But the Battalion lay at Verquin, cleaning up after its ten days’ filth, and there was Mass on the morning of the 14th, when Father S. Knapp came over from the 2nd Battalion and “spoke to the men on the subject of Father Gwynne’s death,” for now that the two battalions were next-door neighbours, Father Knapp served both. No written record remains of the priest’s speech, but those who survive that heard it say it moved all men’s hearts. Mass always preceded the day’s work in billets, but even on the first morning on their return from the trenches the men would make shift somehow to clean their hands and faces, and if possible to shave, before attending it, no matter what the hour.
Then on the 14th October they moved from Verquin to unpleasing Sailly-Labourse, four miles or so behind the line, for another day’s “rest” in billets, and so (Oct. 17) to what was left of Vermelles, a couple of miles from the front, where the men had to make the wrecked houses habitable till (Oct. 19) they took over from the Welsh Guards some reserve-trenches on the old ground in front of Clerk’s Keep, a quarter of a mile west of the Vermelles railway line.
The 20th October was the day when the 2nd Battalion were engaged in a bombing attack on the Hohenzollern, from which they won no small honour, as will be told in their story. The 1st Battalion lay at Vermelles, unshelled for the moment, and had leisure to make “light overhead cover for the men against the rain.” The Division was in line again, and the Battalion’s first work was to improve a new line of trenches which, besides the defect of being much too close to the Hohenzollern, lacked dug-outs. In Lord Desmond FitzGerald’s absence, Major the Hon. H. R. Alexander from the 2nd Battalion took command of the Battalion, and they relieved the 2nd Coldstream on the 21st and resumed the stale routine—digging saps under fire, which necessitated shovelling the earth into sand-bags, and emptying it out by night; dodging snipers and trench-mortars, and hoping that our own shells, which were battering round the Hohenzollern, would not fall too short; fixing wire and fuses till the moon grew and they had to wait for the dawn-mists to cloak their work; discovering and reconnoitring old German communication-trenches that ran to ever-new German sniping-posts and had to be blocked with wire tangles; and losing in three days, by minenwerfers, sniping, the fall of dug-outs and premature bursts of our own shells, 7 men killed and 18 wounded. The two companies (1 and 2) went back to Vermelles, while 3 and 4 took over the support-trenches from the 3rd Coldstream, reversing the process on the 24th October.
When letters hint at “drill” in any connection, it is a sure sign that a battalion is on the eve of relief. For example, on the 24th, 2nd Lieutenant Levy arrived with a draft of fifty-eight men, a sergeant, and two corporals, who were divided among the companies. The Diary observes that they were a fair lot of men but “did not look too well drilled.” Accordingly, after a couple of days’ mild shelling round and near Vermelles Church and Shrine, we find the Battalion relieved by the Norfolks (Oct. 26). All four companies worked their way cautiously out of the fire-zone—it is at the moment of relief that casualties are most felt—picked up their Headquarters and transport, and marched for half of a whole day in the open to billets at pleasant, wooded Lapugnoy, where they found clean straw to lie down on and were promised blankets. After the usual clean-up and payment of the men, they were ordered off to Chocques to take part in the King’s review of the Guards Division at Haute Rièze on the afternoon of the 28th, but, owing to the accident to His Majesty caused by the horse falling with him, the parade was cancelled.
“Steady drill” filled the next ten days. Lieutenant the Hon. B. O’Brien started to train fresh bombing-squads with the Mills bomb, which was then being issued in such quantities that as many as twenty whole boxes could be spared for instruction. Up till then, bombs had been varied in type and various in action. As had been pointed out, the Irish took kindly to this game and produced many notable experts. But the perfect bomber is not always docile out of the line. Among the giants of ’15 was a private against whom order had gone forth that on no account was he to be paid on pay-days, for the reason that once in funds he would retire into France at large “for a day and a night and a morrow,” and return a happy, hiccuping but indispensable “criminal.” At last, after a long stretch of enforced virtue, he managed, by chicane or his own amazing personality, to seduce five francs from his platoon sergeant and forthwith disappeared. On his return, richly disguised, he sought out his benefactor with a gift under his arm. The rest is in his Sergeant’s own words: “‘No,’ I says, ‘go away and sleep it off,’ I says, pushin’ it away, for ’twas a rum jar he was temptin’ me with. ‘’Tis for you, Sergeant,’ he says. ‘You’re the only man that has thrusted me with a centime since summer.’ Thrust him! There was no sergeant of ours had not been remindin’ me of those same five francs all the time he’d been away—let alone what I’d got at Company Orders. So I loosed myself upon him, an’ I described him to himself the way he’d have shame at it, but shame was not in him. ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ he says to me, ‘full I am, and this is full too,’ he says, pattin’ the rum jar (and it was!), an’ I know where there’s plenty more,’ he says, ‘and it’s all for you an’ your great thrustfulness to me about them five francs.’ What could I do? He’d made me a laughing-stock to the Battalion. An awful man! He’d done it all on those five unlucky francs! Yes, he’d lead a bombin’ party or a drinkin’ party—his own or any other battalion’s; and he was worth a platoon an’ a half when there was anything doing, and I thrust in God he’s alive yet—him and his five francs! But an awful man!”
Drunkenness was confined, for the most part, to a known few characters, regular and almost privileged in their irregularities. The influence of the Priest and the work of the company officers went hand in hand here. Here is a tribute paid by a brother officer to Captain Gore-Langton, killed on the 10th October, which explains the secret. “The men liked him for his pluck and the plain way in which he dealt with them, always doing his best for the worst, most idle, and stupidest men in our company.... One can’t really believe he’s gone. I always expect to see him swinging round a traverse.” The Battalion did not forget him, and while at Lapugnoy, sent a party to Vermelles to attend to his grave there.
On the 31st October Lieut.-Colonel R. C. McCalmont arrived from commanding a battalion of the New Ulster Army Division and took over the command from Major Alexander who reverted to the 2nd Battalion, from which he had been borrowed.
Laventie
On the 10th of the month the Guards Division were for duty again on the Laventie sector, which at every time of the year had a bad reputation for wet. The outcome of Loos had ended hope of a break-through, and a few thousand yards won there against a few thousand lost out Ypres way represented the balance of the account since November 1914. Therefore, once again, the line had to be held till more men, munitions and materials could be trained, manufactured and accumulated, while the price of making war on the spur of the moment was paid, day in and day out, with the bodies of young men subject to every form of death among the slits in the dirt along which they moved. It bored them extremely, but otherwise did not much affect their morale. They built some sort of decent life out of the monotonous hours; they came to know the very best and the very worst in themselves and in their comrades upon whom their lives and well-being depended; and they formed friendships that lasted, as fate willed, for months or even years. They lied persistently and with intent in their home letters concerning their discomforts and exposure, and lent themselves to the impression, cultivated by some sedulous newspapers, that the trenches were electrically-lighted abodes of comfort and jollity, varied with concerts and sports. It was all part of the trial which the national genius calls “the game.”
The Battalion (Lieut.-Colonel R. C. McCalmont commanding) was at Pacaut, due north of Béthune, on the 11th, at Merville on the 14th, training young soldiers how to use smoke-helmets—for gas was a thing to be expected anywhere now—and enjoying every variety of weather, from sodden wet to sharp frost. The effects of the gas-helmet on the young soldiers were quaintly described as “very useful on them. ’Twas like throwin’ a cloth over a parrot-cage. It stopped all their chat.”