49 Givenchy + Billets Essars-Les-Bethune

Sets 8 h. 14 min]  june, 1915  [12th, New Moon 6:57 p.m.

At dawn I spot a German lifting a sandbag - Hit the top of the bag & throw dust a yard high -- Get him 3rd button down -- This is from the spot where I have been sniped at for 2 days -- They never got the loophole but the bullets thudded into the surrounding sandbags

THURSDAY 10 [161-204]

Considerable artillery fire over our heads & incessant, futile sniping -- Stench very bad today -- Lad in next Traverse loses his nerve entirely -- Pitiable [Tosce?] -- starts violently at every shot. Relieved at 9 pm -- Morley loses his way & we wander for three hours in the labyrinth of trenches -- Pouring rain, black dark-mud. A tangle of telephone wires -- Finally get out along to Windy corner & along canal to the filthy old Essars-Les-Bethune billet -- Dog tired & soaking wet -- lose my cap & am mad enough to ditch the shovel as many do -- Arrive at dawn --

FRIDAY 11 [162-203] St. Barnabas

Sleep late -- This billet the worst yet -- straw filthy + pounded to chaff -- Two cesspools in courtyard -- unknown depth Hear from Jack Mitchell. Johnson dead -- who was so particular about his toast at Shorncliffe Metcalfe + another hit in the communication trench when I got the spent shrapnel ball on the head also dead -- Metcalf only lived 5 hrs -- brain exposed