Their Adjutant’s preoccupations with officers sick and wounded; N.C.O.’s promoted to commissions in line battalions, and the catching and training of their substitutes; and with all the housekeeping work of a battalion in the field, had not prevented him from making strict and accurate inquiries at Headquarters as to “what exactly is being sent out for Christmas Day. Is it plum-pudding only or sausages alone? Last year we had both, but I should like to know for certain.”
All things considered (and there was no shelling), Christmas dinner at La Gorgue 1915 was a success, and “the C.O. and other officers went round the dinners as at home” in merciful ignorance that those of them who survived would attend three more such festivals.
Major-General Lord Cavan, commanding the Guards Division, who had been appointed to command the newly formed Fourteenth Corps,[7] addressed the officers after dinner and half-promised them the Christmas present they most desired. He spoke well of the Battalion, as one who had seen and shared their work had right to do, saying that “there might be as good, but there were none better,” and added that “there was just a hope that the Guards Division might eventually go to his corps.” They cheered.
The quiet that fell about Christmastide held till the birth of the New Year, which the inscrutable Hun mind celebrated punctually on the hour (German time) with twenty minutes’ heavy machine-gun and rifle-fire in the darkness. One killed and one wounded were all their casualties.
Here is the roll of the Officers and Staff of the Battalion as the year ended in mud, among rotten parapets and water-logged trenches, with nothing to show for all that had gone before save time gained and ground held to allow of preparation for the real struggle, on the edge of which these thousand soldiers and all their world stood ignorant but unshaken:
| No. 1 Company. | |
| Capt. R. G. C. Yerburgh. | (3726 C.Q.M.S. P. M’Goldrick.) |
| Lieut. D. J. B. FitzGerald. | 3303 a./C.Q.M.S. J. Glynn. |
| 2562 C.S.M. P. A. Carroll. | |
| No. 2 Company. | |
| Capt. V. C. J. Blake. | 3949 C.S.M. D. Voyles. |
| Lieut. C. E. R. Hanbury. | 999 C.Q.M.S. H. Payne. |
| No. 3 Company. | |
| Capt. T. M. D. Bailie. | (2112 C.S.M. H. M’Veigh.) |
| Capt. A. F. L. Gordon. | 3972 C.Q.M.S. R. Grady. |
| Lieut. S. E. F. Christy. | 2922 a./C.S.M. J. Donolly. |
| Lieut. K. E. Dormer. | |
| No. 4 Company. | |
| Capt. P. S. Long-Innes. | 2nd Lieut. M. B. Levy. |
| Lieut. Hon. H. B. O’Brien | 3632 C.S.M. M. Moran. |
| (Bombing Officer). | (2122 C.Q.M.S. T. Murphy.) |
| Lieut. R. J. P. Rodakowski. | 798 a./C.Q.M.S. J. Scanlon. |
1916
THE SALIENT TO THE SOMME
Brigadier-General G. Feilding, D.S.O., as we know, succeeded Lord Cavan in the command of the Guards Division, and the enemy woke up to a little more regular shelling and sniping for a few days till (January 4) the 1st Guards Brigade was unexpectedly relieved by a fresh brigade (the 114th), and the Battalion moved to billets in St. Floris which, as usual, were “in a very filthy condition.” There they stayed, under strong training at bombing and Lewis gunnery, till the 12th. Thence to Merville till the 23rd, when Lieutenant Hon. H. B. O’Brien, a specialist in these matters, as may have been noticed before, was appointed Brigade Bombing Officer. The bomb was to be the dominant factor of the day’s work for the next year or so, and the number of students made the country round billets unwholesome and varied. There is a true tale of a bombing school on a foggy morning who, hurling with zeal over a bank into the mist, found themselves presently being cursed from a safe distance by a repairing party who had been sent out to discover why one whole system of big-gun telephone-wires was dumb. They complained that the school had “cut it into vermicelli.”