Lewis war diary, August 1917-March 1919 / James Ray Lewis - Page 68
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[Page 68]
gun squealed overhead and burst in part of the town with a crash feeling for the railway station I suppose. A good few people were still in the streets; it was said that a woman had been cut in two in the street that morning. There were blood in places on the footpaths and many buildings had been smashed. The trains had ceased running a couple of days before.
Amiens lies in the in the Somme valley a little below Corbie. In olden time it was the capital of Picardie and is still the largest city there. In 1910, it had a population of 92,000.
We left Amiens via the suburb of Cagny and marched along the Somme and then up towards Gentils where our batallion was in reserve on reaching our cookers we were given some cocoa and then waited till dusk when we were split up into small parties and in single file set out for the batallion. There were a good few shell holes about here and on our right were about 13 beautiful horses lying dead. An ocassional shell fell but to far away to worry us.
At about 9 we joined our batt and were separated into companies. We had to dig possies for ourselves in the earth just holes down in it all the rest of the Company