It was a test, were one needed, that proved all ranks to the uttermost. The heroism that endures for a day or a week at high tension is a small thing beside that habit of mind which can hold fast to manner, justice, honour and a show of kindliness and toleration, in despite of physical misery and the slow passage of bleak and indistinguishable days. Character and personality, whatever its “crime-sheet” may have been, was worth its weight in gold on the Somme, where a jest counted as high as a rum-ration. All sorts of unsuspected people came to their own as leaders of men or lighteners of care. There were stretcher-bearers, for instance, whose mere presence and personality steadied half a platoon after the shell-burst when, picking themselves up, men’s first question out of the dark would be: “Where’s So-and-So?” And So-and-So would answer with the dignity of Milesian Kings: “I’m here! Caarry on, lads!” So, too, with the officers. In the long overseeing of endless fatigues, which are more trying than action, they come to understand the men with a thoroughness that one is inclined to believe that not many corps have reached. Discipline in the Guards, as has been many times pointed out, allowed no excuse whatever for the officer or the man; but once the punishment, or the telling off, had been administered, the sinner and the judge could, and did, discuss everything under heaven. One explanation which strikes at the root of the matter is this: “Ye’ll understand that in those days we was all countin’ ourselves for dead men--sooner or later. ’Twas in the air, ye’ll understand--like the big stuff comin’ over.” On Sunday the 27th November, the day of the requiem mass for the Irish Guards in Westminster Cathedral, a requiem mass was said in Méaulte Church and they moved out to a French camp (“Forked Tree”), south of the town where the big French huts held a hundred men apiece, but cook-houses, etc., were all to build and the “usual routine improvement work began again.” Their Brigade bombing officer, Lieutenant the Hon. H. P. O’Brien, was appointed Staff Captain to the 1st Guards Brigade, and Captain R. G. C. Yerburgh left to be attached to the 2nd Guards Brigade H.Q. Staff for instruction in staff duties. They were visited by their corps and divisional commanders, inspected by their Brigadier and route-marched till the 3rd December, when they moved to Maltz Horn Camp.