- ing-pan: the broad, general conflagration of the
Somme, the fire. They quitted the frying-pan with some relief, entrained at Proven with the 3rd Coldstream and the 1st Brigade Machine-gun Company, detrained at Watten between the Bois du Ham and the Forêt d'Eperlecques, beyond St. Omer, and marched to the pleasant village of Bayenghem-les-Eperlecques, where they had the satisfaction of meeting the 6th Border Regiment just marching out of the billets that they were to occupy. The place was an intensive training-camp, specialising in all the specialties, but musketry above all. The Somme was open country, where, since they had left it, multitudes of tanks had come into use for the protection of troops, and troops thus protected do not need so many bombers to clear out shell-holes as they do in the Salient, where tanks stick and are shelled to bits in the mud. The inference was obvious! They enjoyed compulsory and voluntary musketry, varied with inspections and route-marchings.
On the 21st October His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught visited them as senior Colonel of the Brigade of Guards, was introduced to all the officers, spoke to most of the N.C.O.'s and the men who had been decorated during the war. The Battalion was formed up in "walking out" order in the streets of the village to receive him. It is alleged by survivors that the sergeants saw to it that never since the Irish Guards had been formed was there such rigorous inspection of "walking out" men before they fell in. ("We looked like all Bird-cage Walk of a Sunday.")
On the 24th there joined for duty a draft of six officers, Major R. R. C. Baggallay, M.C., Lieutenant G. K. Thompson, M.C., and 2nd Lieutenants C. E. Hammond, F. G. de Stacpoole, T. A. Carey, and E. C. G. Lord. Lieutenant D. J. B. FitzGerald was transferred from the 1st to the 2nd Battalion on the Twenty-fifth, which was the day chosen for an inspection of the whole
