On the 18th October they relieved the 1st Coldstream in the front line on the west face of Hohenzollern redoubt, which, were there choice, might be reckoned the very warmest sector of all the neighbourhood. Both battalions knowing their business, the relief was effected in two and a half hours under heavy shelling without casualty, though the Irish lost two killed and three wounded in the earlier part of the day. Their new position ran without definite distinction, except sand-bagged barricades, into the German system, and one might at any time crawl into nests of enemy sentries and bombers. This, again, was a fresh experience to them. Loos had been clean-cut in its boundaries. Their week in Left and Right Boyau from the 8th to the 15th October had not led to undue intimacies with anything worse than Jack Johnsons, but now they were promised a change of methods. Since the great break-through had failed that was to carry our triumphant arms to Lille, the authorities seemed to attach immense importance to the possession of a few score yards of enemy trench, commanded, when won, by a few thousand yards of other trenches, and were willing to expend much blood upon the captures. Doubtless there was deep design at the back of the detailed work, but, from the point of view of those who had to carry it through, it was a little wearisome. They were warned that bombing attacks would be the order of the day, and on the 10th October their Brigadier visited them and, as a preliminary, ordered that a trench should be run to connect Guildford Street, on the left of the redoubt as they faced it, with West Face Trench, a matter of some “sixty yards over ground fully exposed to hostile fire at a range of sixty yards.” In this manner, then, was the trench dug. Beginning in the dark at eight o’clock 2nd Lieutenant A. Pym, with a party of No. 1 Company, crept out of West Face, Lance-Sergeant Comesky leading, and the whole chain crawling behind him “extended” (on their stomachs) along the line to be dug. They had noted the bearing very carefully in the daytime, and a party in Guildford Street under 2nd Lieutenant T. Nugent were trying to help them to keep it, in a subdued tone. One must not shout when there are rifles and machine-guns, hands on triggers, fifty yards away. As the party lay they dug and scratched, first with their entrenching implements, and then with picks and shovels passed along the line; and Lance-Sergeant Comesky, the curve of whose labouring back in the darkness was their guide, had to keep his direction through broken wire, what had been broken men, shell-holes, and the infinite tangle and waste of war. The Irish have some small reputation for digging when there is need. They dug that night as not even the 1st Battalion had dug, and when light came the new trench was four and a half feet deep, and the sole casualty was Lance-Sergeant Comesky, slightly wounded. They had been suspected and