Irish one & very good they were but I should have preferred to have had my own Brigades. At first when we got into the line everything seemed to go wrong & I thought at one time that we would never be ready. Working parties were guided to the wrong places, carrying parties were scattered by shell fire & officers & others made serious mistakes which never occurred when we were in the line before; everything seemed combined to make things go wrong & this naturally added to my anxiety. Then the rain came down in buckets & the wretched men had to stand up to their waists in water for hours together; no hot food under these conditions & they had no great coats which had to be left behind so as not to [illegible] the men; one could hardly move along the trenches owing to the mud; however it cleared up & the trenches improved. I used to watch the little village of Guillemont most days & wonder if we would capture it. We worked a very tough nut, a mass of deep shell holes, mines, broken down trees & other obstacles & one could see the German machine gun loopholes peeping out amongst the ruins & knew that they would have to be knocked to pieces before we could hope to get in. In the meantime we had dug new trenches so as to [illegible] as close to the Germans as possible & to have as little of No Man's Land to cross as possible; our greatest distance was 250 yards & this was too much, but we had no time to get near. The ground our men had to cross before they got to the enemy was a mess of shell holes, fallen trees, railway lines broken, & other delights & in consequence the pace was necessarily slow. This is more or less the shape of the village on the other page. In order to reach the trenches with as few casualties as possible the artillery put on what is called a 'creeping barrage', that is they fired just in front of our troops as the latter advanced so as to prevent Germans getting up to fire at them; the barrage advanced gradually closer in front right up to the German trenches & the men were told they must creep up with it; this of course had to be very accurately timed so as not to hit any of our men. The day before & up to the hour of the attack on the second day, heavy shells were rained on the village so as to destroy the defences and knock out concrete machine gun emplacements; the Germans all this time were in their deep dug outs & subterranean passages, which existed before the war & we knew of their existence. It was necessary therefore to [get to – crossed out] arrive at the exits of their dug-outs before the Hun had time to come out; if this could be done all would be well. What has happened before is that [new page] [sketch map of Guillemont village, showing direction of British attack] the troops have reached the parapets all right & had gone straight on without first digging out the Huns in the dug outs, who immediately our troops had passed came out of their holes & shot at our men from the rear. However we took ample precautions that this should not occur again. We had luck with it on the day. The night previous [before – crossed out] the men moved up to the trenches from which they had to attack [illegible], and here they had to stay until the hour of the attack. During all these hours of waiting the danger I apprehended was that the Germans might have seen them & shelled them heavily; if they had I don't quite know what would have happened; however they did not spot them, chiefly owing to our fine aeroplane service which prevented any Bosch aeroplane seeing over our line. The men were warned to keep very quiet & not to move about or show their bayonets over the top. Everything went well, & the men went over splendidly according to the careful orders they had received from their commanding officers; there was no hanging back or shirking. We did not take the village in the first bound, but made two bites at it; that is to say that after gaining the north & west ends of the village, they had to stop then, fight & mop up prisoners; then after an interval another wave of men swept over & past the others & went through the village still behind the artillery barrage to the eastern edge of it when they halted again & dug themselves in; fresh troops coming up