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[Page 20]
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on either side of us, and we walked amongst the various battalions to see if there were any there that we knew. We were told to rest ourselves that day, which we did, with the exception of walking down to the water point at Ypres to refil our water bottles. This gave us an opportunity of seeing the ruins of that once famous and beautiful city and we walked through the ruins of the Cathedral and Cloth Hall (which was one of the finest buildings in Europe before it was destroyed by the Germans). The amount of traffic going up to the line was tremendous – a continual stream of ammunition lorries, food lorries, water carts, cannon (some drawn by mules others by motors) Red Cross Ambulances, &c &c and thousands of troops wending their way up. No wonder that some of the thoroughfares to the line were called after those of London, such as "Hyde Park Corner", "The Strand" &c, and, as far as traffic was concerned, they didn't belie their names. At dusk we were given a hot meal, for some the last on this earth, for others the last hot one for four days, and, after a final talk given to us by our captain and the chaplains, we commenced the approach march to the line. It was now 9 p.m. and all were in good spirits and quite cheerful. Physically we were fit and alert and ready for battle – how different we were to be in less than twelve hours afterwards.
Men do not go into battle sad and gloomy (as many civilian people wrongly imagine). They are quite the opposite even though they know the dreadful things they have to face and that some of them are going to their death. We passed along, which seemed an endless track of duckboards, "keeping in touch" which was very necessary if we were not to get lost. We had our first rest (a few minutes halt) just in front of our batteries, which were firing spasmodically. After resuming the march again there were frequent stops, caused through broken duck boards, and slipping off the boards into the mud and getting bogged. At several of these unofficial halts the following, amongst other, remarks could be heard:- "Put out that … cigarette" the answer from the smoker being "Oh he's windy" or "He's got the wind up". I may say that we were previously warned not to smoke or talk during the approach march. I am a non smoker (the same as quite a number of the men were) so cannot describe the comfort or ease of mind which the men said that smoking gave to them when in danger or sitting under a bombardment. I always drew my issue of cigarettes and put them in my gas bag, and the men always knew where they could get a smoke when they ran out of cigarettes and which they very often did. A few shells were now falling pretty close to us, and the next stop was close to a "pill box" (captured German concrete dug out) near which, to my surprise, was a fire, from the light of which one could see several dead lying about. We were now on ground which a few days previously was in the enemy's possession and the dead had not yet been buried. Machine gun bullets were now hissing overhead as "Fritz" occasionally "rattled" his machine guns.
We were told to keep quite still when an enemy very light went up, as it is practically impossible to make out stationary objects, when very lights are sent up, but the slightest movement is easily noticed.