or laid on by the enemy was uncertain. The R.E. officer who went down to lay the charges was asphyxiated and several of his men were injured.
Not till the 29th of April were the difficulties overcome; by which time the enemy had driven a fresh shaft into it. After the explosion, a field battery (17th R.F.A.) and the 47th Howitzer Battery fired a salvo at the German trenches. “There was a little rifle-fire, but soon all was quiet.” Mining, like aerial and bombing work, was still in its infancy, and the information supplied by the Intelligence was said to be belated and inadequate.
An interesting point is the unshaken serenity with which the men took the new developments. They were far too annoyed at being shifted about and losing their rest to consider too curiously the underlying causes of evil. They left the 3rd Coldstream to deal with the situation and went into billets in Le Préol, and the next day (April 26) into Béthune for their hot baths. A draft of 3 officers (Captain T. M. D. Bailie and 2nd Lieutenants A. W. L. Paget and R. S. G. Paget) with 136 N.C.O.’s and men reached them on the 27th, when there was just time to give them a hot meal and send them at once to the trenches in the bright moonlight under “a certain amount of rifle-fire and intermittent shelling from small guns which did not do much damage.” An enemy field-gun, long known as an unlocated pest, spent the morning busily enfilading the trenches, in spite of the assurances of our artillery that they had found and knocked it out several times. Appeal was made to an R.A. Brigadier who, after examining the ground, left the Battalion under the impression that “it was likely a gun would be brought up early tomorrow.” Nothing more is heard of the hope: but guns were scarce at that time.
There were other preoccupations for those in command. The second battle of Ypres, that month’s miracle of naked endurance against the long-planned and coldly thought-out horror of gas, had begun near Langemarck with the choking-out of the French and Canadian troops, and had continued day after day with the sacrifice of battalions and brigades, Regulars and Territorials swallowed up in the low grey-yellow gas banks that threatened Ypres from Langemarck to Hill 60, or beaten to pulp by heavy explosives and the remnant riddled anew by machine-guns. Once again England was making good with her best flesh and blood for the material and the training she had deliberately refused to provide while yet peace held. The men who came out of that furnace alive say that no after experience of all the War approached it for sheer concentrated, as well as prolonged, terror, confusion, and a growing sense of hopelessness among growing agonies. If a world, at that time unbroken to German methods, stood aghast at the limited revelations allowed by the press censorship reports, those who had seen a man, or worse, a child, dying from gas may conceive with what emotions men exposed to the new torment regarded it, what kind of reports leaked out from clearing-stations and hospitals, and what work therefore was laid upon officers to maintain an even and unaffected temper in the battalions in waiting. The records, of course, do not mention these details, nor, indeed, do they record when gas-protectors (for masks, helmets, and boxes were not evolved till much later) were first issued to the troops on the Givenchy sector. But private letters of the 25th April, at the time the German mine in the orchard occupied their attention, remark, “we have all been issued out with an antidote to the latest German villainy . . . i.e. of asphyxiating gases. . . . What they will end by doing one can hardly imagine. The only thing is to be prepared for anything.”
The first “masks” were little more than mufflers or strips of cloth dipped in lime water. A weathercock was rigged up near Headquarters dug-outs, and when the wind blew from the Germans these were got ready. False alarms of gas, due to strange stenches given off by various explosives, or the appearance of a mist over the German line, were not uncommon, and on each occasion, it appeared that the C.O. had to turn out, sniff, and personally pass judgment on the case. The men had their instructions what to do in case of emergency, concluding with the simple order, perhaps the result of experience at Ypres, “in event of the first line being overcome, the second immediately charge through the gas and occupy the front-line trenches.”
But to return to the routine:
The casualties for the month of April were 2 officers and 8 men killed and 1 officer and 42 men wounded. The strength of the Battalion stood at 28 officers and 1133 men, higher than it had ever been before.
The following is the distribution of officers and N.C.O.’s at that time, a little less than three weeks before the battle of Festubert.
| Headquarters | ||
| Major the Hon. J. F. Trefusis | Commanding Officer. | |
| Major the Earl of Rosse | Second in Command. | |
| Capt. Lord Desmond FitzGerald | Adjutant. | |
| Lieut. P. H. Antrobus | Transport Officer. | |
| Lieut. L. S. Straker | Machine-gun Officer. | |
| Capt. A. H. L. M’Carthy | Medical Officer. | |
| Lieut. H. Hickie | Quarter-master. | |
| The Rev. John Gwynne (S.J.) | Chaplain | |
| No. 1 Company | ||
| Capt. J. N. Guthrie. | No. 2535 C.S.M. Harradine. | |
| Lieut. R. G. C. Yerburgh. | No. 3726 C.Q.M.S. P. M’Goldrick. | |
| 2nd Lieut. V. W. D. Fox. | 2nd Lieut. Hon. W. S. P. Alexander. | |
| No. 2 Company | ||
| Capt. E. G. Mylne. | 2nd Lieut. S. G. Tallents. | |
| Lieut. Sir G. Burke, Bart. | No. 3949 C.S.M. D. Moyles. | |
| 2nd Lieut. R. B. H. Kemp. | No. 2703 C.Q.M.S. J. G. Lowry. | |
| No. 3 Company | ||
| Major P. L. Reid. | 2nd Lieut. C. de Persse (attached 7th Dragoon Guards). | |
| 2nd Lieut. J. R. Ralli. | 2nd Lieut. C. Pease. | |
| No. 2112 C.S.M. H. M’Veigh. | 2nd Lieut. E. W. Campbell. | |
| No. 3972 C.Q.M.S. R. Grady. | ||
| No. 4 Company | ||
| Capt. G. E. S. Young. | 2nd Lieut. D. C. Parsons. | |
| Lieut. J. S. N. FitzGerald. | No. 2384 C.S.M. T. Curry. | |
| Lieut. C. D. Wynter. | No. 3132 C.Q.M.S. H. Carton. | |
The first ten days of May passed quietly. Mines, for the moment, gave no further anxiety, bombing and bombardments were light, reliefs were happily effected, and but 1 man was killed and 1 wounded. Two officers, Lieutenant H. A. Boyse and 2nd Lieutenant R. H. W. Heard, joined on the 2nd.