43

Billets Essars-lez-Bethune

In billet Essars-lez-Bethune- make friends in town & get promise of letter to home.

Told we had made a name, by Gen. Turner. The (continued at front of book)

Saturday night a continuous string of guns moved forward thru Essars for 1½ hrs.

Write Ada.

Still in the billets - resting up and no use for anything. Try to get into the town of Bethune but all bridges are guarded over the canal.

Woke up last night at 2 am to act as interpreter - the boys sleeping over the cow stable had left a rifle below - with which the calf got disastrously entangled - irate lady wanted court martial & sudden death - suavely explained to her just how the Boches would take her tirade. Feed three of the boys in town - owing to my 'stand in' are fed in the kitchen, while invading Tommies are told 'nothing doing'.

Very bad headache all day - shrapnel bullet I suppose. Going to try and stick it out though.

Return to Festubert.

Paraded to Bethune to shower baths - in some religious institution. Marched out 7 pm & put in old German trench while the 15th & part of our dig a trench 200 yds ahead & 300 yards from the 1st German line. 25% on guard on the parapet, including myself. Attack on near La Bussee - we are ½ mile right of our attack on the 20th, Corporal Shaw very drunk, so we carry on without him.

BC Archives, MS-0392 Box 1 Volume 4 / FRANK SWANNELL PAPERS / Diary and enclosures, 1915.