To-night we dined off boiled eggs, tea, and soup, in that order, in our mess-tent, and we are now going to bed.
On Sunday I went away in a waggon to Railhead to Mericourt to catch a train at 7-30 to go on another course at G.H.Q.—Hezdin, near Etaples. On the train I met Bowkett, from the Tyneside Scottish, and we travelled together. While we were waiting at Amiens to catch a connection we met another man, who was going on the same course, and whom we avoided, as he seemed a terrible person. We arrived at Hezdin about 6-30, reported at G.H.Q., and then walked up to a chateau, where we were billeted. There we saw the Adjutant, who gave us a room together with two decent beds. The chateau is a topping big place in pretty grounds and has most of the furniture left in it. We had a large mess-room, with doors opening into the terrace, and an ante-room. The next day, as our time was slow, we missed our breakfast and only just came down in time for parade at 9-0. In the evening we went down to Hezdin to the hotel to dinner, about four of us. The next day we had breakfast in bed, and were in time for the lecture at 9-0. In the morning, gun drill and firing. The other people in the course were very interesting people, and an awfully nice lot. There was an Australian whom, of course, we all called Anzac—a small strongly-built man, with a military moustache, named Hart. He had a very amusing manner of taking off old Army Colonels and 'varsity men, from what he called Okker and Camer, and whom he described as always going about with a towel round their necks, a blazer and pumps. He would always talk to order. To set him off we had the man we saw on Amiens station, and whom we all call George, for no known reason, and whose real name was Arthur. Like Anzac, he had been all over the world, and was very quiet and melancholy. He used to talk in a pathetic high voice, and teach us Chinese, and tell us how he was arrested as a spy in Armentières, and of his experiences. The other chevalier, you knew at sight, came from Oxford. Bouchier, of the Royal Scots, a small, dark Englishman, who was born in Tipperary, and was known to our society as Arthur Bouchier, the passionate Scot from Tipperary. Sutherland, Black Watch, a decadent specimen from the Coldstreamers; Pinto Pike, and a Canadian Captain called Clarke. The others were Lloyd (Cheshire), Robinson (King's Liverpool), Laying (Gloucesters), Granville (Royal Fusiliers), who was in the same Battalion as Wynn, who was chaplain of Jesus, and Cuthbertson, the girl of the footlights; Steed, a pianist, Propert, and others. Our instructor, Higgins, was a topping chap, with the Military Cross. We had an awfully jolly time on the course.
On Friday we again went into Hezdin for dinner, several of us.
On Saturday morning we saw most of them off, and Bowkett, George Bouchier and I remained. In the afternoon Bouchier and I went and had a hot bath at an old nunnery by the river. Dinner at the hotel, where we spent a comfortable night.
On Sunday morning we set off at 6-0 to catch the 6-24 train, and we arrived at Amiens about lunch-time. On the station I met half a dozen officers from the 8th Suffolks, and talked to them about various mutual acquaintances and of what the Battalion was doing. Then in the town Bowkett and I met a man named Grey, who had come out from our Reserve Battalion to the 8th Suffolks, and we went and had lunch in the Hotel du Rhine with him and several other officers, two of whom I had met at Cambridge. A topping dinner, including ices and strawberries.
When we returned to the station we discovered that the train we were supposed to go on was a crowded leave train, full of people returning from leave, so we waited till the next. Arriving at Mericourt I had to walk to Bresle, but got the assistance of one motor waggon and a mess cart, and arrived at Bresle only to find that the Battery was moving in an hour to Albert, and was going in the trenches that night. I went to have tea, and meanwhile the Batteries went on. Then, very luckily, I found a friend and a car that whisked me past the Batteries trudging with handcarts on into Albert. Arrived in Albert I went on to see Rigby, whom we were taking over from, in a small billet, but found that we were getting a big billet in the hospital—a huge, great place, with large rooms built in 1904, and toppingly fitted up, but now practically empty. All our men sleep in two big double rooms, and Kitty and I in one room, the others in a room 100 feet by 25 feet. Our mess-room is a large, clean, dry, tiled room, with one huge window; we furnished it with tables and chairs, chiefly taken from the old billet, which we are not using. Fuller keeps the room smart with wild flowers.
At 11-0 p.m. o'clock I went up to the trenches with Carroll and half the Battery, who were going in for the night—the men in one big dug-out and Carroll in one with two machine gunners. I returned home and got to bed about 3-0 a.m.
The next morning I was wakened before seven by the guns waking up for their early morning hate just under my window. There are Batteries dotted about all over the place here—18 pounders, howitzers of all sizes, and naval guns. You almost trip over them wherever you go. There are two 6in. howitzers hiding in our back garden. I went up to the trenches to look round the next morning (Monday).
The trenches here are very different from what we have been used to—long narrow trenches, not breastworks, dug down in the chalk, a veritable labrynth of trenches, going in all directions, up hill and down dale. They are very deep, and very few rifle shots are fired. Sniping is done with field guns and trench mortars. The line is very curious, moving forward and backward. In one place in our line a village runs out and there is a German salient. In front of the salient lots of mines have been exploded and no trenches remain, merely holes that bombers hide in, where the trench bulging again we share our parapet with the Bosche. I don't go there often, as you have to crawl, and you usually crawl into the wrong trench and find yourselves wandering in the Bosche lines. The Germans send over a lot of oil cans filled with old razor blades and rubbish, which do a good deal of damage, and are rather unpleasant. However, we are educating them not to send them over too often, as we send over two to their one with our mortars, and in time we shall get them under our thumbs I hope. We always have one man by each gun firing almost continuously. We have dug-outs well back with wire beds in them, also rats! Here we have big underground dug-outs 20 feet underground, some of them down long stairways. The country is very hilly and wooded in parts; our part of the line has two hills and one valley, it is rather like Salisbury Plain, or a flat edition of Derbyshire.
Carroll has been in, and I have gone up in the daytime.