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[Page 36]
Tommies (or Scotchies) took Moquet Farm capturing about 1200 prisoners. The enemy's shelling was so hot however that they retired to a line just behind it, leaving the farm in No Man's Land. We are to leave about midday to-day for as the rumour goes some part of Ypres where most likely we will spend the winter if this rotten war continues. As you may be sure we don't like the idea of spending the winter in France, but would much prefer Sunny New South Wales. My home here was a captured German dugout well ventilated, nice and quiet and pretty safe. Some of those captured dugouts are great pieces of work, sometimes 30 feet deep, lined with wood, with bunks built into the walls in the fashion of a ship's cabin. Invariably they have two entrances with a passage way connecting them, so that if one should be blown in the occupants could escape by the other. Strolling amongst the ruins of Ouvilliers the other day I found what had evidently been an Officer's dugout. It was a substantial brick vault, set well down into the earth and contained an iron ¾ bedstead and evidence of a lot of other furniture besides many empty champayne bottles and spirit flasks And yet I found in this place a couple of German Christian papers So far it has been very quite for us, except for occasional crumps and a bit of shrapnel, but it is a filthy place with the multitude of flies and dead bodies and limbs lying about, some only half buried, others with not a speck of dirt on them.
September 21st Thursday- As I continue this diary, we are at present holding a portion of the front in the Yres salient, our pits not being far from the town itself. And what a wreck it does look with its fine buildings and finer cathedrals all a mass of ruins and riddled with shell holes. Up till to-night I was observing, but a new scheme has come into vogue whereby a sergeant goes up from each battery every day, so that my old job is now done in. The O.P. here is the ruins of an old brick kiln, the telephonist being in the vault and with a good fire going it is quite a comfortable little spot. The actual O.P. was slightly different, however, you climbed up on to the wrecked roof and sat in a little corner seat by the chimney with a sloping piece of tin overhead. In this is the peep hole for