As proof of Lieutenant Holland's dash it is related that the night before the engagement he made a bet of five pounds with a brother officer that he would be first over the parapet when the order came. He won the bet, the V.C., and, in addition, he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and of St. George of Russia. CHAPTER XIV THE WOODEN CROSS DEATH OF LIEUTENANT T.M. KETTLE OF THE DUBLINS For all this glory and renown the Irish Brigade had to pay a bitter price. Many a home in Ireland was made forlorn and desolate. The roads of the countryside by which the men went off to the war will be lonely and drear for ever to womenfolk, for never again will they be brightened by the returning foot-steps of son or husband. One of the most grievous losses which the Brigade sustained was the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Lenox-Conyngham of the Connaught Rangers. He came of an Ulster soldier family. He was the son of Colonel Sir W. Fitzwilliam Lenox-Conyngham of Springhill, co. Derry, was born in 1861, and three of his brothers were also serving in the Army with the rank of Colonel. He fell at the head of his battalion, which was foremost in the rush for Guillamont. "I cannot imagine a more fitting death for him," writes Captain Stephen Gwynn, M.P., who served under Colonel Lenox-Conyngham since the days the battalion was formed at Fermoy. "He was never in doubt as to how his men would acquit themselves. To us officers he said things in private which would sound a little arrogant if I quoted them--and yet they have been made good." The welfare of the men was always his first concern. Captain Gwynn relates that on the return of the battalion one night, after a dreary day of field operations at home, the company officers, feeling very miserable, were gathered about the door of their mess-room, waiting for dinner, when the Colonel called out that their proper place was in the cook-house, seeing that the men were first served. The incident greatly rejoiced the heart of Captain Gwynn, for, having served in the ranks, he knew that the officer who is best served by the men is he who places their comfort and well-being before his own. In France, whenever any compliment was paid to Colonel Lenox-Conyngham, he could not be content until, with frank generosity, he passed it on to the company officers. "It is you who have done it," he would say. "He was right too," says Captain Gwynn. "We did the work, and no men were ever less interfered with; but we did it as we had been taught to do it, and because we were kept up to it at every point."