day's work. The Battalion shot and kept on shooting as it had been trained to do in the instruction-camps and on the comfortable ranges that seemed now so inconceivably far away. The enemy, having direct observation over the whole of our line, shot well and close. We suffered, but they suffered more. They ranged along the front from north to south as waves range down the face of a breakwater, but found nothing to carry away or even dislodge. Night closed in with a last rush at the wire on the Battalion's front that left a wreckage of German dead and wounded, and two machine-guns horribly hung up in the strands. Our losses in officers were 2nd Lieutenant Stokes severely wounded in the morning, and in the afternoon, Lieutenant Nash killed, and Captain Derek FitzGerald wounded and sent down. Lieut.-Colonel R. V. Pollok and Lieutenants Bence-Jones and Bagenal were also slightly wounded but remained at duty. When an officer dropped and could not get up again without help he was assumed to be unfit for work—but not before.

("Ye'll understand, 'twas no question, those days, what ye could or could not do. Ye did it.")

And so ended the 27th of March with the German front from Lens to Albert held up, and destined, though men then scarce dared believe, not to advance to another effective surge. The French and British armies were perilously near forced asunder now and, the needs of the case compelling what might have been done long ago, General Foch in the little city of Doullens was, on the 26th March, given supreme command of all the hard-pressed hosts. The news went out at once into the front line where men received it as part