May 5. Church parade. Wrote a lot of letters and pretended to be happy.
May 6. Borrowed a horse from the Cavalry Depot and went for a ride with one of the nurses. Had a ripping lunch at a little café in Petit Couronne—omelettes and fresh butter (to say nothing of the nurse) are much nicer than bully and dry biscuit. In the evening played the Cavalry at Rugger and whacked them 8–6 after an abnormally hard game. We did enjoy ourselves.
May 7. Lazy day! Sometimes I wonder if there really is a war on—these people here don’t know about it, and in England they must naturally know less.
May 8. Very enjoyable ride in the Forêt de Rouvray with Major J. Had a damn good nag.
May 9. Poor old Jock received news of his brother’s death in Mespot—knocked him up badly.
May 10. Great joy. I am posted at last and to my old Coy.—good old war again!
May 11. At Last!!! Left Rouen in a crowded troop train and made myself thoroughly miserable by wondering if I should ever come back and what everybody was doing at home, etc., etc. Silly ass!
May 12. Sunday. Passed through Boulogne and Wimereux early in the morning and then through Calais and Cassel and on to Heidelbeck, where we slept in the train. Hun planes came over in the night and tried to bomb the train, but they didn’t get anywhere near us.
May 13. Set off at 9 a.m. to find the company, and after walking eleven miles with my pack found them at one of the old camps in the Ypres Salient—quite like home again. The camp is surrounded by guns, and a battery of 9.2 howitzers just behind us make life unbearable. In the evening the Divisional Concert Party gave us a very good show in spite of the fact that the “theatre” was continually shaken by shell explosions.
May 14. Went up the line with Mellor to take over his work on the Green Support Line. Paid my respects to Ypres again—it doesn’t alter much. Whilst I was writing a Bosche plane came over our camp and brought down two of our Parseval balloons in flames. All the observers managed to get into their parachutes and landed in the woods about 200 yards away. Later on two more Bosche came over, but one was driven off and the other forced to descend with a broken propeller.