infantry attacks, after ninety-minute bombardments, on works begotten out of a generation of thought and prevision, scientifically built up by immense labour and applied science, and developed against all contingencies through nine months, are not likely to find a fortunate issue. So, while the Press was explaining to a puzzled public what a far-reaching success had been achieved, the “greatest battle in the history of the world” simmered down to picking up the pieces on both sides of the line, and a return to autumnal trench-work, until more and heavier guns could be designed and manufactured in England. Meantime, men died. THE HOHENZOLLERN AND TRENCH WORK The Battalion, a little rested, and strengthened by four officers from the 1st Irish Guards (Lieutenant and temporary Captain FitzGerald, Lieutenants Rankin and Montgomery, and 2nd Lieutenant Langrishe) as well as a draft of a hundred men under Lieutenant Hamilton, was introduced to the trenches on the 3rd October, when they moved to Vermelles and hid themselves in the ruins and cellars of as much as the enemy had allowed to remain of it. It was an unpleasant experience. The following comment covers it, and the many others of the same sort that followed: “We was big men for the most part, and this creeping and crawling in and out of what’s left of houses, was not our ways of living. Maybe some of the little fellows in the Line would have found it easier. And there’s a smell to that kind o’ billet worse than graves—a smell off the house-plaster where it lies, and the wall-paper peelin’ off the walls, and what’s in the sand-bags that we build acrost the passages an’ the sculleries, ye’ll understand, and the water on the floors stinkin’ and rottin’. Ye hear it drip like dhrums through ceilings in the night. And ye go in an’ out of them dark, stinkin’ places always stoopin’ an’ steppin’ on bits o’ things. Dead houses put the wind up a man worse than trenches.” Next day they were turned down into the multitude of trenches, established or in the making, which lay between Vermelles and the great Hohenzollern redoubt that swept every line of approach with its sudden fires. They were led out (October 5) at dusk across a muddy field beside a dead town, and entered that endless communication-trench called Central Boyau, whose length was reckoned by hours. It led them to the line held by the East Yorks Regiment and two companies of the K.O.Y.L.I. they were relieving. Men forget much, but no man of any battalion ever forgets his first introduction to the stable, deadly fire-line, as distinguished from the casual field-trench. An hour or so before they moved off, a 5.9 burst in a ruined cottage where all the Battalion Staff was sitting, and might well have destroyed the sergeant-major, drill-sergeants and signallers, etc. The only casualty, however, was one pioneer killed, while the officers of the Battalion Staff in the next mound of ruins escaped unhurt.