When we were in Brigade reserve in YPRES, the working parties sent out at night often had this journey to do, after a two mile tramp and heavily laden with shovels, duckboards, barbed wire, and so on, but there was no falling-out, and little grousing.
A feature of this sector was the craters and shell-hole posts out in the open in front, garrisoned by small parties of men; there they lay—cold, wet, and sleepy—for hours on end, visited at intervals by an Officer or N.C.O.
On the 20th Captain Ord was appointed Commandant of the 164th Brigade Officers’ School, and Major A. H. Haslam joined us. On the 22nd 16 “Minnies” fell on our front line, wounding Second Lieutenant J. F. Walmsley and J. H. Ogden; the following night we were relieved by the 1/5th King’s Liverpool Regiment and went back to YPRES to the PRISON and MAGAZINE billets. These two buildings had not been greatly damaged, and the MAGAZINE was fairly shell-proof. We sent the usual nightly working parties up the line till the 27th, when we relieved the 1/4th King’s Own in WEILTJE sector, to the north of RAILWAY WOOD; here the Hun was further off and things were a bit more comfortable.[F] Second Lieutenants Reed, Tong, Vipond, and Vernon were posted to other Battalions on the 29th. The tour was quiet on the whole, and on the 31st a piece of the enemy’s parapet fell in, giving our snipers a splendid chance—they claimed three certain hits. That night we were relieved by the 1/5th King’s Own and marched back to C Camp, a collection of wooden huts distributed in a roadside copse near BRANDHOEK, a little bit of Heaven to weary and sodden men coming out of the line. Here we could sleep and feed in peace, do refitting, physical jerks and parades, and play football.
During the month no less than three Officers and 55 men had gone sick and been sent to Field Ambulance (also known as “Fanny Adams”)—for which the change to the Flanders clay was no doubt largely responsible.
We remained at C Camp till the 8th November, when we moved up to YPRES again and were billeted in the RAMPARTS and the SCHOOL; the latter was a large building on the MENIN ROAD outside the city and made a decent billet till the gunners put a large gun in it, with the usual sequel.
During the next three days we sent a working party of 250 up the line every night. Major Crump rejoined the Battalion on the 11th.
On the 12th we relieved the 1/4th King’s Own in the RAILWAY WOOD sector, B and C Companies being in the front line, A and D in support in BEEK Trench. Captain Houghton rejoined the Battalion.
On the night of the 13th the moon shone beautifully and disclosed our wiring party to the Hun about 100 yards off. Second Lieutenant Higson was hit; the next night our Lewis guns retorted on Hun working parties.
Every day brought its ration of “Minnies,” shells and bullets, and someone got hit; Second Lieutenant Walton was killed by a sniper’s bullet on the 16th. The sniper was promptly shot by one of ours.
On the 17th, at 11 p.m., for half an hour, we strafed the Boche with guns, heavy and Stokes’ trench mortars and rifle grenades, to stir him up—the usual tactics of the 55th Division; he retaliated feebly and wounded only one man; a fighting patrol then went out, but found no Hun about.