Charles E W Bean, Diaries, AWM38 3DRL 606/114/1 - June 1918 - Part 9

106 77
patrols moving but where no actual
path existed, & found a channel,
full of reeds crossing in front of me
(the same, probly certainly, wh Egerton's path crossed).
beyond the reeds were pools - covered
w water foliage & reeds – & with
dense rushes growing all round
them. So Egerton's description ws
certainly justified. He cd not have
 

106 78
got round except by the bit of higher ground
on / bank. I took a photo of his post.
I found the truth of Egertons
account as I went back. I tried
a short cut across / marshes; but
every time some reed-enclosed channell
would stop me in / end. I wandered
one way & another - & finally /
only way out that I could find ws
 

106 79
along / river bank as far as
Treux. Wilkins I noticed tt someone
else had been along there recently;
& when I got back Wilkins told me
tt he & Dyson only an hour or
two before had had exactly / same
difficulty & come - so - they were ^probably his
tracks, I had seen, some men
whom I met who had bn flooded
 

106 80 

out of their dugouts - a little lonely
unit of machine gunners or trench mortar
men there in the marshes – advised
me tt / Buire ^Rd ws / best way back but
I did not believe them at / time.
Thinking over it -/ puzzle is
where were / troops in this days walk.
There ws practically no one - except /
tunnellers digging in / roadside - from
the time I left Heilly till I got to / front
 

106 81
line – & even there I had to worm along
300 yards before I came to a man.
The Coy of the 22nd wh held / front
line was down to 80 men; & they
sd tt their nearest support ws a
platoon 500 yards behind - & tt ws
only 30 men strong.
"It practically means that you
 

106 82
have to rely on your reserve brigade
in case of an attack," I said to
the young C.O.
"It means tt we have to rely on
ourselves," he sd. "We know that
we can't expect any help."
The front line is, indeed, a
sort of outpost line to / reserve
brigade, it seems to me. Freddy
 

106 83
Cutlack ^had pointed out ^to me tt / xxxxxxx possibility
was that / Germans might drive in
the English division on our flank
at Dernancourt & put us into a
queer positn on this south Bank.
Still with ^long comminicatn trenches dug,
as they have been, the troops cd
always make a flank along these
until the situation ws restored saved by
the reserves.
 

106 84
/reserves_∧ Fricker of the 22nd told me tt his
battalion had sniped, they thought, at least
20 men in tt neighbourhood. " We give /
"The German isn't sniping," he sd. "And we give
him plenty of chances."
—————
xxxxxxx Carruthers & Coxen
came along past our camp / other day.
Coxen sd tt he thought one o / next
things we shd have to discover how to
 

106 85
deal with was mist - fog. The
Germans had twice, lately, produced a
very excellent artificial fog on our
front, he sd. The first time ws when
we turned our guns onto their tanks in
the Bois d' Aquaire. The Germans put
up a smoke to cover them, he sd; &
another smoke from ^S. of Albert.
The second time was one morning
 

106 86
when our people mistook the smoke
for / rising of the mists. Afterwds (I
think he sd on a later occasion) they
saw this smoke rising from small ^apparently specially -
- dug trenches. (I don't know whether he
means tt / smoke fog wh covered /
Dernancourt attack ws artificial).
The aeroplanes found this fog so thick
tt their landing flares had to be sent up