the battlefield were raging at Thiepval and Poziers at Guillemont on the

other flank of the enemy's arc of hills, the density of his troops was yet still more remarkable. According to the calculation of the British Staff, he had eleven thousand men garrisoning two thousand yards of trench around the village. This amazing concentration of effort against the British advance was eveidence of the Teuton's military industry but it failed to give his troops the spirit of the attack and it allowed the British guns to inflict casualties which were on this occasion fifty percent heavier than the enemy's losses in previous bombardments.
On the other hand the enemy by massing troops around Guillemont, close to the point of union between the French and British armies succeeded in checking the Allies advance at this point. Since July 15th, when the Highlanders took Waterlot Farm, the ruins of Guillemont had been partly entered during the swaying of the battle-line between Deville Wood and Trones Wood. On July 30th both the French and British attempted an advance on Guillemont, but found the position too strong to be carried. The German system of works stretched southwards for a mile to Falfemont Farm, on a down above Maurepas, and extended eastwards for another mile to Leuze Wood and northward for another mile to Ginchy.
The enemy thus had three high bases for the defence of Guillemont, which was a mass of ruins lying right at the head of the Fricourt valley, with high ground sheltering it southward from direct fire. On August 8th another attempt was made by Sir Douglas Haig to capture Guillemont. After the usual long and furious bombardment the British troops advanced in the darkness before dawn and broke into the village. But in the confusuion and varying success of a large nocturnal operation some of the attacking forces lost touch. On the extreme right the troops did very well, and in a rapid movement conqured the high ridge south of Guillemont and gained an important stretch of ground at small cost. The forces on the left however were checked in the gloom by machine-gun fire in front of the village.This was the ordinary hazard of every trench battle where some redoubts in the hostile line have always to be enveloped. Immediately alongside the checked force another fine body of troops enjoyed better fortune and meeting with little resistance in the enemy's battered lines of works, drove right into the village inflicting heavy losses on the Germans. Then occured a stroke of bad luck. The victorious troops who were still fighting amid the ruins in darkness, lost touch with the battlaions held up on their right. Instead of holding on to the important part og Guillemont they had won some of the men ventturously worked through the whole chaos of brick and tumbled earth until they reached the extreme south-eastern corner of the village. they were but a mere island in a hostile sea, ith the depth of the village between them and their friends and the enemy all about them.

When the sun came up and lit the scene it was too late to rectify the lines of the operation. The German gunners swept the ground with an incessant curtain fire and German bombing parties continually attacked the little island of khaki. After the failure of this operation the French and British troops again combined in an attack around Guillemont in the middle of August. But again though ground was gained about the western outskirts of the village and in the direction of Ginchy, the main position at Guillemont remained unconqured and was proving to be a very hard nut to crack.On the 24th August the Germans made a grand scale attack on the new British Line. But the line held firm. fighting raged backwards and forwards all along the front in particular around Thiepval. Sir Douglas Haig did not want guns removed from the Beaumont Hamel area to the Bapaume sector, because he had another larger operation in view for the middle of September. He had therefore to make General von Marschall apprehensive and partly to this end the fierce demonstration on the Ancre was arranged while the Australians vioently pressed the enemy at Thiepval by a drive into Mouquet Farm and ridge beyond and above it. While the northern point of the German line was thus being threatened the main British attack was delivered with victorious skill against the southern point of the of the hostile arc of works at Ginchy and Guillemont. Again the enemy devined what was about to happen and as the attacking troops were waiting in their assembly trenches they were hammered with some ten thousand gas shells. But the bursts of gas did not seriously impair the vigour of the massed Irish and English troops. There were men from Connaught, Leinster and Munster waiting in the rainy night in front of Guillemont, with English Riflemen alongside them. The Riflemen had already had a long and trying ordeal in the trenches and the Irish Regiments were brought up to the battered position to add fresh energy to the attack. The heavy German bombardment continued upon the new Irish Divisions and became so intense that it seemed impossible for men to live under it, much less advance. The Irishmen who were mostly Roman Catholics, knelt down under the terrific gun fire and received absolution from a devoted chaplain. Then to a tune on the Irish Pipes they went forward with headlong impetuosity, and broke right through the ruins of Guillemont and reached the sunken road leading south-west from the village.

Faced with shell fire and raked with machine guns the Irishmen swept quickly on to their main objective. Companies of the 7th Leinsters, the ' Fighting Seventh ' went over in perfect lines through enemy shelling..The germans did not know what had hit them as the Irishmen got to grips with them. It was here that daring Lieutenant John Vincent Holland, the battalion bombing officer won the Victoria Cross 300 yards north of the village.' Not content with bombing hostile dugouts ...Holland fearlessly led his bombers through our own barrage and cleared a great part of the village in front. He started out with twenty-six bombers and finished with only five after capturing some fifty prisoners...he was far from well at the time and later had to go to hospital '.

Captain Hancock of the 2nd Leinsters wrote to Holland to express the Leinsters' pride that this was the Regiments first Victoria Cross of the war. This remarkable twenty seven year old Irish Lieutenant was not a professional soldier. from Athy, County Kildare, his father was a past president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons of Ireland and he himself was a veterinary student. His nickname was ' Tin-Belly ' because he had served as a trooper in the Life Guards. he had hurried home to Ireland from Argentina to enlist. A story about him and his lively spirit states that he made a bet of five pounds with a fellow officer the night before the attack that he would be the first over the parapet. he won the bet, the Victoria Cross.
" By this gallant action, Lieutenant Holland undoubtedly broke the spirit of the enemy
and thus saved many casualties when the Battalion made a further advance "