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[Page 84]
Up the line, one often saw a dead fritz in a shellhole black and bloated perhaps he was mother's darling. "Jui Sait", they're human just as we are. The 4, 5 howitzers took up another position, and I took their dugout another little home. Old Fritz filled Nannygoat gully with gas several times, "Chlorine", I think mostly and that stinking "Greencross", We dug some deep c'ts here right through the side of the hill.
We left here marching over the top of the hill, and tramping through Heilly to some possies in "Subsidiary" lines at Franzvilliers. We had to walk such a terrible long way to fatigue Kilos every night through Heilley and Merricourt L Abbe. We had one fellow wounded with a ricochette bullet and were shelled and gassed off it one night. One floundered all over the place with their mask on and fell down trenches and shellholes. Our job was laying a cable. Behind Heilly was a hollow circular gully and it was filled with guns. Merricourt was an absolute ruin. Heilley was damaged a bit, but not so much on account of its formation. It was a very pretty village with rows of poplars from the station, but all was silent, except at night, when there was the ceaseless noise, like a swift rushing river of transport going up to the line. The Ancre runs by the Tilley, a swift little stream which is used to drive a sawmill there.
I used to remember a light on a wall