Thomas James Richards, Diaries, Transcript Vol. 4, 9 November 1916 - 31 May 1918 - Part 6

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Staff Capt. Watson showed me two jobs in a tunnel, one an
office chamber the other a sleeping apartment. I set the
men to work and later went down to the Battalion Camp and
arranged for 60 francs of canteen goods for the boys, as we
have nothing at all for Xmas dinner.
I fell in luckily with Lieut. Patterson & Lieut.
Ashcroft of some Tunneling Co. who are working along here
with 50 men. They could do but little in the way of sleeping 
accommodation for me but they welcomed me along to their
little mess and fed me up jolly well indeed. I slept in a
stuffy tunnel. The men are also in a tunnel.
December 25th.    Monday    Xmas Day.
At 8 o'clock last night a heavy artillery bombardment 

started from the German side and our guns replied vigorously
for 40 minutes. The result is that the 3rd and 4th Battalion
men have been flowing through the Hospital all day long. Fritz
seems to have done very well indeed for a Xmas Eve, only he will
never have the satisfaction of knowing whether he has done any
damage or not.
To-day has had flashes of sunshine running through it
but for the most part it was cold showery and gloomy. There
was plum pudding for the men, the issue was 8 lbs to 21 but I
spent 60 francs on a whole lot of canteen goods and it brought
the pudding up to  ½lb. a man.
Around about work went on as usual but I was very
reasonable with my men and worked them only a few hours, on a
job of enlarging Brigade Hdqrs., which I hope will see the next
8 days over comfortably as we can keep our feet dry now and
sleep, work also, in safety, although the Germans did put over
a whole lot of coal boxes to-day and knocked some men nearby.
It was a quiet and a dull Xmas all things considered.
I got a Dictionary and letter by post from G. Williams. but I
eat some goods from the parcels of some days ago and think very,
very kindly of the kindly souls who sent them along.
 

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I sit writing at the moment in my tunnel home
reasonably free from shells, with dry feet, eating lollies,
nuts, biscuits, drinking cocoa and dreaming of home and
parents, and good friends far away.
December 26th.   Tuesday.
Another patchy day ending up with a whole lot of
rain. All the morning our aeroplanes passed to and from
Fritz's territory. I saw one plane brought down, around me
it was thought to be one of our own machines, but I've heard
since that it was Fritz's. Later I heard that three of our
planes had been lost this morning. The officers who I am
living with now are late arrivals 1st Tunneling Co. and like
the old men they can see no peace without severe fighting.
My dugout work is going on slowly in the chalk which
I find is splendid standing ground.
I have written to Archie Powell and Blaxland to-night.
A sentimental story on Xmas Day.
December 27th.    Wednesday
The officer I am living with is a jolly good fellow.
Very considerate and obliging but he is a diet crank, as the
people who study their eating and regulate their drinking habits
are commonly called. He has read all the available works on
how to live healthy and continue on to a hundred or more, but
as is common with such people he has very weak eyesight and a
stomach that needs pampering too. Yet he brags about the food
values of certain foods and recommends them to men like myself
whose digestive organs can meet the occasion if stones were the
diet eaten.
I am sleeping very well indeed in my little tunnel
dugout with Mr. Ashcroft. He knows Queensland mining well
December 28th.      Thursday
To-day was about the coldest to date. Even this
afternoon the water in the shell holes was frozen over with
 

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a film of ice. Early this morning the country was covered
thickly with frost. The only time I have seen anything like
it was coming down here in the train in late October.
There is a great scarcity of materials of all kinds.
Jobs are hung up all over waiting for timber to go on with.
Long tunnels are being put in. Reserve machine gun positions
are going well into the ground 20 ft. down and dugout work goes
on everywhere but it is impossible to continue the work without
timber etc. It seems that the British have just woke up to the
immense value of dugouts and are building too many for the timber
supply.
December 29th.         Friday         
There seems to be the greatest possible trouble in
obtaining socks and more especially boots. For weeks past
hundreds of men have their feet on the ground and still orders
come through regarding the care and attention of the feet.
Whale oil must be rubbed in at least twice a day and platoon
commanders are half responsible if this is not done while
company commanders will be called to account for all cases of
trench feet and the men with "trench feet" will be held as having
"self-inflicted" wounds and tried by court martial for same.
And yet we have no boots to wear! !
I have seen no papers for a long time now so know
nothing or want to know anything about the war.
The 1st Battalion are moving into the line probably I
will have to go too! I hope so as I want to gain trench experience 

