Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/306

 ranged over our forward batteries or short of our rear ones, found their camp. When our 15-inch guns retaliated, from a hundred and fifty yards behind them, the blast extinguished all candles. The Diary observes: "The noise and the hostile retaliation made proper rest difficult." That was on the 4th April, when the attack south of the Somme was in full swing.

On the 5th April their huts in Brigade-reserve were shelled for half an hour, with six casualties, and when they went into the line on a new sector, held by scattered posts, nearly every one of their guides lost his miserable way in the dark. Headquarters here were pitched in an old German trench and then—for they were not even rain-proof—shifted to the edge of Boiry-St. Martin village. A cellar had to be dug out and supported, and the rain descended on the mud-pie that it was, and when Headquarters, and all their papers, had established themselves, the enemy gas-bombarded the village with perfect accuracy. The Commanding Officer, Lieut.-Colonel R. V. Pollok, the Assistant Adjutant, Lieutenant J. N. Ward, and the M. O., Captain Woodhouse, had to be sent down suffering from yellow-cross gas after-effects.

Consider for a moment the woes of a battalion headquarters in the field. Late in January, Captain Gordon, the pukka Adjutant, riding to Arras for a bath, canters into a barrage of "heavies" and is wounded in the hand—a vital spot for adjutants. This leaves only the C.O. and the Assistant Adjutant, Lieutenant J. N. Ward, to carry on, and whatever the state of the front, the authorities demand their regular supply of papers and forms. No sooner has the Assistant Adjutant got abreast of things, than all Battalion Headquarters are knocked out in an hour. Luckily, they were only away for three or four days. The enemy added a small and easily beaten off raid to the confusion he had made in Orderly-room; Major Baggallay took over the command, and Captain Budd, adequate and untroubled as ever, who had held the ghostly F Post on the Scarpe, acted as Adjutant. Officers were