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Remembered Today:

Two Men - One Memorial


stiletto_33853

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Saturday, May 20.

We move from here at 6 to-morrow morning. I am sorry to leave this place, its duck pond, orchard, and cider press; the little boy who leads a different dog every day about on a string, and the other good people of the farm, who can't know about life in towns, whose kingdom is sufficient; the red clover fields, and the orchard where our cooker are quietly busy; the nightingales, and the May blossom.

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Sunday, May 21.

An uneventful and not very restful day. One of the women owning our Mess billet was ready for us on our arrival with a marble chimney-piece lying in three pieces, 'excactly as it was when we left a week ago'. It was to cost a hundred francs. If she broke this on purpose, whe has had a severe loss.

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Monday, May 22.

We marched as a Brigade in great heat, halting for about an hour. At Orville I had a very delightful billet, very clean, with a wallpaper with little flowers on it, and a wash hand stand. A real civilised bedroom, in almost the only two storied house in Orville. A most courteous old lady owned it, and she had at the back of it a very neat garden. The men bathed in the Authie. The people of our Mess billet were also very nice to us, and made us drink a large quantity of their wooden cider when we arrived.

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Tuesday, May 23.

At 6.00 p.m. we started again, a further stage on the road towards the sound of the guns. It was dark most of the way, and as we got within ten miles of the lines, the Very lights began to flicker a kind of welcome at us. Arrived at an unlovable village, at about 11.30. The men's billet bad. When we came to find our Mess, we discovered a very angry, high-screaming woman, pushing our servants out of the door and depositing their rifles and their 'sacs' after them. It appeared that the servants had come in and taken possession in rather a cavalier fashion. Indeed, the lady brought her husband clad in pants and a shirt, and thuis arrayed he gave us a spirited imitation of the exact song and dance which the servants had done, his wife providing the music. I've never heard any one as loud as that woman. I remarked that there were 'des choses de plus mauvaises' -Q. 'Quoi donc?'_A. 'Les Allemands.' _ 'Alors, Allez, allez les chasser.' We assured them that, as usual, there would be money for all this. At that the man ceased to dance, but the woman is still shouting, and has forbidden us to play with a tennis-ball in the orchard at the back.

Wednesday, May 24.

In the afternoon Company Commanders went up to the trenches, to see the ground for work.

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Thursday, May 25.

Went up to the ground for work again this morning, with Gracey and Fagan, a weary walk. At night the Company worked in those same trenches from 9.30 to 1.30 in the pouring rain. Got back in an 'uneasy dawn' at 3.0 a.m., drenched and muddied. And whereas we officers could change and sleep in something like beds, the men had not a dry stitch save their great-coats in which to lie on the floor of their barns, and I felt ashamed at this unavoidable injustice. With the amount of comfort that an officer has and must have, it is easy to love the tiredness for sleep and the hunger for food that are so frequent in this kind of life.

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Friday, May 26.

Slept till late in the morning. In the afternoon rode up to the trenches again with Patterson, and reconnoitered the night's work. Had a fine night and worked from 9.30 to 1.30, and then watched the daylight come as we marched back along Watling Street (so says the map) - Watling Street, which is here undermined with trenches and sometimes swept by machine guns, which leads from the trenches to Radlett, and so to church Stretton and Wenlock Edge. There was a bombardment of the trench in front (our front line) from 11.0 to 11.15, and we had to stop work.

During this day there were many turns and much glorious futility, and I realised that I am peculiarly fortunate in my fellow Company officers.

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Tuesday, May 30.

Made efforts to get in touch with 2nd Battalion to see Buxton. A very idle day.

Read The Scholar-Gipsy before going to bed.

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Wednesday, May 31.

I joined the 6th R.B. a year ago to-day. This cannot be celebrated by a dinner, because there is night work to be done. To-morrow, perhaps.

Jocelyn Buxton came over.

Fraser returned from 3rd Army School. It was very good to see him. I walked back part of the way with him after dinner.

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Thursday, June 1.

On an all-day working party, digging cable trenches through the fields.

After haversack lunch I lay in long cool grass and looked through the dog-daisies and buttercups, and remembered this was June.

We celebrated yesterday, Russell-Smith and Barnes and Johnstone came to dinner. Also the CQMS brought me round quite a decent fiddle, which I played for some time

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Sunday, June 4.

Church Parade. Rode over to 2nd Battalion. Saw Buxton and others of the Sheerness people, and also Neale - they were encamped in a place like Sidbury Hill, with a rolling chalk plain all about.

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Tuesday, June 6, and Wednesday, June 7.

Worked at night with forty men on Dog Trench, a grass grown ruin of a trench, with destroyed dug-outs and the ruins of old bombardments - altogether an unpleasant place. We are to assemble in it on the day. It poured with rain all night.

