The idea of forming a Guards Entrenching Battalion seems to have come from certain officers at the base. Shortly before the arrival of the new battalions of the Guards in France, rumours were afloat that an entrenching battalion for the Guards Division was about to be formed. Captain Viscount Lascelles wrote a letter to the effect that a platoon from the reinforcements of every battalion of Guards was to be diverted to an entrenching battalion. The platoon from the 2nd Battalion Grenadiers had already been told off, and was to be commanded by an officer of the Connaught Rangers, while the Battalion itself was to be placed under a cavalry captain. Captain Viscount Lascelles deplored the fact that there was no one of sufficient seniority at the base, to combat these proposals, and thought the whole matter should be referred to the Lieutenant-Colonel rather than let it lapse, on the judgment of half a dozen ensigns at the base. Nothing, however, appears to have been done until November, when a Guards Entrenching Battalion was formed, and Major E. C. Ellice, Grenadier Guards, was sent out to take command. He arrived at Chipilly on the Somme, about five miles from Bray, on December 1, 1915, and took over the Battalion from Major Clutterbuck, who had been temporarily in command. The Battalion consisted of 230 Grenadiers, 300 Coldstream, 250 Scots Guards, and 200 Irish Guards, with 40 tunnellers from the Royal Engineers. Major Ellice, having made the acquaintance of his new Battalion, appointed Lieutenant Ian Bullough, Coldstream Guards, to be Adjutant, while Captain Jones, who had hitherto occupied that post, became Quartermaster. The Battalion was divided up into four companies: No. 1 Company Grenadiers under Captain M. Lloyd, No. 2 Coldstream under Lieutenant Viand, No. 3 Scots Guards under Lieutenant Maitland, and No. 4 Irish Guards under Lieutenant Hanbury. The billets in which the men lived were not only uncomfortable but also extremely inconvenient, being sometimes over a mile apart, and so cramped were the men for room that pigsties even were made use of to house them: it was therefore with pleasure that Major Ellice received instructions to move the men to Wood Camp, which was no paradise, but still preferable to the pigsties, and much nearer the trenches. An old stone quarry, worked by a gang of twelve quarry-men under a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, provided the material for draining the camp and improving the roads. Water carts were obtained to provide sufficient water for cooking parties, and fatigue parties were sent every evening to draw water for other purposes from the Somme.