49

Givenchy + Billets Essars-Lez-Bethune

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

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 --

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

Small route march & foot inspection & in the afternoon forced parade with side arms to aquatic sports on the Aire Canal -- Beautiful martinets we have, but poor handlers of men -- Saw a poor lad tied to a post on the main road in the hot sun, so he could neither sit nor stand -- In front of Provost-Marshals

Met Water Campbell "Field Punishment No 1" & Pete (McDonald) Killed Sept. 1916

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