so that when I go back to school I will know something of
the practical side of the game and therefore grasp things a whole
lot quicker.
Cis Sponza writes 10 pages in interesting style.
Dealing mostly with the rows and political troubles in Sydney.
It seems that the whole of Australia is seething with discontent
and grave disorder. Her letter was written before polling day
so that now the anti-conscriptionists have gained the day I hope
 

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matters will settle down peacefully. At the same time the
red rag element are getting too strong a hold in Australia
and are stopping at nothing foul or even murder in the gaining
of their ends.
December 30th.      Saturday
The temperature has risen a whole lot to-day. The
ground is thawing after a whole lot of freezing and consequently
leaking through the rotten ground and running into the tunnels
and dugouts making a bally nuisance.
The day was fairly bright and clear; aeroplanes and
balloons had a day out, also the German artillery. Shells were
flying about all day and night. In the mud, however, the shells
had purely a local effect and done but little damage. There
might have been 60, 5-9 shells landed within 200 yards of our
shallow tunnel; they were meant for an artillery position nearby.
But there was no damage done to the guns. A few dugouts were
blown in but the men succeeded in getting clear.
December 31st        Sunday            New Years Eve
No doubt if the world was swinging around in a peaceful
groove I would be having a little jollification to-night, as it is
I have only the memories of past celebrations and hope for future
ones to lighten the load of my dismal surroundings. Not that
I have much to complain about to-night. No! far from it!! The

1st Battalion are in the front line to-night, A and B Companies
in the position of responsibility. I am an A Company man and
would have been with my Company in the cold and wet to-night but
for the formation of a mining platoon; quite a new thing and
much opposed by both Brigade and Battalion, but Division created
it and so it goes along very much against the wishes of, and
uncared for by the discenting parties. My luck seems to have
stuck to me again and I have fallen upon my feet once more.
I sit to-night in a tunnel and sleep warmly with only a cover of
two blankets, and for work, well, there is little to worry about.
The signal office dugout I am constructing is ¾ of a mile away
 

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over a line of duckboards. These duckboards have a cant on
in places and being slippery it is quite a feat to walk along
them and evade slipping off into the deep mud and water on
either side. There is no doubt about the advantage of Germany's
position. They hold a commanding view of our field and the day
being fine they pelted hell out of us! and seeing that all of our
materials have got to be carried up to the front there are
hundreds, nay, thousands of troops wandering around carrying
planks, duckboards etc. all day long and these men give a good
target for the German gunners and they just give us gip all day
long with big shells and shrapnel. I don’t see anything of the
casualties nowadays but if we have many days like the two past
days there will be a whole lot of trouble in store for our men.
Colonel Stacy complains that I have allowed too many
of my men to go to Hospital and that before I permit a Medical
Officer to see them I must make sure that they are really ill.
There are few reinforcements coming, so sick or not, we have to
keep our men from going away to Hospital.
January lst, 1917.           Monday
I have been caught on the sentimentallity of the season
and have written to Comer, Bostock-Smith and Bollston on the
reflections brought so pleasantly home to me in the isolated
surroundings by the coming of another year.
I went down to Battalion Hdqrs, at midday; it was a
long walk over a line of duckboards to near Bull's Road (where
our signal office off a deep German dugout is nearly completed),
then Parish (my batman) and I wandered over the mud in hip high
rubber boots to Battalion Hdqrs, where I learnt I had been
expected with my party for days past. I promised to be down
ready to start work at Chalk Cliffs at daybreak on Wednesday.
I then went across to the Chalk Cliffs and after wending my way
over ground churned up a hundred times over by shells of all
sizes, and nearing the dugout workings of the small cliff I was
somewhat surprised by the machine gun bullets that splattered
 

