"At about 10.30 p.m. we saw the Transport set off along the road, taking rations and supplies up to Ypres.... Humfrey went with them. (I would have gone up with him, but the Adjutant of the 2/5th had sent a message by the signals saying that I could sleep at the Transport Lines and report the following morning.) Red Cross motors were also coming back from Ypres with wounded. Meanwhile the moon—a full moon—steadily rose above the Front, amid the flashes between Ypres and Messines, the bombardment sounding like thunder. It was a fine scene. If only there had been an artist there to paint it! A farm on the Switch Road (a new road for traffic built by the British Army) some way off got on fire. I hear that the King's, in our Brigade, are going over the top on a raid to-night. Our great offensive here has not yet opened, but it will come off before very long....
"To bed 11.30, the guns booming like continuous thunder. I was awakened in the night by shells whizzing past the hut where I was sleeping."
So I was, at last, introduced to that strangest of all music—the screech of a shell: Whoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-UMP!
CHAPTER II
THE PRISON
It has already been observed that the 55th (West Lancashire) Division, after a hot time on the Somme, particularly at Guillemont and Ginchy, had come up the Salient in October, 1916. So when I joined the Division it was in the 8th Corps, commanded by Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston ("Hunter-Bunter," as I remember Best-Dunkley calling him), in Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army. The 55th Division was responsible for the sector between Wieltje and the south of Railway Wood.
The 55th Division was commanded by Major-General Jeudwine, of whom it has been said: "No General ever was more devoted to his Division: no Division ever was more devoted to its General."[2] The three infantry brigades in the Division were the 164th Brigade (Brigadier-General Stockwell), the 165th Brigade (Brigadier-General Boyd-Moss), and the 166th Brigade (then commanded by Brigadier-General Lewis). The 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers, who had been commanded by Colonel Best-Dunkley—an officer who had previously been Adjutant on the Somme—since October 20, 1916, were in the 164th Brigade.
In those days a brigade consisted of four battalions. The other three battalions in the 164th Brigade were the 1/4th King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, commanded by Colonel Balfour, the 1/8th King's Liverpool Regiment (Liverpool Irish), commanded by Colonel Heath, and the 1/4th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, commanded by Colonel Hindle, who, after winning the D.S.O. and Bar, was killed at the head of his battalion at Heudecourt during the great Battle of Cambrai on November 30, 1917. When the necessity for "infiltration" brought about the reduction of the strength of brigades from four battalions to three, the Liverpool Irish were afterwards transferred to the 57th Division. But throughout the whole of the period with which this narrative deals the Liverpool Irish were still with us.
It is interesting to note the summary of the situation written by the chronicler of the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers in the 1917 Lancashire Fusiliers' Annual: