Diary Entry - 8th January, 1918

Another bitter night and I failed to keep the cold out of my bed. Being orderly offic,r awoke at six a.m. to the crashing of bombs not far away north of us and, as the fall in was about to go, a wretched plane flew right over us - at least he seemed directly overhead by the noise - and dropped six bombs not two hundred yards from us. The men stampeded up the hill after the first three, so, not quite knowing what to do, I shouted, 'Lay on your stomachs.' It was all over very quickly and the trumpeter sounded the fall in about 15 seconds after the second lot had burst. We heard afterwards that one infanteer was badly wounded. In fact, he got his deserts as had a large brazier burning merrily in the open. It had frozen again in the night and the place was one sheet of ice, making it awfully slippery. That evening Siggers and I dined with McKenna and we arrived just before the Colonel and Adj left to dine with General Fanshaw at the Corps. Goschen offered me a job as intelligence officer - or in other words General's ADC - but I refused, not wanting to leave the battery, having been with them so long. It rather made my mouth water though as it is a thoroughly cushie job with little or no work to do and thoroughly comfortable quarters guaranteed.