1915
LA BASSÉE TO LAVENTIE
They were not disappointed. New Year's Day was
marked by the flooding out of a section of forward
trenches, and by experiments with a trench-mortar,
from which 2nd Lieutenant Keating and some Garrison
gunners threw three bombs at an enemy digging-party
a couple of hundred yards away. This is the first reference
to our use of trench-mortars in the young
campaign. The enemy retaliated next day by bombing
from their real trench-mortars, at a distance of seven
hundred yards, the small farm-house where Battalion
Headquarters lay. The bombs could be seen "coming
at a very steep angle, but the house was only once
hit." Daylight showed the work of the Irish trench-mortar
to have been so good—it had blown a gap in the
German trench—that they continued it and inflicted
and observed much damage.
They were relieved on the 3rd January by the King's Royal Rifles and got to billets near Vieille Chapelle late that night. A London Gazette announced that the Distinguished Conduct Medal had been awarded No. 2535 Sergeant C. Harradine; No. 1664 Corporal C. Moran; No. 4015 Private W. Moore (since killed in action); No. 2853 Lance-Corporal W. Delaney. Also "the new decoration called the Military Cross" had been awarded to Lieutenant the Hon. H. W. Gough.
The Battalion, as a whole, had its reward for the past ten days when the Brigadier expressed his approval of the work of the Guards Brigade "and especially that of the Irish Guards."
Cleaning and refit, classes in bomb-throwing (both
