line there; the 2nd Grenadiers in reserve, and the 1st Irish Guards in support.
The ground was not yet a sea of mud, but quite sufficiently tenacious. "The area allotted" was old trenches and newish shell-holes with water at the bottom, in "the small rectangular wood east of Trônes Wood." They were employed for three or four days in cleaning up the litter of battle all about the slopes and piling it in dumps, while the enemy shelled them more or less regularly with large black 5.9 shells—a very fair test of the new drafts' nerves. The stuff would drop unheralded through the then leafy woods, and explode at large among the shelters and slits that the men had made for themselves. They took the noise and the shaking with philosophy as their N.C.O.'s testified. ("There was some wondherin' in the new drafts, but no budgin', ye'll understand.")
Reading between lines one can see that the R.C. Priest, the Reverend Father F. M. Browne, was busy in those days on spiritual affairs, for he was hit in the face on the 23rd, "while visiting a neighbouring battery," so that Mass on the 24th—the day before their second battle of the Somme—was celebrated by the Reverend Father Casey. They were shelled, too, that Sunday in the wood, a single unlucky shell killing two men and wounding thirteen. The last available officer from the base, Lieutenant A. H. Blom, had joined the night before; all drafts were in; the ground was assumed to be walkable (which was not the case), and about 9 P. M. of a pitch-black Sunday night the Battalion left the wood and reached its assembly-trench, an extraordinary bad and unprotected one, about midnight. They were promiscuously shelled in the darkness, and the trench, when found, was so narrow that they had to stand on the edge of it till the Battalion that they relieved—it did not keep them waiting long—got out. No. 1 Company (Captain L. R. Hargreaves), No. 2 Company (Captain the Hon. P. J. Ogilvy) were in the front line, the latter on the right, No. 3 Company (Lieutenant A. H. Blom), and No.
