There naturally cannot be any definite or accurate record of the day’s work. Even had maps been issued to the officers a week, instead of a day or so, before the attack; even had those maps marked all known danger-points--such as the Ginchy-Flers sunk road; even had the kaleidoscopic instructions about the brown and yellow lines been more intelligible, or had the village of Ginchy been distinguishable from a map of the pitted moon--once the affair was launched, there was little chance of seeing far or living long. The two leading platoons of No. 3 Company following the Coldstream, charged, through the ripping fire that came out of Ginchy orchard, to the German first-line trench which ran from the sunken road at that point. The others came behind them, cheering their way into the sleet of machine-gun fire. The true line of advance was north-easterly, but the 2nd Guards Brigade on the right of the 1st, caught very heavily by the German barrage on their right flank, closed in towards the 1st Brigade and edged it more northward; so that, about an hour and a half after the advance began, what the countless machine-guns had left of the Irish found itself with three out of its four company commanders already casualties, all officers of No. 2 Company out of action, and the second in command, Major T. M. D. Bailie, killed. They were held up under heavy shelling, either in front of German wire, or, approximately, on the first-line objective--a battered German trench, which our artillery had done its best to obliterate, but fortunately had failed in parts. With the Irish were representatives of every unit of the 1st and 2nd Brigades, mostly lacking officers, and some fresh troops of the Fourteenth Division from the left of the line. Outside their area, the Sixth Division’s attacks between Ginchy Telegraph and Leuze Wood had failed, thanks to a driving fire from the Quadrilateral, the great fortified work that controlled the landscape for a mile and a half; so the right flank of the Guards Division was left in the air, the enemy zealously trying to turn it--bomb _versus_ bayonet.