Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/365

 field-guns came up and shelled Wagnies-le-Petit into silence, and at half-past four orders arrived for the Battalion to go through the 2nd Grenadiers and continue at large into the dusk that was closing on the blind, hedge-screened country. There was no particular opposition beyond stray shells, but the boggy-banked Aunelle had to be crossed on stretchers, through thick undergrowth, in a steep valley. Everything after that seemed to be orchards, high hedges, and sunk and raised roads, varied with soft bits of cultivation, or hopelessly muddled-up cul-de-sacs of farm-tracks. The companies played blind-man's buff among these obstacles in the pitch-dark, as they hunted alternately for each other and the troops on their flanks. There was "very heavy shelling" on the three most advanced companies as well as on Brigade Headquarters throughout the night. The men dug in where they were; and casualties, all told, came to about twenty. Very early on the 5th November the 3rd Guards Brigade passed through them and continued the advance. Preux-au-Sart, the village behind them, had been taken by the 2nd Brigade the evening and the night before, so the Battalion "came out of its slits" and went back to billet in its relieved and rejoicing streets, where "the inhabitants on coming out of their cellars in the morning were delighted to find British troops again, and showed the greatest cordiality." If rumour be true, they also showed them how easily their Hun conquerors had been misled and hoodwinked in the matter of good vintages buried and set aside against this very day. "The men were very comfortable."

The fact that Austria was reported out of the war did not make the next day any less pleasant, even though it rained, and "all the windows in the Battalion Headquarters were broken by one shell." Battalion Headquarters had come through worse than broken glass in its time, but was now beginning to grow fastidious.

On the afternoon of the 7th November the Battalion marched to Bavai over muddy roads in a drizzle. Even then, men have said, there was no general belief in the