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[Page 14]
supports to the front line. This meant three trips each across what was now practically open country. We got it across alright and strange to say I think we had not one casualty .
In this time when we were working in the trenches I always picture the unbroken line of wounded passing towards the rear. All those who could possibly walk did so for they said "there are others worse than we". But there were only too many stretcher cases. It was a sight worth the seeing to watch the uninjured men in the trench clamber up on the parapet or parados of the trench to allow the wounded to pass. The unwounded thought it just the proper thing to do to expose themselves, that those already wounded should have a clear passage to the dressing station.
About 10 o'clock on Wednesday night we heard we were to be relieved and we were more than glad. We had held on under conditions we could not even have imagined prior to the battle, and yet as we thought of what we had had to live through, we pitied the poor boys who had to take over. About 12 o'clock the head of the 2nd Brigade appeared and we prepared to move out. Once on the way we lost no time. We collected our gear and passed down Sausage Gully. About the sap in the Gully were strewn dozens who had gone west trying to go up or down but we got out with a minium to casualties. We passed by Casualty Corner where we had first had casualties and soon were back at Gordon's Dump where stew and tea were prepared.
We stayed some time at the dump. Whilst there a batter of 60 pounders fired almost alongside us and it brought home to each of us how much our nerves had been strained in the last four days. Every man there jumped and for a fraction of a second looked as though he would seek cover, and many a "dixie" of tea or stew was spilt by the involuntary flinching of our over-strained nerves.
When we had had tea we fell in and marched back towards Albert. Each step as well as being a physical effort was a mental strain too. At last we arrived at the place where we were to bivouac about a mile on Pozieres side of Albert. We threw our overcoats down and ourselves on them and within a few minutes were dead to everything.
Sleep had been practically a stranger to us for a week and we needed no rocking to make us oblivious to everything just then. Men lay about in all attitudes. The dew was thick but that did not matter. We had drawn on our stock of endurance to the last once and now just let ourselves go, literally falling asleep.
Daylight came too soon and by 10 'clock we were all up having breakfast and preparing for what the day held. After breakfast we were ordered to fall in and now came perhaps the saddest part of the whole time.
We fell into platoons and then came roll call. Some platoons had practically ceased to exist. The companies looked like decimated platoons and the Battalion like one company. Of the thousand and more men who a week before had marched along the road beside which we were camped there remained now but two to three hundred. Of the seven or eight hundred missing, some were killed, a few were missing and the rest were wounded.
The Officers and the N.C.O's who were left to each Company called the roll and as each man's name was called, if he were still with us, he answered, but if not the question was" does anyone know anything about him". Then those who could give authentic information said" yes-he was killed at such a place"-or-"I was with him when he was wounded". But if no one could tell anything then he was placed in the saddest list of all," among the missing". At last all available information was taken. We now formed up in close order to hear the Colonel's speech.