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[Page 16]
closed.
Thursday 8th June saw us again on the move for the trenches. A soaking steady rain fell as we marched in making the foot-hold on the duck-boards very unclean & as usual stirring the unboarded trenches into a gummy slush which adhered to everything it touched. Everything was very quiet. The German lines at this point were from 250 to 450 yards apart & grass a yard high mingled with the mangled stumps of trees & the wire entanglements in the intervening "No-mans land".
Our artillery on the 9th aggravated Fritz to the extent that he threw over a dozen or so coal-boxes which made an awful noise & and scattered a few loose sand-bags but did nothing further. However had he been allowed to persist at the game he may have rendered some of us homeless or at least "dug-out-less" for the night but our light field guns & quick firers began to play havoc with his parapets he desisted. As the afternoon cleared off there was considerable aerial activity both our A.A. Guns & the German's – but particularly the latter's – wasting hundreds of shells & covering half the sky with a canopy of shell-smoke.
[Two sketches of bullets exploding in the air; bomb exploding on the ground, captioned: A German "Coal-Box"]