WAILLY.

Having sent an advance party to General Xardel's headquarters at Beaumetz
to effect liaison, and to meet French guides, the Battalion paraded
towards evening, left Monchiet, picked up the guides en route and marched
to Wailly. The day had been one of blizzards and the night of the relief
was black and wet. Added to these circumstances was the difficulty of
understanding the directions of the Frenchmen, the Battalion's knowledge
of their language being not very extensive. Towards midnight, thoroughly
drenched, hungry and weary after a heavy day, the men were ultimately put
in their proper stations, some in the village and others in the trenches.

From the appearance of the houses Wailly had been a prosperous farming
village lying within a short distance of Arras. Agricultural implements of
the latest manufacture were in evidence, and these could only have been
bought by peasants with some capital. This village was to be the
Battalion's home for the next five months. The Battalion first did a month
alternating in position between the front line and the village. For some
days while in the front line the Battalion was in touch with the 27ième
Régiment d'Infanterie, which had a sentry post in its area composed of men
from one of the companies who readily fraternised with the fantassins.
This regiment belonged to a division of the French Active Army, and in
consequence its efficiency was of a very high order. Nowhere had anyone
seen trenches so well revetted and so neatly constructed as those occupied
by this French regiment. The trenches stood out in marked contrast to
those actually taken over by the Battalion, whose former occupants, the
French Territorials, had left them in a very bad condition.

The trenches had not been revetted or duckboarded, and during the first
month of the Battalion's occupation there was a good deal of snow, and