On the 11th August fresh attempts were made to work some sort of foothold across the crater-pitted ground into the enemy’s trenches, specially at the spot where a crater had been partially filled up by the explosion of a fresh mine. The day was quiet. Captain M. V. Gore-Langton spent the evening of it in reconnoitring the enemy’s wire, went out across the partly filled crater, found yet another crater which ran into the enemy’s line, and there met one German lying out within a few yards of him, whom Private Dempsey, his orderly, killed, thereby rousing the enemy in that particular point. They opened with bombs on a party of ours at work on a sap in one of the innumerable craters, and were discomfited for the moment. An hour later, Captain Gore-Langton, with one man, went out for the second time across the same crater to put up some more wire. He fell into the arms of a German bombing party, was knocked down thrice by explosions of bombs around him and only got back to the trenches with great difficulty. The C.O., Colonel Trefusis, then “remonstrated” with him on the grounds that “it is not the Company Commander’s business to go out wiring.” On the heels of this enterprise, a really vicious fight with machine-guns as well as bombs developed in the dark. It was silenced by four rounds of our howitzers when the roar of the bombs stopped as though by order. A third affair broke out just on dawn when our men found enemy working-parties in craters below them and bombed with them exceedingly, for the Germans were not good long-range throwers. On the morning of the 12th August came General Horne to look at the position, which he examined leisurely from every part of the line instead of merely through the covered loop-holes which had been built for his convenience. “I was glad when I got him safely out of it,” wrote the C.O., “for one never knows when bombs may come over.” Just before they were relieved, the C.O., Colonel Trefusis, was telephoned word that he was to command the 20th Brigade and was pathetically grieved at his promotion. He hated leaving the Battalion which, after eleven months of better or worse, he had come to look upon as his own. No man could possibly wish to command a better. He was going to a brigade where he knew no one, and his hope was that he might be allowed to remain one day more with the Battalion “when it goes to the trenches” before going into reserve. He had his wish when they went into the line on the 14th August, and he faced the ordeal, worse than war, of saying good-bye to each company in the morning, and at evening “went round to make sure that the night companies had plenty of bombers in the proper places.” Bombs were the one tool at that time which could deal with nests of occupied craters, and since the work was dangerous the Irish were qualifying for it with zeal and interest, even though they occasionally dropped or released bombs by accident.