The Brigade is now under orders for rest and training, and it must now be our object to keep up the high standard of efficiency, and those who have come to fill our depleted ranks will strive their utmost to fill worthily the place of those gallant officers and men who have laid down their lives for a great cause.
(Sd.) C. E. Pereira,
Brigadier-General,
Commanding 1st Guards Brigade.
September 28, 1916.
Lord Cavan had sent the following message to General Pereira:
Hearty thanks and sincere congratulation to you all. A very fine achievement splendidly executed.
To which the Brigadier had replied:
Your old Brigade very proud to be able to present you with Lesbœufs. All ranks most gratified by your kind congratulations.
And so that little wave among many waves, which had done its work and gained its few hundred yards of ground up the beach, drew back into the ocean of men and hutments below the slopes of the Somme. The new drafts were naturally rather pleased with themselves; their N.C.O.’s were reasonably satisfied with them, and the remnant of the officers were far too busy with reorganization and re-equipment to have distinct notions on any subject except the day’s work. It was a little later that heroisms or horrors, seen out of the tail of the eye in action, and unrealised at the time, became alive as rest returned to the body and men compared dreams with each other, or argued in what precise manner such and such a comrade had died. There was bravery enough and to spare on all hands, and there were a few, but not too many, decorations awarded for it in the course of the next month. The Battalion took the bravery for granted, and the credit of the aggregate went to the Battalion. They looked at it, broadly speaking, thus: “There was times when ye’ll understand if a man was not earnin’ V.C.’s for hours on end he would not keep alive—an’ even then, unless the Saints looked after him, he’d likely be killed in the middest of it.” In other words, the average of bravery required in action had risen twenty-fold, even as the average of shots delivered by machine-guns exceeds that of many rifles; and by the mercy of Heaven, as the Irish themselves saw it, the spirit of man under discipline had risen to those heights.
Captain L. R. Hargreaves (killed on the 25th) and Captain P. S. Long-Innes (wounded), with Lieutenant G. V. Williams (who was knocked unconscious and nearly killed by shell-fire on the 25th), were given the Military Cross for the affair of the 15th. Drill-Sergeant Moran, a pillar of the Battalion, who had died of wounds (it was he who had asked the immortal question about “this retreat” at Mons), with Private Boyd, received the D.C.M., and Sergeant Riordan (wounded and reported missing) the Bar to the same medal. Lance-Corporal J. Carroll, Privates M. Kenny, J. O’Connor, J. White and Lance-Corporal Cousins had the Military Medal—all for the 15th.
For the 15th and 25th combined, Lieutenant Walter Mumford and 2nd Lieutenant T. F. MacMahon won the Military Cross; and Sergeant P. Doolan and Private G. Taylor the Military Medal.