The first little ripples of our own returning tide began to be felt along the Arras-Amiens line when on the 4th of July the Australians, under Lieutenant-General Monash, with four companies of the Thirty-third American Division and many tanks, retook our lost positions round Hamel and by Villers-Bretonneux. The Battalion celebrated that same day by assisting the American troops with them (and the Guards Division) at their national game. Here the Second in Command narrowly escaped serious injury in the cause of international good-will, for a baseball, says the Diary most ungallantly, “luckily just missed him and struck a V.A.D. in the face.” The views of the V.A.D. are not given. The 14th July, the French celebration at Paris, fell just on the eve of Marshal Foch’s historical first counter-attacks which, after the Second Battle of the Marne, staggered the German front, when the same trees that had hidden the 1st Battalion’s dead at Villers-Cotterêts, close on four years ago, covered and launched one of the armies that exacted repayment. And the 2nd Irish Guards, entirely appreciating the comfort of their situation, despatched to Paris every member of their bureaucracy who could by any means hatch up passable excuses for helping to form the composite battalion which should grace the festivities there. The C.O. (the Second in Command had gone on already), the Adjutant, the Assistant Adjutant, the Sergeant-Major, the M.O., the Sick Sergeant, the Orderly-Room Clerk, the Signalling Sergeant, the Mess-Sergeant, and all the drums managed to get away. So Captain Nutting chaperoned the remainder down to the pleasant watering-place of Criel Plage, which is over against Dieppe. This time they were set up in business as a young officers’ seminary for the benefit of newly commissioned officers who were to be taken in hand by the 4th Guards Brigade before passing on. Many of them had had considerable service in the ranks, which again required a special form of official education. They were distributed among the battalions to the number of twenty-five or thirty each, and drilled as companies. Whatever they learned, they were, beyond question, worked up to fit physical trim with the others, and, at the Guards Brigade Sports, the Battalion covered itself with glory. They won every single event that counted for points, and the Brigade championship by an overwhelming aggregate. Next day, being the fourth anniversary of the War, they listened to a serious sermon on the matter—as they had listened to others—not much crediting that peace was in sight. Among the specialists who lectured them on their many businesses was an officer from the G.H.Q. Physical and Bayonet Training School, who spoke of “recreational training”—boxing for choice—and had a pretty taste in irony. For he told them how well some pugilists had done in the War; citing the case of an eminent professional who had been offered large purses to appear in the ring,