It is about 5 o'clock on Thursday afternoon, and I am sitting in the
little house where some of us are billeted, and I shall try to begin
again where I left off in my first letter. I finished my last letter
rather hurriedly, so that it could go off at once. I had got to the
point where we were just starting off to march to join our Brigade.
We left at about 10 a.m. and reached the place where we now are about
one o'clock yesterday. That was Wednesday. We are not quite at our
destination yet, as we are to move a few miles away to-morrow, and I
suppose that will be as nearly the end of our journey as we can judge
just now. The travelling has been pretty constant since we left
Falkirk last Friday night, and we have just gone on and on, so that I
have to stop and think what we did each day and night.... Monday
night was spent ... trundling along at about 25 miles an hour, and
also the most of Tuesday. We got to the end of it at 5.15 p.m., and
by about 6.45 I had my transport off the train, and the horses and
mules all harnessed and hooked to their vehicles, ready to go to
spend the night in billets, when the rain came down. It poured. The
men of the Battalion were all right, but my wretched transport horses
had to spend the night in a field that had been used for a similar
purpose before and was inches deep in mud. We put the blankets on
them and, of course, they lay down in the mud, and everything was
such a pleasing sight next morning! I slept that night in the same
room as the Adjutant in an empty house. I lay down on my valise and
blankets on the floor about 11 o'clock and slept with few wakenings
till six in the morning. I got up then and went to my muddy field to
see to the watering and feeding of my 72 beasts. Then, as usual, the
blankets and cooking utensils had to be collected from the Battalion
billets, and everything belonging to the transport picked out of the
mud and got on the road ready for the march. Several times my big
wagons stuck in the mud, but we got them out again. It was about one
o'clock when we reached the little village where we now are, and all
along the road troops got more and more numerous, and motor-cars,
motor-ambulance wagons, motor-transport wagons came and went in
continuous streams, and we knew we were getting nearer the centre of
things. To-day has been wet, and mud is even thicker than usual. I
had my clothes off for the first time last night since leaving
Falkirk. There is some rumour of baths or tubs of some sort being
available not far away, but we have not yet sought them out. They
say that we are not far from the trenches, but we shall get reliable
information soon on that point, as our four Company
Commanders,--Captains McKenzie, Brown, Boyd and Murray,--are going
into them to-morrow night without any other officers or men of our
Battalion with them, just to see what things are like. So far as one
can judge from the sound of the guns, this portion of the line
appears to be comparatively peaceful. There have been several loud
bangs this afternoon that sounded not far away, but there were not
very many of them altogether. The roads here are narrow, and the
centre portion of them is paved with square-shaped blocks of stone;
the sides are of mud, thick, deep mud, churned up by passing traffic.