The Irish Guards in the Great War, Volume 1 (of 2)

But all this was as light, casual, and unrelated as the throwing of the ball from hand to hand that fills time before an innings; and, by the latter part of July, men began half...

In the afternoon the enemy attacked--with rifle-fire and a close-range small piece that broke up our two machine-guns--across some dead ground and occupied the wrecked trench, d...

At 2 P. M. on the 6th of February the stacks were heavily bombarded for a quarter of an hour--a large allowance. Even “Mother,” a neighbouring 9.2, probably of naval extraction,...

On the 7th September the Battalion made a forced march from Tonquin to Rebais, where there was a German column, but the advance-guard of the Brigade was held up at St. Simeon ti...

They do not seem to have been called upon to do more than sit, suffer and be shelled till evening, when they were relieved by a company of the 1st Coldstream and went back in th...

Next day they were relieved by the 7th Norfolks, 35th Brigade of the North Midland Division of Territorials, and went to rest at Verquin, five or six miles behind the line. It t...

The instruction bore fruit; for, so soon as they were back in the trenches at Ebenezer farm, which they had quitted on the 4th, bombing seems to have been forced wherever practi...

Our armies were brought up for the most part on their own feet and lay in trenches not in the least concreted; nor were our roads to the front wholly equal to the demands on the...

There naturally cannot be any definite or accurate record of the day’s work. Even had maps been issued to the officers a week, instead of a day or so, before the attack; even ha...

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,...

On the 16th April they were shifted to relieve the 2nd Grenadiers at Railway Wood north-west of Hooge. This was almost the most easterly point of the Salient on the north of the...

Major Arbuthnot (Scots Guards) arrived on the 14th December with Queen Alexandra’s presents to the Battalion which were duly issued to selected officers, N.C.O.’s, and men, but...

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. Capt...

There is a tale concerning the rivers here, which may be given (without guarantee) substantially as told: “Rivers round Maubeuge? ’Twas _all_ rivers--the Aunelle and the Rhônell...

On the 17th February that move was made by three Divisions (Second, Eighteenth, and Sixty-third) before dawn, through heavy mist on the edge of a thaw, and in the face of a well...

The idea of the day’s work for the 25th was less ambitious than on the 15th, and the objectives were visible German trenches, not imaginary lines on uniformly indistinguishable...

Next day (August 14) men rested a little, looking at this strange, bright France with strange eyes, and bathed in the sea; and Captain H. Berners, replacing Sir Delves Broughton...

On the 23rd July orders came that their expected term of rest was to be cancelled as the Division would go “elsewhere,” which all knew meant towards the Somme. There were five d...

The Brigade’s system of forty-eight hours’ reliefs enabled them to do more in a given time than battalions who went in for four days at a stretch, as a man could carry two days’...

On the 23rd June, Major-General Sir A. J. Godley, commanding the Second Anzac Corps, came over on a visit to the Battalion and inspected the men, and day by day the pieces requi...

On the 15th August, the eve of the Langemarck attack, they were put on one hour’s notice, which was withdrawn the next day, when six divisions (the Forty-eighth, Eleventh, Fifty...

So, too, with the officers. In the long overseeing of endless fatigues, which are more trying than action, they come to understand the men with a thoroughness that one is inclin...

The original intention of our Army on the Flanders flank had been offensive, but the long check on the Aisne gave the enemy time to bring forward troops from their immense and p...

The 4th Guards Brigade, which had been in billets near Villers-Brulin, after its heavy work on the Arras side, was despatched on the 10th April to the flat country round Vierhoe...

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original maps. See 64638-h.htm or 64638-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64638/pg646...

The Salient, with its sense of being ever overlooked and constricted on every side, fairly represents the frying-pan: the broad, general conflagration of the Somme, the fire. Th...

When morning of the 28th broke “few signs of enemy movement were observed.” Men say that there is no mistaking the “feel of the front” under this joyous aspect. The sense of con...

The 18th dawned in wreaths of driving rain and mist that wrapped the flats. The preliminary bombardment of farm Cour l’Avoine was postponed for lack of good light, and in that l...

The end of the month was filled with constructive work and the linking up and strengthening of trenches, and the burial, where possible, of “the very old dead”--twenty-nine of t...

Men took the news according to their natures. Indurated pessimists, after proving that it was a lie, said it would be but an interlude. Others retired into themselves as though...