All around the La Bassée district fierce fighting had raged since October. The 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards, in common with other regiments, now experienced the severities of trench warfare. At the end of January they were stationed near the La Bassée brickfield, and the Germans were subjecting them to a withering fire. [Illustration: _Copyrighted in U. S. A. by New York Herald._ How Sergeant O’Leary of the Irish Guards Won the Victoria Cross “He rushed on like one possessed, never looking behind to see if his comrades were following. A railway bank rose in front of him. He cleared it, and went on, heedless of risks....”] The last night of January the enemy’s fire was particularly hot. It was decided that the trenches were too expensive to hold. But before evacuating them the men were ordered to storm the enemy’s position. In order to prepare the way for the assault, the artillery commenced one of the fiercest bombardments of the war up till then. The boom of the big pieces and the detonation of their shells were audible twenty miles away. The guns fired with such intensity in order to demolish what had become a regular bastion in the German lines, also to break down the barbed wire entanglements in front of the German trenches, and thoroughly to demoralize the enemy before the men stormed the positions. No. 2 Company of the Irish Guards was ordered to keep up a hot rifle fire. This was to make the Germans keep under cover, no matter how much they wished to escape from the artillery. The diversion also caused the enemy to expect an attack from this direction, with the result that he concentrated his fire on the trench occupied by No. 2 Company. Then No. 1, O’Leary’s Company, which was on the left of No. 2 Company’s trench, was ordered to charge. The Irish dashed over the parapet with a yell, their bayonets fixed, and rushed at the enemy in fine style. The distance they had to cover to reach the German positions was from 100 to 150 yards. The men were very eager to be at the enemy after their long spell in the trenches, and went for their foe at racing speed. O’Leary soon outstripped his comrades. His Irish blood was up. “You would laugh if you saw us chasing the Huns and mowing them down,” he wrote to his parents. CHARGE OF THE “MAD IRISHMAN” He rushed on like one possessed, never looking behind to see if his comrades were following. A railway bank rose in front of him. He cleared it, and went on, heedless of risks, toward a strong barricade held by the Germans. O’Leary paused at a little mound and looked around. In front of him was a deadly machine gun, trained on the trench occupied by the second company of Irish Guards. As already explained, their work was to deceive the enemy and the maneuver had proved successful. Their rifle fire had prevented the Germans from showing their faces, and they had not seen that the British were racing toward them.