On the 17th they went into line “for a tour which proved to be one of the most unpleasant and most expensive” since the Battalion came to France. They held the whole of the 2nd Guards Brigade frontage, with a battalion of the 3rd Guards Brigade on their left, so the companies were necessarily broken up, as their platoons were detached to the separate trenches. All No. 4 Company and two platoons of No. 3 were in the front line, and a platoon of No. 3 and Company H.Q. in the support-line near Hunter Street. In Walkrantz Trench was another platoon of No. 3; No. 1 Company was in an unwholesome support-trench; and working with it, one platoon of No. 2. In Bleuet Farm were the remaining three platoons of No. 2 Company; and Battalion Headquarters were in Chasseur Farm, about a hundred and fifty yards behind No. 1 Company. Altogether, it might fairly be called a “hurrah’s nest” to relieve, hold, or get away from. The enemy, even without being stirred up by our first series of preliminary bombardments, which had opened on the 15th, were thoroughly abreast of things. They began by catching No. 2 Company coming up to Bleuet Farm in a barrage of gas-shells, which meant putting on box-respirators in the dark and going ahead blind. Only one man was knocked out, however. The transport was gassed late at night on the Elverdinghe road, and held up for two hours under fumes of lachrymatory and phosgene. But transport is expected to get in, whatever happens, and the fact that Lieutenant R. Nutting, its officer, was badly gassed, too, was an incident. From the official point of view he should have put on his respirator at the first, which is notoriously easy when rounding up hooded men and panicky horses. So he suffered. But as he was the only person who knew where Bleuet Farm might be in that poisonous blackness, he lay on the mess-cart, and between upheavals, guided the convoy thither. Next morn, after spending the night in a dug-out, he had to be carried back to the dressing-station. That same night 2nd Lieutenant Lofting, while on patrol along the canal bank, was slightly wounded in the leg. The next three days were one nightmare of stores of all kinds for the battle-dumps pouring into the front line while the platoons there stacked and sorted them out, under continuous fire. Our hourly increasing force of heavies (the field-guns were not yet called upon) took as much of the burden off our men as they could, but the enemy were well set and knew just what they had to bowl at. The front-line companies’ work was to repair a very great deal of trench damage; make assembly-trenches for the coming attack; pile up the dumps, praying that the next salvo would not send them all sky-high, and keep the crawling communication-lines clear of corpses, wreckage, wounded and traffic blocks.