A Divisional Horse-show was held on the 22nd, but there the Battalion did not get a single prize. They hammered on at their trainings and Brigade field-days—all with an eye to the coming open warfare, while the “Spanish fever,” which was influenza of the post-war type, grew steadily worse among men and officers alike. When H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught visited Divisional Headquarters at Bavincourt Château on the 30th June, and the Battalion had to find not only the Guard of Honour but 160 men to line the avenue to the Château, there were seventy officers and men down with the pest, out of less than 900. Thirty-one men had been sent down sick, two had been killed in action presumably by overhead bombing, for the Diary does not mention any trench casualties, and twenty-three wounded.
The following officers joined during the month of June: Lieutenant C. A. J. Vernon, and 2nd Lieutenants E. B. Spafford, A. E. Hutchinson, H. R. Baldwin, G. F. Mathieson, J. A. M. Faraday, E. M. Harvey, M.C., and A. E. O’Connor, all on the 2nd June; Captain A. W. L. Paget on the 4th, and 2nd Lieutenant A. H. O’Farrell on the 10th June. Second Lieutenant C. S. O’Brien, who was in command of the model raid already mentioned, was awarded the Military Cross on the 9th of June.
After a sporting interlude on the 3rd July, when they met the 1st Munster Fusiliers at athletics and won everything except the hundred yards, they relieved the 15th H.L.I. in the intermediate line near Hendecourt. As a matter of fact, they were a sick people just then. All Battalion Headquarters except the Commanding Officer, and all the officers of No. 2 Company, besides officers of other companies, were down with “Spanish fever” on going into the line. A third of the men were also sick at one time, and apparently the enemy too, for they hardly troubled to shell by day and let the night-reliefs go without attention. The only drawbacks were furious summer thunderstorms which, from time to time, flooded the trenches and woke up more fever. The front line held here by the Guards was badly knocked about and battered, and instructions ran that, in event of serious attack, it would not be contested.
There is no clear evidence of the state of the Battalion’s collective mind at this time, but from home letters it might be gathered that the strain of the Bush and its bewilderment had given place to the idea that great things were preparing. Battalions are very often told tales to this effect, but they suit themselves as to the amount that they swallow. No power on earth, for instance, could have persuaded the veterans of the Somme, after Cambrai, that there was “anything doing”; but as the summer of 1918 grew warmer in the wooded and orchard country behind the Amiens-Albert line, and our lines there held and were strengthened, and those who had been home or on the seas reported what they had heard and seen, hope, of a kind not raised before, grew in the talks of the men and the officers. (“Understand, I do not say there was anny of the old chat regardin’ that the war would finish next Chuseday, the way we talked in ’16. But, whatever they said acrost the water, we did not hould ’twould endure those two more extra years all them civilians was dishin’ out to us. What did we think? That ’19 would see the finish? ’Twud be hard to tell what we thought. Leave it this way—we was no more than waitin’ on mercies to happen an’—’twas mericles that transpired!”)
They relieved their own brigade battalions with the punctilio proper to their common ritual, and for the benefit of over a hundred recruits. It was their ancient comrades under all sorts of terrors, the 2nd Coldstream, whose guides from Boiry-St. Martin one night lost their way in the maze of tracks and turns to the front line. But, as meekly set forth in the Diary, when it came the Battalion’s turn to be relieved by the 2nd Grenadiers, “all tracks had been carefully picketed by this Battalion to assist grenadier companies coming in and ours going out.” The occasions when the guides of the 1st Irish Guards lost their way must be looked for in the reports of others.
“Little shelling and no casualties” were the order of the fine days till, on the 29th July, taking over from the 2nd Coldstream, they found six platoons of the 3rd Battalion, 320th Regiment, U.S.A., which had come into line the night before and were attached for instruction. These were young, keen, desperately anxious to learn, and not at all disposed to keep their heads down.
Next day the enemy opened on them, and “were rather offensive in their shelling.” The front platoon of the Americans, attached to the Battalion’s front company, caught it worst, but no casualties were reported. Then things quieted down, and a patrol of Special Battalion Scouts, a new organization of old, trusty No Man’s Landers, under Lieutenant Vernon as Intelligence Officer, went out on reconnaissance, across the Cojeul valley, and wandered generally among ancient trench-lines in bright moonlight. They found a German party working on fresh earth, but no signs of enemy patrols on the move in the valley. This was as well. No one wished to see that dead ground occupied, except by our own people at the proper time.
July’s bill of casualties was the lowest of all. No officer and but one man had been killed, and two wounded. This last was when the enemy shelled Boiry to celebrate the arrival of the American platoons. Seventeen men were sent down sick. Fifty other ranks were transferred to the 1st from the 2nd Battalion, now acting as a feeder to its elder brother.
On the 1st of August the Battalion was still in the peaceful front line watching the six American platoons being relieved by other six platoons from the 2nd Battalion of the 320th Regiment. It was observed, not without some envy—“They did not know enough to save ’emselves throuble, an’ they would not ha’ done it if they had. They was too full of this same dam’ new ould war.” Even at this immense distance of time, one can almost hear the veterans commenting on the zeal and excitement that filled the stale lines where, to those young eyes from across the water, everything was as shining-new as death.
On the 3rd August the Battalion made a reconnaissance of a post with the idea of raiding it, which was a complete though bloodless failure. Some of our back guns chose the exact moment when the raiders were setting out (on the sure information of a scouting-party, who had just come in) to wipe up the unconscious little garrison and their machine-gun, and woke the night with heavy shell dropped in our own wire and in front of our objective. Naturally nothing could be done, and the affair was called off till the next evening (4th August), when a “crawling-party,” under Lieutenant Vernon, of a corporal and six men went out along the same route that the scouts had taken the night before. They were expected and welcomed with enthusiasm. A sentry gave the alarm, a little party ran out to cut them off, the machine-gun (a heavy one), which had not betrayed itself before, promptly opened fire, but wide of our prone men, and a German, as promptly, hove bombs in the wrong direction. All this, says the report, happened as soon as some one inside the post gave “short, decisive orders.” Then Véry lights flared without stint, and, being some way from home, with much unlocated wire between, the raiders got away swiftly and safely. The tracks of the scouts through the long grass the night before had put the enemy on the alert. But if our guns had only held their tongues on that occasion, our coup might have been brought off. Instead of which, the enemy woke up and shelled a front company for a quarter of an hour with 60-pounders before he could be induced to go to bed.