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[Page 56]
a tramp in my life. Talk about hard work, the clay was sticking to our boots, the load on our back was heavy, & we were getting weary. Passed along a road where I saw some of the N.C.O's of the 56th in dugouts who were in Codford when I was at the 14th I.B. Then we tramped across ploughed fields with the grain just growing, which the old Frenchies have had to abandon, & I thought we were never going to stop. I don't know how we kept going, no halt, on & on across the heavy ground. I was so weary I wouldn't have cared if a shell hit me. Then we drew near a hedge on the side of a village, & the field was simply honeycombed with shell holes, there were thousands, & Lor' knows how any human body lived in such a place. And yet, as we walked across the field, not a single shell was falling there. The village was Villers Bretonneux, it was taken by the Germans last Wednesday, but our boys have since won it back. We got through the hedge, & came, without warning, on several dead Germans lying in the open, a most gruesome sight. Two I looked at were shot in the head. They lay there unburied, & our chaps started to look for souvenirs, but somebody had been through their pockets before. I could have got a German bayonet & small entrenching tool, water bottle, bomb handle &c. had I any chance of getting them away. I got a small note