The Irish Guards in the Great War, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b The First BattalionKipling, Rudyard
History
The Irish Guards in the Great War, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b The First Battalion
Kipling, Rudyard
Great Britain. Army. Irish Guards -- History; World War, 1914-1918 -- Regimental histories -- Great Britain
They moved out on the 2nd of February _via_ Maricourt and Maurepas,
left No. 2 Company under canvas in Maurepas Ravine, distributed the
rest in shelters and dug-outs and resumed their watch. The frozen
ground stopped much digging or “improvements,” and the enemy’s front
line gave no trouble, but a few small shells were sent over, one
of which hit 2nd Lieutenant J. Orr temporarily in command of No. 1
Company and wounded a couple of men. The rest of their turn--February
2 to 6--was quiet, for the new-fallen snow gave away the least
movement on either side. While they crouched over their braziers and
watched each other, the operations round Serre and at the nose of the
Arras-Le Transloy salient, began again as the earth’s crust hardened.
The Sixty-third Division hammered its way for a day and a night up
the southern slopes of Serre, and our guns were threatening the line
of enemy’s trenches from Grandcourt westward. This move unkeyed the
arch of his local defences at this point, and next day he evacuated
Grandcourt and such of his front as lay between Grandcourt and the
Stuff redoubt.
By the 7th February our troops had carried forward to midway between
Beaucourt and Miraumont, and on the 10th February the Thirty-second
Division took in hand the business of shifting the enemy out of what
remained to him in the Beaumont Valley. Their advance brought Serre
village into direct danger from our artillery, and any further move
on our part up the valley of the Ancre would make Serre untenable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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