._

We were shelled all the morning, but had no serious casualties.

My Brigade now consisted of the Devons (14th Brigade), West Ridings
(13th Brigade), and the Norfolks (15th Brigade). The remains of the
Cheshires and Dorsets were withdrawn and put into the Rue de Bethune
hamlet in rear of Festubert, under orders of the 13th Brigade as their
reserve, whilst the Bedfords were attached to, I think, the 14th
Brigade, somewhere Quinque Rue way. It was a glorious jumble, and what
happened to the rest of the 13th Brigade I do not know. I believe
they combined in some way with the 14th, but I know that two days
afterwards the Brigadier was left with only one fighting battalion,
the West Kents, I think.

However, my command was shortly increased considerably by the arrival
of Commandant Blanchard with the 2nd Battalion of the 70th Infanterie
de Ligne (Regulars). Blanchard was a good solid man, and I put him to
hold Givenchy in conjunction with the Devons, who were now occupying
the Bedford trenches there. The French on the right of the 70th gave
us acute reason for anxiety by retiring calmly from their trenches
when they were shelled; but it was only their way, for half an hour
afterwards they trotted back into them quite happily, much to the
relief of the Devons and their exposed flank.

I rode down to Givenchy in the afternoon to see Blanchard and make
arrangements for holding the village, and here I met Williams (now
commanding the Devons since his C.O., Gloster, had been hit two days
before, not very seriously) and talked matters over with him.

We expected a night attack, and were certainly not in a strong
position to resist it. Had we been driven in we should have been
jammed into the swamp in rear, between the Canal and the
Gorre-Festubert road, which would have been extremely unpleasant. So I
issued orders to hold tight at all costs, besides secret orders to
certain C.O.'s as to what they were to do if we were badly mauled and
had to fall back.

Luckily no attack took place, and we had a fairly quiet night.

_Oct. 24th._

At 7 A.M. I received the encouraging news (from the 2nd corps) that we
were going to be heavily attacked to-day, and what certainly gave
colour to it was the arrival of a large number of Black Marias during
breakfast, which exploded within an unpleasantly narrow radius of our
house. It is quite conceivable that the position of our Headquarters
had been given away by some spy. Anyhow, it lo