their area, and we had to move to a similar billeting area a few
hundred yards outside Reninghelst where we stayed until the 28th. The
weather remained hot and fine, except for two very heavy showers in the
middle of one day, when most of the officers could be seen making
furious efforts to dig drains round their bivouacs from inside, while
the other ranks stood stark naked round the field and enjoyed the
pleasures of a cold shower-bath. We spent our time training and
providing working parties, one of which, consisting of 400 men under
Capt. Jeffries, for work at Zillebeke, proved an even greater fiasco
than its predecessor in May. For on this occasion, not only was the
night very short, but the guides failed to find the work, and the party
eventually returned to bivouacs, having done nothing except wander about
the salient for three hours. Two days before we left Reninghelst the
first reinforcements arrived for us, consisting of 12 returned
casualties and 80 N.C.O.'s and men from England--a very welcome addition
to our strength.

The time eventually arrived for us to go into the line, and on the 29th
the officers went up by day to take over from the Sherwood Foresters,
while the remainder of the Battalion followed as soon as it was dark.
Mud roads and broad cross-country tracks brought us over the plain to
the "Indian Transport Field," near Kruisstraat White Chateau, still
standing untouched because, it was said, its peace-time owner was a
Boche. Leaving the Chateau on our right, and passing Brigade
Headquarters Chalet on our left, we kept to the road through Kruisstraat
as far as the outskirts of Ypres, where a track to the right led us to
Bridge 14 over the Ypres-Comines Canal. Thence, by field tracks, we
crossed the Lille road a few yards north of Shrapnel Corner, and
leaving on our left the long, low, red buildings of the "Ecole de
Bienfaisance," reached Zillebeke Lake close to the white house at the