Page:The Irish guards in the great war (Volume 1).djvu/29

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No. 3 Company.

Capt. Sir Delves Broughton, Bart. (replaced by Capt. H. Hamilton Berners).
Capt. Hon. T. E. Vesey.
Lieut. Hon. Hugh Gough.
Lieut. Lord Guernsey.
2nd Lieut. Viscount Castle-*rosse.


No. 4 Company.

Capt. C. A. Tisdall.
Capt. A. A. Perceval.
Lieut. W. C. N. Reynolds.
Lieut. R. Blacker-Douglass.
Lieut. Lord Robert Innes-Ker.
2nd Lieut. J. T. P. Roberts.


Details at the Base.

Capt. Lord Arthur Hay.
2nd Lieut. Sir Gerald Burke, Bart.

They reached Havre at 6 A. M. on August 13, a fiercely hot day, and, tired after a sleepless night aboard ship, and a long wait, in a hot, tin-roofed shed, for some missing men, marched three miles out of the town to Rest Camp No. 2 "in a large field at Sanvic, a suburb of Havre at the top of the hill." Later, the city herself became almost a suburb to the vast rest-camps round it. Here they received an enthusiastic welcome from the French, and were first largely introduced to the wines of the country, for many maidens lined the steep road and offered bowls of drinks to the wearied.

Next day (August 14) men rested a little, looking at this strange, bright France with strange eyes, and bathed in the sea; and Captain H. Berners, replacing Sir Delves Broughton, joined. At eleven o'clock they entrained at Havre Station under secret orders for the Front. The heat broke in a terrible thunderstorm that soaked the new uniforms. The crowded train travelled north all day, receiving great welcomes everywhere, but no one knowing what its destination might be. After more than seventeen hours' slow progress by roads that were not revealed then or later, they halted at Wassigny, at a quarter to eleven on the night of August 15, and, unloading in hot darkness, bivouacked at a farm near the station.