when this melted the sides of the trenches commenced to crumble, making
them very muddy at the bottom. In consequence of this mud they became
almost impassable. For the men doing trench duty the conditions were bad
enough. The man on post had to stand on the fire step for hours in damp
clothes, shivering in the freezing cold, knowing that when his tour of
duty was over all he could look forward to was the cold damp floor of a
dugout on which to rest his weary body. For the ration parties the
conditions were almost worse. The meals were cooked in the field kitchens
in the village, and fatigue parties to carry up the meals were found by
the support company which was in a trench called by the French the
Parallèle des Territoriaux. Many of the men will never forget the
innumerable times they trudged heavily laden with a dixie of tea or stew
through the mud in the tortuous communication trenches Boyau Eck, Sape 7,
and the Boyau des Mitrailleuses. At times these trenches became so muddy
that on one or two occasions reliefs had to be carried out over the top
under cover of darkness. It was risking a good deal to line up a whole
company outside the trench a few yards in rear of the front line, knowing
that an enemy machine gun was located about a hundred yards away, and that
the machine gunner might fire an illuminating flare at any moment, and so
expose the men to his view.

It was during the first tour at Wailly that Major C.G. Bradley, D.S.O.,
assumed command on the 29th February.

After having done a month in the Wailly sector, the Battalion was taken
on the 14th March for a week in Brigade Reserve. Though the Battalion only
got into billets at 1 a.m., after a four mile march, a working party had
to be found at 8-30 a.m. for work on a Divisional show ground, which was a
place where model trenches were dug to show the uninitiated how things
ought to be done. Tasks like these were regarded as onerous by the men,