April 25. Several fellows posted to companies to-day, so that it looks as if we shall soon be over the wall that Haig spoke about and with our backs to it again.
April 26. More Demolitions—news still very bad—if they don’t let us go to the Huns methinks they will come to us.
April 27. Demolitions again. We destroyed a steel rail and heard a fragment of it go humming away over our heads just like a shell. About ten minutes afterwards the Colonel came down with great wind-up and chewed us all to pieces for being careless. Our piece of rail had evidently gone right over the camp and landed somewhere near the Revolver Range. Unfortunately, the Colonel had heard it humming over his hut and it had nearly frightened him to death!
April 28. Church parade.
April 29. Learning how to make dug-outs as practised by an officer who has never heard a gun go off—I wonder if the Huns do silly things like this.
April 30. Wasting ammunition all day on the Lewis Gun Ranges.
May 1. Bayonet fighting—so that it looks as if we may eventually get into it again. One man down from the line to-day says that he has seen R.E. Field Coys. holding the front lines with P.B.I. in support. Oh! let us be joyful!
May 2. Had the day off as I am Orderly Officer to-morrow. Went out with Lucas and two nurses and crossed the Seine by an old-fashioned rope ferry. Climbed the hills on the far bank and spent a glorious day in the woods—scenery magnificent and everything so unlike war. In the evening we boarded a river steamer and went downstream four or five miles to Rouen. Had tea (so-called), took the nurses back to their camp, and back to ours by train. Rouen is a strange mixture—Gothic beauty and twentieth century filth!
May 3. Quiet day. Could hear distant gunfire in the evening—presumably at Amiens.
May 4. Lucas and Richards went up the line to-day.