Rose with the lark this morning, which I should think was about drowned by now, as it has rained hard all day. After a cup of tea, I trudged up to the O.B. and nearly got submerged in a trench that leads up to the back door. Oh, to think of the poor Infantry today. At seven, the battery do a half hour strafe on the enemy's communicaton trenches, firing fifteen rounds H.E. Everything is quiet till one, when a mad K's division/15 starts firing into the blue and carries on for about an hour, wasting ammunition. The Germans make a very feeble reply and we fire a few rounds on Mine PPoint, and I find No. 6 gun ballooning for some unknown reason, but I can gain no information from the Battery as to the reason why. The afternoon passes quietly and is spent beside a coke brazier reading a magazine and trying to catch mice which occasionally come round looking for scraps from lunch. The evening passes quietly and I retire to bed early.
Its is sounding more and more tiresome. A war of set pieces, bordering on a macabre form of 'theatre'. At least the artillery is aware of the conditions under which the infantry toil.
ReplyDeleteHE - heavy equipment ?
Mine Point - probably an English name for a section of landscape
'ballooning' - it comes to mind that a canon could blow up in the middle, but would appreciate your thoughts on this one.
It has occured to me that the Auchie which I added to the map is actually known today as Auchy-les-mines. I will investigate further to see if this is a name related to the Mine Point to which EWM refers in his diary entry today.
ReplyDeleteIf it's not spoiling things, I'm afraid as the month wears on and the New Year arrives, it goes from tiresome to borderline gruesome. I am grateful for your research. It sounds like I should change Auchie to Auchy - I've been wondering about Beuvrie too. He sometimes calls it Beuvry and sometimes Beuvrie. There is also a place he refers to as Les Brique, which I have been assuming is Les Briques but may, I suppose, be L'Ebrique or something else. I should check all these things, but at the moment am flat out trying to get the diary entries onto the computer as far ahead as possible as, with children et cetera staying from mid December well into January, I won't have time to do any voicing in of the material over Christmas.
ReplyDeleteIn that area, there seem to several variants of Auchy. Can't find anything involving Brique.
ReplyDeleteBack again. Got sidetracked by real life. Where was I?
ReplyDeleteYes yes ... Les Briques. I have three means of 'research'. Firstly I look up Google Maps. Then I simply put the name into Google and see if anything is thrown up. Then I look the word up in my Collins French dictionary to see if that throws any light on the issue.
So, now to read the other entries from this one forward to see where our gallant hero is up to.