MORNING SERIAL
I WENT along their trench a considerable way and was surprised not to find a sentry anywhere; they had lost heavily the day before, having over six hundred casualties, the majority being killed.
There were dead and bandaged wounded men in the trench and men sleeping on the fire-steps dead-beat to the world. I woke one or two of them by shaking them, but they were so dead-beat that they instantly dropped back to sleep as soon as I ceased shaking them. In the Royal Welch, if every officer and NCO had been casualties the oldest soldier that was left would have posted his sentries and seen for himself that they were keeping a sharp look-out.
Proceeding along the trench I met the Old Soldier and two other men of ours: one of them was carrying a rum jar which the Old Soldier said was three-parts full. So I didn’t go any further but returned back with them. Before we arrived back in our trench we filled some spare water bottles with the rum and I took one of them back to my dug-out. During the next forty-eight hours there were no cheerier men in France than some of the old hands of my platoon and more brews of tea were made than what had been known for some time.
Shortly after I delivered a message to Captain Thomas whom I found standing on the fire-step looking through his field glasses at something on our right front. He got down from the fire-step and read the message, then got back on the fire-step, his head and shoulders being fully exposed. I told him that he had better keep his head down, as only a few minutes before a man had been sniped through the head in the bay on the right of him. “Thanks very much,” he replied, “I am watching the show over on our right.” Some of our new divisions in the direction of Loos had advanced through a gap that had been made but were now retiring in disorder. A few minutes later Captain Thomas was killed; a sniper had spotted him and the bullet had entered the side of his neck. We were very cut up over his death: he was a soldier to his finger-tips and a very brave and humane man. He always treated us as men and not as machines.