In those days it took me three solid hours to drag myself through the mud and water on my morning round of perhaps 2 miles. Officers and men alike were caked with mud.
What an afternoon that was when the parapet was blown in and we lost 12 killed and 25 wounded in a few minutes! I shall never forget seeing boys who might well have been still at school, pinched with hunger and cold, sitting crouched under a waterproof sheet, fumbling with their frozen fingers, trying to open a letter from home. This letter was probably their one gleam of light in their horrible surroundings; and yet they never complained, but stuck to it like Camerons. I used to curse in my heart the loafers at home who ought to have been out here, instead of leaving it to lads who never should have been exposed to a winter in the trenches.
Who is there left in the Battalion that used to come to the garden at Verquin to listen to the drums and pipes playing Retreat, in the days when we first began to know that we were to take part in one of the greatest battles of the age?
The little broken-down house, which was the Battalion Headquarters at Philosophe the night before Loos, is still there. Quality Street, instead of being a peaceful little village where one lived in comparative safety, is now battered every day by German shells.
How many men are there still in the ranks who clambered over the parapet on the 25th, and joined in that mad rush which struck terror into the Bavarian regiments who were up against us? I do not suppose that in any case there can be many who have a clear recollection of what actually did happen in the charge, or on that fateful afternoon when the remnant of the 44th Brigade hung on to Hill 70, silent and grim in their determination to hold the Hill for Scotland. The bank behind which we first began to dig is still there, and easily recognised, just between the firing and support line.
What a weary little party returned to Philosophe that night! What a shambles Quality Street was next morning when we went back through it to hold the old German line.
Even Christmas at Allouagne, the concerts in the Recreation Room, and the boxing in the Hospital yard, are beginning to fade away in the distance.
Although we have recently been lucky, yet there are many of our comrades who marched off from Noeux-les-Mines in January, but will never answer their names again at Roll Call. Some have been buried at Loos, within a few yards of where we fought on the 25th, and some have been buried in the trenches.
I often wonder whether the men of the Battalion realise the link that is being formed amongst us. Do they realise, when the war is over, the longing to see some of their old officers again will be such as to defy description? Do they realise that little acts of unselfishness and kindness, performed every day in the trenches, will be amongst their most treasured remembrances, no matter whether they go out into the world or return to a life of ease and comfort? Then it may be that for the first time the old saying, "Once a Cameron always a Cameron," will come home to them in its full intensity.
J. W. S.