Item 01: James McCall Young diary, 9 November 1917-22 April 1918 - Page 59

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[Page 59]

3.30 PM had tea. 4.30 PM. Got aboard the train, 8 to each compartment, Dog Boxes had to wait till 10 past 8 before we moved off, put in the time howling all the songs we could think of, moonlight and very cold, saw some very large towns along the line.

In our compartment is
Bdr [Bombardier] Burrows – Dvr Young
Dvr Aburrow – Dvr Petty
Dvr Redden – Gnr Stredwick
Dvr King – Gnr Fitzgerald.

Still travelling, 6.30 AM arrived at Bari, our first stopping place, had breakfast. Saw a lot of snow on the trucks and carriages that were coming down the line. The town here as far as can be seen from the station appears to be of some importance, has a very large railway depot, with some huge engines with two tenders on them. The Electric trams here have women conductors on them. left Bari 10 AM. passed a large building with an anti-air-craft gun on the roof, also a lot of trucks with heavy guns on them, going up to the front, and train loads of troops and as they were going up, hospital trains with wounded were coming back, saw a lot of aeroplanes on trucks on the siding as we went past, We stopped at Foggia at ¼ to 2 for dinner, at different parts along the line were groves of Olive trees miles long, also Orange trees and Vinyards, passed a very large Wine (Vino) Distellery, as we were stopped on the line some Italian boys amused us by snowballing each other. At Barletta snow had fallen very heavy.

Saturday Dec 29th
Travelling all night, stopped at Angona for breakfast left at 8 AM. more snow, passed some trucks with heavy howitzer guns on, we went for miles on the train right along the sea border with only a stone wall between us and the sea on one side, and on the other cliffs a couple of hundred feet high. I was greatly taken with the way the hay stacks were built with a long pole driven into the ground and the hay stacked round it, then when they wanted to use it, they cut

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