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[Page 77]
Erquinghem
1/6/16
The country is looking lovely and the lanes are screened by the dense hedges and render any movement along them very hard to detect from aircraft. The people are so beautifully clean and the little children spotless and well looked after. There seems to be much happy family life. The old thatched farmhouses so neat and well kept with cultivation all around. Not an inch of land is wasted, the plots are hoed and weeded and most are carefully tendered. The roads wind in and out from place to place and nothing like a surveyed layout is attempted.
Having to take chaps out tonight who have been hard at it all day is very rough indeed but cannot be avoided it seems. It is no life for the weakling. Some paraded about it but what can one do. Went out at 7 pm in charge of the battalion fatigues. We had to march to a place 5 miles away and there settle down after an exhausting march to a nights pick & shovel work. Carried on working hard burying telephone cables until 1 pm and then set out on the march home again 5 long miles all the lads dog tired. Some have been on duty continuously for 24 hours.
Rose at 4 am 1/6/16 and then set off the Dump to unload coal, marching 3 miles there and 3 back. Worked hard for 6 hours on that job. Had 6 hours off and then fell in for 10 miles of marching and this pick and shovel task, not ceasing until 4 am 2/6/16. Others worked all last night marched 10 miles in the course of that same work. Returned 3 am and fell in again at 8.30 marched to Croix du Bac, 8 miles in all on parade all the afternoon and then fell in again at 7 pm for this nights 10 miles march & labor.
Only the toughest veterans could possibly stand work of this exhausting nature, on such fine cut food. Of course it wears them down very fine. No recruit could possibly live through it. We were under fire all night and a heavy bombardment just in front of us caused 15 casualties who were carried past us. On their return the