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[Page 21]
entry into the trenches. On the 24th however Fritz peppered our corners with "whizz-bangs" & high explosive. This knocked our parapet in pieces towards the heavens , smashed in duckboards, knocked corners off dugouts, made a terrific terrific row but killed no- body. That night we went out to reserve billets in Fleurbaix. This rather once flourishing little town is now a straggling battered collection of houses, where the German vents his fury if anything in the nature of a reverse takes place. The houses looped-holed barricades & mined are prepared for street fighting in case of a German advance. On the outskirts is the church a once imposing edifice but now a mass of ruin. Shells & bullets have smashed through the walls & roof. Images of splendid workmanship, bas-relief & mural decorations are smashed & battered or lie ruined the brick-strewn floor. The organ smashed by a shell to matchword lies hangs into few remaining pipes over the gallery railing while the magnificent stained glass windows are smashed hand broken & blackened. The tower with its monstrous bell still stands in fair fairly good order.
On the 27th we left at 10 P.M. for fatigue to the trenches. This consisted of taking up some two hundred of more [indecipherable] to the firing line. It had been raining all day as usual . The rail road, a wooden one, difficult enough to negotiate in dry weather with a truck was a slippery mire. The truck wheels clung to the sodden rails & ones feet either sunk