Lewis war diary, August 1917-March 1919 / James Ray Lewis - Page 67
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[Page 67]
what for I don't know, make our feet sorer I suppose. We shifted into billets in the village which were warmer and dryer. There were a good few refugees in this village.
In nearly all the villages in France the water is got out of wells for drinking purposes and then it has to be boiled. The Wells at Moliens must have been 60 or 70 feet deep. No provision is made for reinforcements until 24 hours after joining up and we did starve mostly, or ate our iron rations. There was a canteeen here for a while till it ran out.
A couple of days later we got into battle order and tramped out of Moliens to join our batallion. we marched along the roads , and it was hot and dusty and like all new hands we were loaded up with more than was necessary. We passed through Raineville and numbers of other villages until about dinner time we reached the city of Amiens, pronounced R-me-on, we marched through the old town which is rather ancient looking and nothing to blow about, and past the famous cathedral which at a close view looked very sooty and musty. Now and then a shell from a long range