It is a matter of no military importance but of deep interest to everyone who sympathizes with the 69th Regiment and knows its history and traditions, that when the raiding party marched up past Regimental Headquarters on their way to the trenches, there fluttered from the bayonet of one of the men a flag—a green flag marked in gold with the harp that has for centuries been Ireland’s emblem—the harp without the crown—and inscribed “Erin Go Bragh!” This flag had been given to Sergeant Evers of the Band and by a stranger—an old woman who burst through the great crowd that lined the streets when the Regiment marched from the armory to the dock on their journey to Camp Mills and, crying and laughing at the same time, thrust it into his hands. The flag went “over the top” twice that night, and for memory’s sake the name “Rouge Bouquet” was embroidered on it. Later, the embroidered names became so numerous that the design of the flag almost disappeared. Who the woman was who gave the Regiment this appropriate tribute is unknown. Perhaps it was Kathleen in Houlihan herself. It was natural that this brilliant and utterly unexpected _Coup de Main_ should have the effect of irritating our country’s enemy. It did so, and the result was a dose of “Schrecklichkeit” which at first threatened to prove more serious than the fatal bombardment of the dugout in Rouge Bouquet. It came on the days of the raid—March 20th and March 21st. The French soldiers had been inclined to make light of the 69th Regiment’s elaborate precautions against gas-attacks, of the constant wearing of the French gas mask and the English box respirator at the alert position (the respirator bound across the soldier’s chest ready for immediate use) when in the trenches. The Germans, they said, could not send cloud or projector gas through Rocroi Woods, and their last gas shell attack had been made three years before. Why take such precautions against an improbable danger?