Major A. F. Bayley arrived on the 27th, and was posted to the 310th Brigade.
For the next few weeks things were comparatively quiet, though life in the batteries was diversified by occasional bombardments. I take from a note written at the time a short account of one of my routine trips. It is a fairly typical one, and will serve to give some idea of the sort of condition under which we were now holding the line:
First we drive in the car for about two miles; then we alight, fix gas helmets in the ready position, put on tin hats, and go on on foot, leaving the car in a sunken road fairly safe and snug. Now the excitement begins. We go across country, generally in full view of the Boche lines, though they are still far off, and often dodging the places where their long-range shells are falling, or lying down till they burst if we hear them coming near us. A walk of one and a half miles brings us into a much-battered village in which my most advanced guns are scattered about, and now begins the second and more dangerous stage. The village (Ecoust) is a deserted ruin, but for occasional individuals moving hastily from cover to cover, and we waste no time in passing through it, and enter the communication trench which leads up to the front infantry line. As the Boche has exact photographs of the course of this trench, he frequently bombards it; and though the chances are greatly against a shell falling on any one bit of the trench just at the moment when one is passing, still at the time the possibility seems far from remote, and the situation is thrilling enough. About a mile of trench as the crow flies (but treble that distance to walk, owing to the zig-zag formation of the trench, so designed to prevent a shell from sweeping right down it) brings one to the support line. Stage three, and the most dangerous one, now begins; one follows the support trench for a good long way; it is generally pretty deep, but in places it has almost been destroyed by recent shelling, and then one has to crawl and duck until a safer depth is reached; then up other zig-zags to the very front line. Here one is in comparative safety, for the enemy is only one or two hundred yards off, and his artillery dare not shoot at you for fear of hitting their own front line; so you are safe except for snipers (if you are foolish enough to show yourself), or for that most terrible of all terrors, the minenwerfer.
These trips were often unpleasant enough even to people who, like myself, could always count on returning to a comfortable and fairly safe billet for the night, and they helped us, I hope, to realise the strain and discomfort which the officers and men at the batteries were forced to endure from day to day and night to night. The bulletins "nothing fresh to report" or "all quiet on such a front" had for them very little signification.
During this period, in addition to the normal duties at the gun positions and in the wagon lines, every spare man was kept constantly hard at work in building stabling for the coming winter. It was a case of "sic vos non vobis," for everyone knew that our chances of remaining in this particular place were very small indeed, and that other men would enter into the fruit of our labours; however, the same considerations applied to the whole army, and one could only work one's hardest and trust that other divisions would do the same—a trust which, it is only fair to say, was rarely disappointed, even though, as must also be admitted, batteries almost always thought that the stables, shelters, and positions, which they had made, were a good deal better than those to which they succeeded. This belief may or may not have been always justified; anyway, it was human nature, and certainly the stabling constructed for this winter by the brigades and D.A.C. was of a very excellent and substantial nature.
During the period covered by this chapter 14 Military Medals were gained in the Divisional Artillery. Lieut. F. C. Pritchard won the Military Cross on the 8th October for the following act:
"When an ammunition pit and the camouflage over a gun were on fire, he went out and pulled the camouflage off the gun, and shovelled wet mud on to the fire. He did not leave until it was isolated from the other ammunition, thereby preventing much destruction."