The battalions got through the day with only six men killed, eleven wounded, and one gassed, and on the 9th, when they were busiest in the work of repairing wrecked trenches, they were informed that certain recesses which they had been cutting out in the trenches for the reception of gas-cylinders would not be required and that they were to fill them in again. As a veteran of four years’ experience put it, apropos of this and some other matters: “Men take more notice, ye’ll understand, of one extra fatigue, than any three fights.”
A few aerial torpedoes which, whether they kill or not, make unlimited mess, fell during the night, and on the morning of the 10th October Lieutenant M. V. Gore-Langton--one of the Battalion’s best and most efficient officers--was shot through the head and killed by a German sniper while looking for a position for a loop-hole in the parapet. He was buried six hours later in the British Cemetery at Vermelles, and the command of his company devolved on Lieutenant Yerburgh. Our own artillery spent the day in breaking German wire in front of the Hulluch quarries at long range and a little more than a hundred yards ahead of our trenches. Several of our shells dropped short, to the discomfort of the Irish, but the wire was satisfactorily cut, and two companies kept up bursts of rapid fire during the night to stay the enemy from repairing it. Only 5 men were killed and 5 wounded from all causes this day.
On the 11th our guns resumed wire-cutting and, besides making it most unpleasant for our men in the front trenches, put one of our own machine-guns out of action, but luckily with no loss of life.
The tragedy of the day came later when, just after lunch, a shell landed in the doorway of Headquarters dug-out, breaking both of Colonel Madden’s legs, and mortally wounding the Rev. Father John Gwynne, the Battalion’s R.C. chaplain (Colonel Madden died in England a few weeks later). The Adjutant, Lord Desmond FitzGerald, was slightly wounded also. The other two occupants of the dug-out, Captain Bailie, who had gone through almost precisely the same experience in the same spot not three days before, and the Medical Officer, were untouched. It was difficult to get two wounded men down the trenches to the Headquarters of the supporting battalion, where they had to be left till dark. And then they were carried back in the open--or “overland” as the phrase was. Father Gwynne died next day in hospital at Béthune, and the Battalion lost in him “not merely the chaplain, but a man unusually beloved.” He had been with them since November of the previous year. He feared nothing, despised no one, betrayed no confidence nor used it to his own advantage; upheld authority, softened asperities, and cheered and comforted every man within his reach. If there were any blemish in a character so utterly selfless, it was no more than a tendency, shared by the servants of his calling, to attach more importance to the administration of the last rites of his Church to a wounded man than to the immediate appearance of the medical officer, and to forget that there are times when Supreme Unction can be a depressant. _Per contra_, Absolution at the moment of going over the top, if given with vigour and good cheer, as he gave it, is a powerful tonic. At all times the priest’s influence in checking “crime” in a regiment is very large indeed, and with such priests as the Irish Guards had the good fortune to possess, almost unbounded.