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[Page 64]
South Foreland. Goodwin Sands with 3 masts still showing & enter Downs. lifebelts are discarded, happy relieved all vessels leave us though every boat fly white ensign & even towing boats seemed to be armed with a gun. Last RBD has apparently no funnel looked a speedy craft. Pick up Pilot in the Downs & then proceed. Enter Estuary at 2.45 pm & pass up river. land is flat on water & slopes back to hill. All is cultivated no towns or houses. River is barricaded around ground. houses are quaint & ancient style. First people I saw in Eng were farmers & men of a farm with square shape.
Passed a boat which had been upended cut in pieces & each piece lying tied to bank. Finally anchored at Gravesend or Tilbury Dock - its the same thing place. Left here 3 am.
26-8-18 Mon
Found ourselves at Albert Dock & woke up about 5. Reveille 5 am no sleep came down with influenza. Disembark 9 am & train came 11.30 by Great Eastern & S.W.R to Fovant in the south of Salisbury. The undulating country with its vivid green & dense clumps of trees together with harvested hay defies all description & it is such scenery as I have never witnessed before a sort of refined beauty not the vast rugged grandeur which it has always been my lot to see I saw in reality the pictures of McWhirter & whose painting I have often studied. But amid all the beauty the suspicion of a congested population struggling for existence & living satisfied with little. Stopped at Woking & reached Foran about 4 pm disembarked & my troops went one way & I went another. Army officer Major Blake is VC & Capt Lindly is Assist Adjutant & also PMO [Principal Medical Officer] of SWS [Shore Wireless Service]. The officers are a very nice lot & everyone does all they can to make