Diary Entry - 23rd August, 1917

The major of the four eights relieved me as Hoyland and Nicholson have gone on leave and the Major has to do his turn of work. As I left met the General of 6th RA and Claudet, the former was up to look at the front. I find Sherman has come up to the guns to stay and that I am to go down to the WL. Wright returns from leave in the evening. There has been good news of the Italian and French attacks, the former having taken 20,000 prisoners, the latter 10,000, at Verdun. At seven thirty p.m. we fired some smoke shells from a trench mortar, supposed to be purole in colour, but they looked like HE, so, as the demonstration was to try it as an SOS, it was a failure.