Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 31

This has been a wet day. Some wet! They were quite right about our dug-out. It does, leak, some leak! In fact a wash out, literally a wash out. It has defeated Murray and myself and we are here in the sandbagged mess-room very cold and very much smoked from the damp wood on our fire, endeavouring to get a wink of sleep before our several turns of duty. But to return to the rain. It has teemed, the trenches are ankle deep – some places calf deep – in mud and water and the communications trenches are rushing streams of brown water. The men are wet through but stick the job like Britons and I do hope for their sake that the weather may lift with the morning.^v

The Coy has taken over the line tonight on its own for the first time and we are all very bucked about it. The men have done Al and the East Lancs are pleased with them. I am glad indeed, because nothing tells a regiment’s efficiency so truly as the unsought opinion of other regiments. The guns have been strafing today no end but up till now we have dodged the show. It may be ours again tomorrow, though. One never knows.

Tonight I messed with the CO [of the 1st Bn, East Lancs]^vi down in Mesnil. He is a fine man and seems to have the happy knack of griping without strafe. He put on a regular beano for dinner, soup, fish, joint, sweets, coffee, dessert. I haven’t seen the like since our lunch in Amiens and I did it full justice. It is marvellous how the poor live!