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By Root 1681 0

gardens and they were full of soft fruit, blackcurrants, raspberries, gooseberries, and naturally we wanted to get at them. The only way you could do that was to open the back door and lie flat on your tummy and crawl down the garden and reach up for the fruit. You couldn’t stand up because it was on a slight slope and the slope faced the German line and the wall didn’t hide you because you were above the wall because of the slope. If you stood up you could see the German trench, but nobody was fool enough to stand up. We used to crawl out into the garden when the officers weren’t about to gather this fruit. There were young carrots too and young turnips and they were all just about right, and we used to pull them up and cook them. Of course we couldn’t make smoke, but sometimes we got hold of dry fuel that would flame and if we had none and we could get hold of newspaper that would do. (I discovered you could boil water and make tea on one newspaper. You would roll it up and twist it round into tight sticks and that was one useful thing I learnt. I can still do it!) It was fairly quiet there in August so long as you didn’t attract the attention of the Germans, but I had one nasty experience. I wasn’t company runner, but this day when we were in the front line I had to take a message back to Battalion Headquarters which was in these cottages, a beautiful sunny day it was. I went along this communication trench and I was coming to that hole in the wall and all of a sudden about six whizz-bangs came – one after the other. Not one of them dropped in the trench, just nearby, but by Jove, that made me lie low for a bit. After it was quiet I got up, started going along a bit and it happened once more. Still they didn’t drop one in the trench. Then it suddenly dawned on me. They were very profligate with their ammunition and there were balloons, observers, and if they saw some movement it was the old idea: ‘If it moves, shoot it.’ I was extremely careful about my movements until I got through that hole, believe me, and I was very careful indeed going back again.

Not far ahead of the trenches, easily visible on rising land behind the German line, was the small mining village of Loos. It was an insignificant place, familiar to no one but the local inhabitants of the region, but within a few weeks the name of Loos would be blazoned in the headlines of newspapers round the world. It was here among the pit-heads and the slag-heaps that the British Army was to make its next desperate push.

The planners were busy but it was summertime and although the August weather was unpredictable and a few warm days were often succeeded by a period of rain and thunder storms, the intermittent sunshine was heartening. Barnyard billets, so draughty and inhospitable in winter and chilly spring, were pleasantly cool on summer days. Drilling, parades and route-marches, endured with sullen stoicism in inclement weather, seemed less arduous, and off-duty in the long pleasant evenings even Tommies with nothing to spend in the local estaminets could pass the time pleasantly enough lounging in a field, leaning on a farm gate, or strolling in the pleasant countryside. Some even helped gather in the sumptuous harvest and the women and girls who had been left to run farms single-handed were happy to repay them with an acceptable jug of cider or rough wine. And there were entertainments. Most battalions out of the line took the opportunity of holding traditional field days and sports days just as they did in peacetime and they kept the troops amused and in high spirits.

2nd Lt. F. Best.

The greasy pole over the corner of a muddy pond afforded great mirth, the competitors being dressed in the regulation Army Service Corps swimming costume of honest underpants. The entire population of the village formed up round the water to spectate. The most shouting event of all, however, was the band race. Here all the players were formed up at the starting point and were handicapped according to the nature of their instruments. Triangle and cymbals started at scratch,