- ity." He was noticed to "object very strongly to our
air-craft crossing his lines." Never was enemy more anxious not to draw attention to his moves. And, far behind our line at Arras and elsewhere, men dug and entrenched and sketched works of defence to meet the German rush, while the front trenches sat still and looked across deserts, apparently empty of life, till a head moved in the open. It was a season without parallel in our armies' experience—this mere waiting for a certain blow to be dealt at a certain time. No written history records the psychology of those spring days. The Diary is concerned with the Battalion's own sorrow. Here is the story, as written: "During the month [February] the Household Battalion was disbanded and eighty men were allotted to the Battalion. This marks the beginning, and is the first official recognition of the fact that the Irish Guards cannot keep up the supply of Irish troops. A most regrettable epoch in the history of the regiment." On the heels of this comes, comically enough, almost the sole personal expression of feeling in the entire Diary. They went, on the last day of February, into rest at Gordon Camp, christened after the 9th Gordons who made it. "It is without exception the most comfortable and best-laid-out camp I have ever been in. Everything that one could possibly wish for is here—even an officer's bathroom with porcelain bath and hot and cold water laid on." It was an all-too-short interval in cold and dirty work; for on the 2nd March the Scarpe trenches reclaimed them—Fampoux, Colt Reserve, Pepper and Pudding—in snow, sleet, and unbroken monotony of working-parties.
On the 6th March the Diary notes that the 2nd Grenadiers, whom they relieved the next day, carried out a raid, successful in itself, and doubly so as drawing no retaliation on their own line. It resulted in two identifiable prisoners and a machine-gun. But battalions do not approve of their neighbours raiding when the enemy is "nervous."
