A characteristic of every place was the lack of facilities to obtain extra meals, though at certain estaminets a good repast of fried eggs and chips, with an occasional dish of stewed rabbit, was procurable.
This is merely a glimpse of the peaceful and gladly welcomed break in the life of the soldier who is on active service. It makes you all the more fit for the trenches and that night sentry duty to which you are so often roused in your dug-out by the corporal shouting, “Next relief!”
CHAPTER XVII
THE DAILY ROUND
[By way of contrast with the diary which was kept in Gallipoli by an Australian soldier, and is given on page 180, and as an admirable companion to that work, there is this diary of a young officer, kept by him while serving on the Western Front. The diary is of the small, leather-bound pocket variety, and it was kept by means of the little pocket-pencil accompanying it, in small, yet clear and coherent writing, despite shell fire, bombs and other warlike elements. The extracts are made exactly as they were entered from day to day, and they form a deeply interesting record of what is “the daily round, the common task” of a very large number of junior officers who have undergone precisely the same experiences with unfailing cheerfulness and courage. The writer after serving in an Officers’ Training Corps, was posted to a Service battalion of a famous old Line regiment.]
Dec. 13th, 1915.
Marched to ——, seven miles. Water in places up to the knees. No billets for B Co. on arrival.
Dec. 14th.