With my regiment

by Arthur Mills

I watched the tin, wondering if all the stew had turned to steam. However, happily it had not, and we had a good meal.

After lunch I strolled across to have a look at the field-dressing station, which was in one of the farm outbuildings.

The doctor was attending to one or two wounded who came in, but not having a very busy time. I watched him at work for a little while. He was wonderfully thorough considering that his ward consisted of an open yard and his material a box of dressings, a pair of scissors, and a bottle of iodine. He stripped off the field bandages of each man that came in and put on fresh dressings. One fellow walked in with a bullet straight through his chest. He was deathly pale, but he stood up while they took off his jacket and cut his shirt away, and looked down quite unconcerned at the blood pouring from the hole through him.

At four o'clock we were told we were wanted in the firing-line again. Goyle made the men take off their greatcoats and advised the officers to put away their mackintoshes.

This last piece of advice was very sound. An officer wearing a mackintosh is a conspicuous target in a line of men, and many have met their death through doing it. Officers will carry rifles, cover their field-glasses with khaki cloth, wear web equipment, and take all sorts of precautions to make themselves as like the men as possible, and then the first time a shower of rain comes put on their mackintoshes and forget to take them off again when they advance. They might just as well wear surplices.

XVIII. "THE —TH BRIGADE WILL ATTACK ——"

We thought we should have to attack that day, as we knew the powers that be were most anxious for —— to be taken.

The regiment had been, so to speak, in the forefront of the battle for the past two or three days; that is to say, we had not had any troops between ourselves and the enemy, and, though the fighting had never been of a brisk nature, nevertheless the men were feeling the strain of constant watchfulness and going without sleep. Even if there is not much firing it is not a restful feeling to have nothing but a stretch of open ploughland between oneself and the enemy, and to feel one may be called upon to advance over the ploughland at any minute. It was a nasty stretch of open country, swept and raked from every corner by the enemy's machine-guns, and to lie there waiting for the order to get up and cross it was rather like sitting inspecting a stiff fence.

Greatly to our relief the Westshire Regiment had been sent up to relieve us at 4 A.M. and we had gone back in support. We had handed over the trenches to them without much reluctance, and with an easy prescience that we had had our share of work, and that it was the turn for a regiment fresh from reserve to come up and take our place.

After being relieved we were marched back to a sugar refinery a mile behind, and here we fully expected to spend the day. The men were issued out rations, and the officers made preparations for breakfast. There was a nice house belonging to the manager of the sugar refinery, and in a kitchen we found some crockery and a fire, also the caretaker of the manager's house and his wife. The latter made us a pot of tea, and with our morning issue of cold bacon, a tin of marmalade, and a loaf of bread there were the materials for a good breakfast for the five of us—Goyle, Evans, myself, and the other two platoon commanders.