Читать книгу The War History of the 1st/ 4th Battalion, 1914-1918. The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment онлайн

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On the 19th, the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers left us and went to ST. OMER, and 18 of our men were sent to the Tunnelling Company R.E.; this is mentioned because it was our first separation—we had been together, in the same sections even, with practically no change for months.

On the 20th we marched to billets in farms on the east side of LOCON; when we got there we found them occupied by a Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, who had been in action the night before and lost their Colonel, Sergt.-Major, and 67 other Ranks, so we formed up in a field opposite a large 18th century farm with a moat round it and stayed there all day; in the evening the Guards moved out and marched off with that inimitable swing of theirs, and we took over their billets—untouched farms within three miles of the line. Here we were close to the lair of a 9in. Howitzer—the only one on that front, it was said—which had been shelling the Hun all day.

The next day we set to work with zeal to clean up and put the sanitation right—covering middens to prevent flies breeding, building incinerators, and fixing up a water supply; we rather specialised in sanitation even in those days, when most people seemed rather to scoff at it. Late at night the 5th Gordons arrived and bivouacked in the field opposite.