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Wednesday 22 December 2010

Diary Entry - 23rd December, 1915

I spent an uneventful day at the O.B. The light was very bad, there being a thick fog (ground) about Les Brique. At two, it commenced to rain and continued till about four. The Major and Griffith came up at two thirty but only stayed about ten minutes and then went on to follow some telephone wire. I only fired ten rounds all day, and most of those were fired in finding the corrector. In the evening, Siggers and I went for a walk along the usual pavé track and, as we went along, we came across a very lame horse being led by a gunner. We questioned the man as to what was the matter with it, and he told us that it had been wounded with a pipsqueak while standing outside the Infantry brigade headquarters. The poor wretch had a lump of the shell on the inside of the near hind leg. It was burned into the flesh, and we could not remove it, and it seemed to be losing a lot of blood. Before we had gone much further, it began to rain, so we retraced our steps to the Mess. Two more attachés arrived for tea, the other four having left in a bus before breakfast.

3 comments:

  1. Interesting concern for the horse. You can't take the country out of the boy.

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  2. A lack of concern for the animals would be a really bad sign in anyone, don't you think? The men on each side have some idea of what they've got themselves into, but not the livestock.

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  3. Indeed, not the livestock. But I wonder if the men did either. Really. Or are they very good at patching it over. Or is it just too early into the hostilities?

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