On the 13th October they, with their Brigade, took over the support line on the old battle-front from various units of the 2nd and 3rd Guards Brigade. The 2nd Grenadiers relieved the 1st Grenadiers in the front line on the right and the 2nd Coldstream the Welsh Guards on the left sector. The Battalion itself was scattered by companies and half-companies near Koekuit-Louvois farm, Craonne farm, and elsewhere, relieving companies and half-companies of the other battalions, and standing by to attend smartly to the needs of the forward battalions in case of sudden calls for more bombs, small-arm ammunition, and lights. They were instructed, too, to be ready to support either flank should the troops there give way. But the troops did not give way; and they had nothing worse to face than heavy shelling of the supports at night and the work of continuing the duckboard-tracks across the mud. Most of the men were “accommodated in shell-holes and small, shallow trenches,” for water stopped the spade at a couple of feet below ground; but where anything usable remained of the German pill-boxes, which smelt abominably, the men were packed into them. It was in no way a pleasant tour, for the dead lay thick about, and men had not ceased speaking of their officers of the week before--intimately, lovingly, and humorously as the Irish used to do. More than most, the advance on Houthulst Forest had been an officer’s battle; for their work had been broken up, by the nature of the ground and the position of the German pill-boxes, into detached parties dealing with separate strong points, who had to be collected and formed again after each bout had ended. But this work, conceived and carried out on the spur of the moment, under the wings of death, leaves few historians. They were relieved on the 16th October by the 20th Lancashire Fusiliers of the 104th Brigade on their right, returned to Elverdinghe through Boesinghe, and entrained for a peaceful camp at Proven. During their three days’ tour, Lieutenant R. H. S. Grayson and fourteen other ranks were wounded, mainly by shell and two other ranks were killed. They had begun the month of October with 28 officers and 1081 other ranks. They had lost in sixteen days 252 other ranks and 14 officers killed or wounded. Now they were free for the time to rest, refit, and reorganise in readiness, men said, to be returned to the Somme. (“Ye’ll understand that, in those days, we had grand choice of the fryin’-pan or the fire.”) THE RETURN TO THE SOMME AND CAMBRAI