Item 04: Harry Pidcock Mason war diary, August - October 1916 - Page 40

[Page 40]

the stables & lofts to sleep in. The stall 4 of us are in is very hard being paved with cobble stones also cold and draughty but we make ourselves as comfortable as we can under the circumstances.

The weather cold and rainy.

Am interested in this mill it driven by water power from a locked canal & the froggy millers very kindly show us all over it.

After dinner I walk up the town rather a large place with a B.E.F. (British Expeditionary Forces) Canteen where every thing can be bought by the troops from a needle to anchor.

In my wanderings I enter a place & procure a cup of coffee from a French madame and her very pretty daughter of sixteen with a bunch of dark Greecian curls. We get quite friendly & madame tells me her husband is fighting at the front & she comes here & opens a coffee room to be near him her home is in Paris hence I am bucked up with a spirit of contentment & intent to make this my rondevous.

The Town is full of Tommies