Diary Entry
The BC took up a section to the guns, starting at eight, and Siggers took his section up. We remained in camp all day, expecting to move up next morning. Nothing thrilling happened except that the DAC lost two mules during the day by shellfire, which will give one an idea of what things are like when wagon lines often have shells dropped into them.
Letter Home
Dear Family
It is very nearly a year since we sailed from Melbourne. It will be on the twenty eighth, and we are just about to enter one of the most interesting parts of the line - and I suppose more lively than most parts at the time of writing. We got short notice to move last week and on Tuesday evening we moved out to the wagon line. I was at the OP the last day, being relieved at seven fifteen, and Hoyland and I dined with the incoming people, then rode to the wagon line, getting there about twelve am. The next day my old staff captain of the billeting episode told me I was to be the OC divisional convoy, which was to move by road, the rest of the division entraining. Well, there was a certain amount of work entailed in getting things like supplies and other little details. It was arranged that we should move off at twelve from the village on Thursday. Well, when I looked over the show that awaited me, I found a wonderful collection both of vehicles and horses, from a big French wagon and draft horses to a light jinker and a mule.
A staff colonel belonging to headquarters came along just before moving off and told me that I had to load three wagon loads of boxes onto my already overloaded wagons and deliver them at a railway about 14 miles distant. So there was nothing for it but to load the stuff on in the village and heave it off when the trouble came. To cut a long story short, with lots of amusing incidents, I got to the railway minus two wagons and half the goods.
If you could only see the German prisoners just returning from work to their wire enclosures below the hill.
Well, I got with the convoy all right, picking up the division on Saturday evening at seven thirty pm. We covered about 60 miles in two and a half days, but it meant early rising, reveille at four each day. The whole trek was quite amusing, and it was an experience well worth having. Of course we used to bivouac in any old field by night. As we were cut fine both in horses' and men's rations, we lifted a fair amount of hay along the road, but I used to always look the other way, as we had to feed the blooming horses.
The division was right in the valley on a river when we reached them and it was nice to be able to get a good wash in the morning - and bathing was pretty popular with the men too. I have never seen such a sight as the whole division bivoacked close together like that but it is getting quite common now as wherever you go there is transport, motor cars, troops and every engine of war you could think of. In fact I am on a hill now with a road just beneath, on which you see everything pass, from an infantry man to a 15-inch howitzer. The traffic continues all day and night. We moved up here yesterday as a division, and a section has gone into action today. The rest of us go up tomorrow. It will be quite an interesting spot, as we are in the open and lots of heavy stuff falls about. In fact, Siggers, who went up today, had to put his gun into an 8-inch crater where a gun was last night, before the shell arrived. Oh, if I only had a camera with me, what a chance! Well, I think you will guess where we are.
No more time to write. Hope you are all well,
Your affectionate son,
Walford,
PS: It was rather amusing - one of our men discovered a Bosch amongst the prisoners, who used to be a baker in the same village he lived in. I have just been speaking to a Queenslander by the name of Young - sugar growing people, I think.
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