Diary Entry - 21st September, 1916

Thursday, an eventful day. Siggers was on duty at the guns and Cruickshank at the OP. I remained with Siggers. We worked on our dug out through the day, rectifying leaky rooves and filling up a big gap between the two rooves with sand bags. In the afternoon, after lunch, Bosche started on the 9th, with aeroplanes doing the observation. It was rather a treat to watch someone else being shelled and we were tickled at seeing men running for their lives, not knowing anyone was hurt. However, Bosche put a 4.2 armour piercing through the 9th Mess, which exploded inside and seriously wounded an officer, mutilating his legs badly. He passed us on the way to the dressing station, being carried on a stretcher and looked very bad indeed. At four fifteen, as Siggers and I were rather bothered with hostile planes and could not carry on our work, we retired to the Mess for tea. We were rather surprised to hear that we were to move to the wagon lines that night and sleep there and that all guns were to be taken. Well, to get the guns out was no easy matter as they had been all built in for some months and very strong fronts put up and so a good lot of work had to be done there as well as getting tools et cetera collected and packed. We in the Mess also had rather a problem as we had built the Mess around the Mess basket and to get it out had to pull down a window we had erected in the side of the gun pit and rather spoilt the decorations we had put up in the Mess. By ten, we got under way and reached the wagon lines at twelve thirty, being uncertain as to our movements the next day. It was rumoured that we started at eight thirty in the morning.