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[Page 19]
Puchevillers
19/7/16
First parade 9 a.m. was held on a little enclosed piece of ground at the back of the farm. A rather fine sunny morning for a wonder. The church in this village is an old one with a square tower after the style of the Erquinghem one. The roads outside the town immediately commence to rise over the small hills. Picardy is a place of green rolling hills and fields the same as Flanders is level cornfield. The normal population of this village might be 500 but with the soldiers it now runs into thousand. Problems of sanitation arise with so many crowded up together and the local people lose a good deal of their homelife by men running in and out. It coarsens everyone, but our men are very good.
In the afternoon met Bert Curnow and went up to the big casualty clearing station which is full of wounded. The sight of the sisters cheered us up. Went into a tent full of wounded Germans most of them not badly hit but did not look round much as I don't think it the thing for officers to look at them as a sideshow, poor devils. Human leg blood covered thrown into incinerator as we Bert passed. Curnow came to tea and afterwards we played poker assisted by Andrew & Rodda the result being a win of 1 franc 5 centimes for me. Received orders for a move tomorrow morning early.
20/7/16
Head-dress
The women are often crude peasant folk and wear kerchiefs over their heads. Babies often have tiny little close fitting straw hats with a little tassel. The men favour a peaked cap and corduroy breeches. Women wear short skirts & long big boots.
The men all had a great deal of beer last night and argument and disputation was carried far into the night with wealth of verbiage. We left from Puchevillers and made Lealvillers at 12.30 after a tiring march up and down hill. A hot dusty muggy morning. Passed plenty of motor transport, all named after Pickwick characters & others, each with a rather good appropriate little painting on the side of the wagon. Lealvillers is an ordinary village with the conventional brass rooster crowning the tower of the church, & crooked streets radiating from it.