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Friday, June 9.

Again wet, but a dry night for work, we deepened Dog undisturbed, though at times I thought the enemy must see us on so clear a night. They did see a party of C Company, and shelled with about ten whizz-bangs rapid. But no casualties. We are told that the enemy have put up a notice in front of their trenches, saying, 'We know you are going to attack here. But you won't do it before Peace.'

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Saturday, June 10.

Rose at 12.45 and had a very idle day. 'L'attaque' and reading. No night working parties.

We leave to-morrow night.

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Monday, June 12, to Friday, June 16.

Working every night on assembly trenches. The first three nights rain poured, and the trenches were in such a state as to make movement very slow.

The number of troops on the Serre Road (Watling Street) at night is very great, and the chaos at trench junctions, when parties are returning at 1.0 a.m. and converge on each other, is almost ludicrous.

Traction engines come through the night, dragging huge guns and howitzers. Everywhere we see men struggling with boards, hurdles, and all kinds of building materials.

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Thursday, June 15.

After tea we went down the road, and saw a battery of 12-in howitzers, put in position during the short hours of darkness last night - also their shells.

At night we continued on assembly trenches, camouflaging all the work as before, and grassing over all the earth.

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Friday, June 16.

The weather has cleared again, which is good, though it made the night very clear for work, and the Bosche drove us to ground with 'that' machine gun several times. But I don't think he has seen our work yet.

I am rather liking this life; at least I hate some of it so much that the good parts are glorious, which is the true kind of enjoyment. I hate starting out at night, with the possibility of casualties and of parties going astray up wrong trenches. But it is grand getting back in the dawn, and sitting down noisily to sort a meal and a pipe before going to bed. Fraser has gone on leave.

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Monday, June 19.

After my working party went home at 2.0, I waited for daylight to show the N.C.O.'s of the Company round our assembly area for the attack. We all trooped home in the sunrise at 5.0 o'clock, and Fagan and I had a wonderful sort of breakfast.

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possibility of casualties and of parties going astray up wrong trenches

Never thought of them getting lost before. It's easy enough to imagine a trench, but it's beyond me to 'see' the whole system.

Marina

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Hi Marina,

The chaos at trench junctions also makes one wonder with so many working parties going on, certainly made me think a bit on this problem.

Andy

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Wednesday, June 21.

A real June day; but I seem to see nothing at present but a feverish and tired phantasmogoria of wagons, sand-bags, 'material', copies of orders, men and horses.

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Hi Marina,

The chaos at trench junctions also makes one wonder with so many working parties going on, certainly made me think a bit on this problem.

Andy

Yes, it must have made getting things done very difficult. It's hard to imagine what the scene must have been like - there's a passage in burrage's 'Memoirs Of Private X' which described it. It was the first time (blush to the roots of my hair) I relaised that the highways, byways, and trench systems must have been crowded.

Marina

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Thursday, June 22.

The Battalion moved back to Beaussart for a few day's rest. Camp, instead of our old billets; and the lady, in whose house we were to mess, drove us from the place with hard force of logic and much shouting. We failed to find a place till, at 8.0 in the evening, we borrowed a table and chairs from the Town Major's office, and put them in a disused house.

In the evening the Colonel talked to the Battalion.

There was a wonderful sky in the north-west as I lay down in my valise, and I watched it under the flap of my tent, and I thought of many things that were under it. Country railway-stations, porters, and four wheeled cabs came into the oicture. A strange picture - but there is much of England in those things. And I thought of fields with hedges (the Man made me do that some weeks ago), and of blue hills, and all of those dear people and things under that sky. Fraser returned while I was looking at these things.

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Friday, June 23.

We had a before-going-into-action parade Service, which Laurie conducted. It was very impressive; so was his short sermon - all of it almost too impressive, and I was most awfully moved by it all.

The guns are getting more active. In the afternoon Fraser, Fagan and I rode over to Bertrancourt to see a raised relief model of the Divisional attack area.

While we were waiting to start, a most terrific thunderstorm, with violent wind and rain - the sort of thing which they write about in the tropics, and of which there will be a kind of imitation beginning tomorrow.

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Saturday, June 24.

I have just been out at the back of the garden of our Mess billet, watching the horizon jumping into flame with our shells and, I suppose, the German shells too.

The Sucerie and the trenches beyond it are now a new world, no longer the scene of humdrum working parties drawing tools and looking forward to breakfast on return, but a region transformed by the beginning of the Great Battle. It began this morning early, quite unobtrusively, but very steady and continuous.

There is not much noise here, as none of the batteries are within half a mile, and the Bosch shells are bursting a mile away. From the south and north there is no sound, but an occasional flash.

A very lazy day for me, and pleasant. I read and wrote and received a fine mail.

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