In those days a brigade consisted of four battalions.  The other three battalions in the 164th Brigade were the 1/4th King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, commanded by Colonel Balfour, the 1/8th King’s Liverpool Regiment (Liverpool Irish), commanded by Colonel Heath, and the 1/4th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, commanded by Colonel Hindle, who, after winning the D.S.O. and Bar, was killed at the head of his battalion at Heudecourt during the great Battle of Cambrai on November 30, 1917.  When the necessity for “infiltration” brought about the reduction of the strength of brigades from four battalions to three, the Liverpool Irish were afterwards transferred to the 57th Division.  But throughout the whole of the period with which this narrative deals the Liverpool Irish were still with us.

It is interesting to note the summary of the situation written by the chronicler of the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers in the 1917 Lancashire Fusiliers’ Annual: 

“On May 26th, the Battalion moved back to the Prison.  Lieutenant-Colonel B. Best-Dunkley went on leave the same day, leaving Major Brighten in command.

“Then began a very memorable 17 days—­Ypres was shelled heavily every day, particular attention being paid to the Prison.

“By night the Battalion was occupied in digging a new communication trench, Pagoda Trench.  The digging was finished in two nights, but there was all the riveting to do as well.  Every night the working parties have to pass through a barrage.  Our casualties during this period totalled 60 or 70.  The moral of the men was very high all the time.  The continual shelling, paradoxical as it must seem, hardened and prepared them as much as anything for the great day which every one knew was not far off.

“We had our first serious gas attack on June 3rd.  It was preceded by a heavy bombardment of Ypres, after which some 25,000 gas shells were put over, lasting from 10 p.m. to 4 p.m.  We were fortunate in having very few casualties.”

That was the position of the Battalion when I set off to join it in the Prison cells on the morning of June 5, 1917.

I rose at 10 a.m.  It was a rowdy morning.  The guns were still unusually lively.  While we were having breakfast shells were bursting three or four hundred yards away from our hut, and we could hear occasional H.E. dropping as far back as Poperinghe behind us.

The following letter which I wrote home from my cell (which I shared with three other second-lieutenants, Gilbert Verity, Bernard Priestley and H. A. Barker) in the Prison, dated June 6, 1917, describes my journey to Ypres: