Item 01: William Daniel Hardy diary, 9 October 1915-31 December 1916 - Page 123

[Page 123]

16 Monday
Today was a beautiful day although rather sharp wind blowing. It is very dangerous to strike matches or show a light of any kind outside of a night, if a machine gun isn't played onto the place where the light was, it is a cert that a few shells will come over, so a person can't be too careful. The airoplanes observing for our artillary causes a lot of annoyance to Fritz, he fires hundreds of shells at them trying to bring them down.

17 Tuesday
We are it is fairly quiet here now, so we havent much to do. We have to carry our drinking water from King Alberts "Chateaux" a distance of about 400 yards. Only the walls of the chateaux remain standing. Went for a walk to Ypres in the afternoon & had a good look round. It has been a fairly large city, but now in places is in heaps of ruins & in places battered to the ground.

18 Wednesday
Seems very peculiar it always starts to rain about 7 pm every evening & continues throughout the night. It makes the boards very slippery for us to carry on. We generally have about six stretcher cases & about the same amount of walking cases every night. There are a good few 18 pdr guns around us, & when there is a bombardment on, the noise is terrible, you cannot hear yourself talk.