Sullivan letter diary, 27 October 1915-9 October 1917 / Eugene Sullivan - Page 123
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[Page 123]
in whispers, but, for the most part, each soldier just follows the one in front of him or keeps in line with his next door neighbour. Needless to say we were delighted when it was all over and we could climb back into our warm beds. We all had to sleep in the open and I am tell you it was very chilly. When we awakened in the morning our top blankets were soaked through with dew, and our hands and feet were frozen. The doctor and his orderly occupied the solitary tent but they fared very little better than ourselves. We returned to Larkhill on Thursday afternoon and, to our surprise, had to set out again for Shrewton on Friday morning.
This time we carried out a mock attack on the trenches in the presence of the Brigadier-General himself. He acted as a kind of umpire and decided when the men should be counted as casualties.
We and the stretcher-bearers had to carry out our portion of the job too. The doctor established a dressing station under some shelter about half a mile two hundred yards from the trenches and the stretcher-bearers brought the wounded in to us there to be dressed &c.
The Brigadier had a supply of pebbles and whenever a party exposed themselves too much he would throw one of these supposedly bombs amongst them and tell them that they were all casualties. A ticket was then pinned to them denoting the nature of their wounds for the information of the stretcher bearers who had to then render first aid and carry them in to our dressing station or Reg. Aid Post. I can tell you we had our