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around. I did not think we were so near to the German trenches.
The dugouts are planned to carry 200 or more men. It
would be glorious then for the housing of supports keeping them
dry and warm. Two shafts, at one in one grade are down to a
vertical depth of 18 feet. They are 102 feet apart so that when
driven out and connected there will be room for a tier of three
bunks. This spot is a splendid one being protected as it is from
the shell fire, but why it is not being forced along I don't know,
timber is, of course, the main obstruction.
I came away and had to hurry back to camp before it got
too dark to find the duckboards and then to stick to them. It
was heavy walking in the mud and when we got on to the duckboards
it was quite a task to keep from slipping off them and into the
mud and water holes on either side as the rubber soles and the
slimy boards offered no grip.
I had a sponge bath when I got back to the tunnel and
enjoyed my dinner with Ashcroft and Patterson.
The latter returned from Hospital to-day which means
I have to get out of his two bunk room and sleep in with the
Sergeants, who however are good chaps.
A memorial card from David Morgan was splendid
testimonial to Maggie's popularity. D. Gregory's letter was
welcome. Both I received at Hdqrs.
January 2nd.         Tuesday
I have bothered about nothing at all to-day, just
letter writing and chatting. Shell fire from our own batteries
has been almost continuous of late. It is the 18 pounders that
are going so strong, our big guns are not so plentiful now and
don't seem to fire as often as when we were here 6 weeks ago.
The "push" has undoubtedly stopped for the winter months.
I met my old pal Phil Thomas on the duckboards to-day
he is getting on well with the 3rd Battalion for an honest man.
 

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January 3rd.           Wednesday
All hands were up and breakfasted by 5.30 a.m. ready
to move off, but it was so very, very dark we would surely get
lost so we waited until 6.15 a.m. and then moved on in the gloom.
The end of the duckboards was reached in 30 minutes of precarious
walking. I then had to lead the way down to the Cliffs over a
trackless stretch of country without a star to guide or a direction
post. I probably walked further round than if it had been daylight 

but I hit in not far from the Cliffs all right and the men
got going on their bits of shelter places for themselves to sleep
in during the day as they go mining at night. I reported in at
Battalion Hdqrs, and went to live in the bottom of a very small
German artillery dugout with three other officers and two servants
in a few yards of space. The boys tried to keep a primus stove
going but succeeded in putting up a cloud of kerosene smoke only.
The smell is bad, and the smoke blackens everybody and everything
but its better than living out in the cold!!
The shelling that goes on about here is awful; and to
walk over the flat from here to the Chalk Cliffs ¾ miles is one
of the most interesting possible. Huge craters have to be
passed that were made only a few hours before judging by their
newness, in walking around Guiduecourt, and one keeps wondering
how it is possible for so many men to come and go over this area
without being blown to blazes. Certainly it makes one a little
anxious and sets him thinking of the rottenness of this war
business right through.
It is strange where one's mind does get to in such
exposed surroundings, more particularly around the mysterious
village of Guiduecourt. Mysterious because the Germans won’t
allow troops to go near it by keeping an almost continual fire on
to it. Day and night high explosives and shrapnel are thrown
into it. For what reason nobody seems to know, but there
undoubtedly is a reason for the Germans paying it so much
attention. I will take the first opportunity of going into it
and having a peep around.

 

