Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/344

 and, between salutes, returned their arms stiffly to the safe "Kamerad" position. This added the last touch of insanity to the picture. ("We'd ha' laughed if we had had the time, ye'll understand.")

None recall precisely how they reached the bottom of the Canal, but there were a few moments of blessed shelter ere they scrambled out and reformed on the far side. The shelling here was bad enough, but nothing to what they had survived. A veil of greasy smoke, patched with flame that did not glare, stood up behind them, and through the pall of it, in little knots, stumbled their supports, blinded, choking, gasping. In the direction of the attack, across a long stretch of broken rising ground, were more shells, but less thickly spaced, and craters of stinking earth and coloured chalks where our barrage had ripped out nests of machine-guns. Far off, to the left, creaming with yellow smoke in the morning light, rose the sullen head of Bourlon Wood to which the Canadians were faithfully paying the debt contracted by the 2nd Battalion of the Irish Guards in the old days after Cambrai.

At the crest of the ascent lay Saunders Keep, which marked the point where the Scots Guards would lie up and the Irish come through. Already the casualties had been severe. Captain Bence-Jones and 2nd Lieutenant Mathieson of No. 2 Company were wounded at the Keep itself, and 2nd Lieutenant A. R. Boyle of No. 1 earlier in the rush. The companies panted up, gapped and strung out. From the Keep the land sloped down to Stafford Alley, the Battalion's first objective just before which Lieutenant Barry Close was killed. That day marked his coming of age. Beyond the Alley the ground rose again, and here the Irish were first checked by some machine-gun fire that had escaped our barrages. Second Lieutenant O'Brien, No. 3 Company, was hit at this point while getting his men forward. He had earned his Military Cross in May, and he died well. The next senior officer, 2nd Lieutenant E. H. R. Burke, was away to the left in the thick