between Givenchy and Cuinchy, in the hope of bursting it and flooding the country. They spent more than a hundred eight-inch howitzer shells on that endeavour in one day, and later—long after the lock had been thoroughly protected with sandbags—used to give it stated doses of shell at regular intervals. Similarly, they would bombard one special spot on the line near Béthune because once in '14 an armoured train of ours had fired thence at them.
The Battalion had just been reinforced by a draft of 107 men and 4 officers—Captain Eric Greer, Lieutenant Blacker-Douglass, 2nd Lieutenant R. G. C. Yerburgh, and 2nd Lieutenant S. G. Tallents. They were under orders to move up towards the fighting among the brick-fields which had opened on the 25th, and had not ceased since. Unofficial reports described the trenches they were to take over as "not very wet but otherwise damnable," and on the 30th January the Battalion definitely moved from Locon, with the 2nd Coldstream, via Béthune to Cuinchy. Here the Coldstream took over from the 2nd Brigade the whole line of a thousand yards of trench occupied by them; the Irish furnishing supports. The rest of the Brigade, that is to say, the Herts Territorials, the Grenadiers, and the 3rd Coldstream were at Annequin, Beuvry, and Béthune.
The companies were disposed between the La Bassée-Béthune road and the railway, beside the Aire-La Bassée Canal. The centre of their line consisted of a collection of huge dull plum-coloured brick-stacks, mottled with black, which might have been originally thirty feet high. Five of these were held by our people and the others by the enemy—the whole connected and interlocked by saps and communication-trenches new and old, without key or finality. Neither side could live in comfort at such close quarters until they had strengthened their lines either by local attacks, bombing raids or systematised artillery work. "The whole position," an officer remarks professionally, "is most
