Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 243
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[Page 243]
121
R.T.O. (an elderly Major) then see that the standard troop-train was positioned in good time; inspect the box cars (for horses) and carriages to ensure that they were complete, clean and in safe condition; await the arrival of the unit to be entrained and see them off. It was simple easy work, and all of our afternoons and some evenings were free to go to the cinemas, or entertain French ladies at the Cafe Tortini, with the obligation of getting them home safely before 8 p.m.
Among the units I entrained for the Front was my own 34th Battalion, and a few days later I was ordered to rejoin it in the trenches in front of Armentieres. These defences were well constructed and drained, with slatted wooden "duckboards" underfoot, and ample shelters and dugouts: they were, for the most part, nearly two years old. The defence system consisted of a front-line protected against surprise attack by several rows of barbed-wire apron fencing; a support line about one to two hundred yards in rear; and a reserve line, containing Battalion Headquarters, more or less half a mile farther back.
"No-mans-land", between our front trenches and those of the enemy, varied in width from about two to four hundred yards. The terrain was open farmland: flat cultivation fields, lined on the boundaries with pollarded willow trees and traversed by deep drainage ditches. Long zig-zagging communication trenches led back to the nearest streets of the shattered edge of the town. Snow was falling over the bleak landscape as I arrived, only a few rifle shots and the occasional chatter of a machine gun could be heard: the troops were well covered up in their greatcoats, Balaclava caps and mittens, and it was a rather depressing scene and an inactive one, though it was nearly noon. It was a very quiet part of the battle front very suitable for a newly-trained unit's initiation to trench warfare. To troops who had been sent there after suffering on the Somme, it was known as the "rest camp".
The main diversions were regular night patrolling in "no-mans-land" and occasionally a big raid on the German front trenches to try and capture a prisoner or two for questioning