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[Page 18]
Rainneville
17/7/16
This place has justified its name and we have rested here all day and taken things quietly. I lectured for an hour this afternoon on the different phases of open fighting and trench attacks. All round the back of this little house is the deep green of tree and hedge & a silent wet rain is falling. Much tolling of church bells for some person who died last year. Rumble of distant guns like those at Helles.
18/7/16
Sudden orders stand by to move at 11 am. We moved off correctly at the appointed time and marched for 8 miles over country that is as totally different to Flanders as any you could well imagine. Passed through the pleasant little villages of Pierregot, Rubempre, & Toutencourt. The country is a little hilly & the road undulates. From the higher points it is spread out like a carpet full of different coloured patches, where various cultivation is done. No fences, but merely the division of colour. In some places we passed fields of poppies evidently grown for the morphine. Some woods square and fairly young.
Reached Toutencourt and found through staff messing we had no billets and had to march to Puchevillers. There we succeeded in getting a good billet in the village. These villages very pretty all embowered in green leaves. Lovely winding lanes. Little planted groves of trees with their central shrine a Calvary. A grey day. Always grey.
Rumours of a set back last night to our people. Ambulance wagons busy going up. Sir Douglas Haigh passed us in a car. Men have a furphey that Erquinghem has been plastered and the old 900 yeared church knocked down. Paid the mess after tea. This is a good billet with a nice m'selle who sang for us and madame caters for the mess at the rate of "quatre francs per jour". Big casualty clearing stations in this small place. 9,000 Germans put through there wounded since the 1St. They say our gun fire is awful.