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January 4th.         Thursday
I was up at 6 a.m. and over to the Cliffs to have a
look at the works. I found all men lying down and a complaint
that there was no timber about. A fatigue party left some timber
there last night but as there are 40 support men waiting there
without any shelter they got away with it and it was too dark to
find them/.
It is raining heavily in this very light rain; not
drops of rain hardly but a sheet of vapour that gets down your
neck and wets your clothes without you noticing it.
There is nothing but artillery fire and sniping going
on from the Germans. As many of our posts are not connected by
trenches it is necessary for the fellows to go along over the top
in full view while Fritz keeps potting away. The men say that
he can't shoot for nuts, seeing the practice he gets.
I came back from the Cliffs at 9.30 a.m. and the dugout
was still asleep. I climbed into my 6 ft. long and 3 ft. square
hole in the wall, had breakfast there and remained until 9.30 p.m.
when I pushed out again for the Chalk Cliffs midst a heavy
artillery and indirect machine gun straffing. It makes a fellow
think to be walking in mud between old and new shell craters going
in the direction from which Fritz's shells are travelling in great
numbers, some breaking in front but most of them going overhead
and breaking at all ranges behind. Then our own gun fire coming
from the opposite direction and passing also overhead makes it
decidedly unpleasant. To-night the shells seemed to make more
sizzling noises and could be heard and followed coming towards me.
A hundred times I was tempted to "go down" as the shell slowly
drew nearer, but in tightening my jaws I moved quickly along with
my head down watching the shell holes and picking my way. The
moon shone splendidly, Jupiter and Irion were strickingly prominent.
It was a long and exciting walk, with the reports of our guns and
the sizzling of the shells travelling oh! so plainly and slowly
each way.
 

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January 5th.              Friday
There is trouble about rations this morning. The
Q.M. evidently forgot to include my 20 men on his ration strength
and our men took the 2nd Battalion Mining Platoon tucker. This
is a terrible mess. The Battalion had 48 hours notice to obtain
rations and I suppose they forgot. But the rotten part is that
42 men have to live on half rations when full rations will only
just keep a man alive. Why a reserve ration can't be obtained
and stocked for such occasions as this beats me.
2 o'clock.
I have just been out of the dugout and right in front
of me was a number of balloons. German aeroplanes have been
hovering about so you can guess the day is clear and bright but
instead of going abroad we had to lie low to avoid the whereabouts
of our residence becoming known to the Germans.
11.30 p.m.
I have returned after a horrid trip over to the Chalk
Cliffs and find about 20 letters all addressed to "Pte" Richards.
One of them Ella's is contrary to my desire but she is candid and
I like her better than ever. John Howard sends his greetings and
a good cotton handkerchief. Cis Sponza comes to light with a
long letter and a handful of cuttings all full of political struggle
and strife. I also received some papers, Bulletins from Abercrombie

 and Africa.
January 6th.            Saturday.
I was up at daylight this morning, feeling careless and
contented. It had rained a little over night, but that was not
so very noticeable. I took a cape and the rubber trench waders
with me as it looked like raining at any moment. There was very
little gun fire going on so I thought it a splendid opportunity to
go into Guiduecourt village and have a look around. I strolled
up and walked precariously about amongst huge shell holes. The
place is so absolutely chopped about that nothing could be
recognized. This is the mysterious village which the German is
 

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always shelling day and night. Some tell stories of deep
dugouts full of ammunition and valuable stores, also that
there are several batteries of heavy guns there. Anyhow,
I saw very little indeed, the place is churned up to a depth
of 8 ft. It is impossible to imagine such a place; so often
has the ground been uprooted that I was afraid that it would
let me through and up to my waist in the loose wet earth.
There may have been dugouts about, I may have walked over a
dozen, but if so, they are so closed together by shell fire
as to be completely off the map. As for guns I saw none
either; if they are there they are not noticeable although
they would be buried in the dirt that has been torn and heaped
up. The noticeable heap or mound in the centre seems to me
to be made by a chimney stack falling.
I passed on down through the village noticing an
Australian big hat, a Tommy cap and some coils of wire, shovels,
picks, etc. There were no dead, probably blown to bits or
covered over by the earth.
I stayed at the Chalk Cliffs a while and then went up
to the front line of lst Battalion trenches. The communication
trench was shallow in places and deep in mud and water when it
offered protection. Eve Alley it was called, and I found it
necessary to get over the top, taking a chance with the snipers,
the slush seemed so deep. In the front line I was disappointed
as there was no firing stands, sandbags or loopholes. I could
see before coming on to it that the trench was there and well
occupied by the number of tins, rum jars etc. thrown behind.
I met Lieut. Page at the corner which was very exposed. He
showed me a Lewis gun position and a bombing post 150 yards in
advance and 80 yards from the German line with the enemy bombing
post 20 yards to the left. The German positions had a whole lot
of wire outside of them while we hadn't a sign of any.