Lewis war diary, August 1917-March 1919 / James Ray Lewis - Page 70
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[Page 70]
We left Gentils after a few days and went back to reserves at Contay. It was a nice place in a gully and I had a fairly decent posy along with the rest of the Lewis gun section. We went for a bath here you hand in your underclothes and get other ones for them, the clothes you hand in are full of live chats and the clothes you get are full of dead ones.
We passed one of the soldiers' graveyards so common behind the lines in France. "The poppy fields in Flanders grow," "By little crosses row on row", only it wasn't Flanders it was Picardie "Sweet Picardie of the Somme". "La France" is beautiful now it is spring and the trees are in flower and leaf. The woods are all every shade of green and look lovely now.
Here we have some rifle shooting at old tins on a makeshift range. Every now and then we hear one of our six inch naval guns fire and the hiss of the shell of through the air resembles escaping steam.
The Somme country is of chalk formation though the river has through course of ages worn the country down into a broad valley the sides of which are deeply indented with gullies and this gives the country a hilly appearance, but once on the upland