Upon the left of the Fifth Division the difficult task of storming Guillemont had been entrusted to the Rifle and Rifle Brigade battalions of the 59th Brigade upon the right, and to the 47th Brigade of the Sixteenth Irish Division. This brigade had come temporarily under the command of General Douglas Smith upon the left, taking the place of the 60th Brigade, which had lost heavily in strength from cold, wet, and continual German gassing and bombardment. The 61st was in divisional reserve. The attack was ordered for noon. Profiting by previous experiences it was planned that the whole village should not be rushed at once, but that the attack should proceed with method in three definite stages. The guns of the Sixth and of the Twenty-fourth Divisions joined in the preliminary bombardment. At noon, the infantry leapt over their parapets and charged home. The enemy was taken unawares. The 10th and 11th Rifle Brigade with the 10th and 11th King's Royal Rifles, supported by the 6th Oxford and Bucks, carried all before them on the south and west of the village, while the Leinsters, Connaughts, and Royal Irish did as much in the north. The Quarries, which was a nest of machine-guns, was taken in their stride. No more valiant or successful advance had been seen during the War, and it may take a place beside the attack of the 36th Brigade at Ovillers as a classical example of what British infantry can do with all the odds against them. The Riflemen fought in grim silence, but the Irish went through with a wild Celtic {228} yell which, blending with the scream of their pipes, must have added one more to the horrors of the shaken and hard-pressed garrison. Neck and neck the two brigades, English and Irish, went through the German line. Hand-to-hand fights took place in the village, but all resistance was soon beaten down. By 12.30 the first objectives were solid, and at 1.20 the whole village was taken and the survivors of the enemy streaming out to eastward. The English losses were heavy and equally distributed. The Irish were also heavy, especially in the case of the 6th Connaughts, who also lost their colonel. At this time, through the failure of recruiting in Ireland, these brave battalions were below full strength, in spite of which within six days they stormed or helped to storm two of the strongest villages upon the line. One hardly knows which emotion is stronger--one's pride in those who went, or one's contempt for those who bided at home. No one admired the splendid dash of the Irish stormers more heartily than the British Riflemen, who kept pace with them in their desperate venture. Equally brave, they were more deliberate in their methods, with the result that more than once pockets of fighting Germans who had been overrun by the Irish, but were still venomous, were cleared up by the Riflemen on the flank. So infectious, however, was the fiery dash of the Irish, that Mr. Philip Gibbs has left it on record in one of his