Tuesday 2nd November 1915

Close reserve positions west of Fauquissart

At 1pm the Battalion commenced their relief of 11^th King’s Royal Rifles in the front line trenches from just north-east of Fauquissart, south-west as far as Chapigny Farm. Just a week earlier these trenches had been described by 1^st Worcesters as, “good, with easy means of getting in to them”. However, the heavy rain which had fallen since then had brought a complete transformation in conditions. The communication trenches were now, “impassable owing to rain and falling in revetments”. As a result the relief had to be carried out, in broad daylight, above ground. The Battalion moved, by section, up the main road to occupy the front line. Remarkably, they suffered no casualties in so doing and the relief was completed by 5pm. However, they found that the trenches were now, “in an exceedingly bad state of repair & owing to the rain and rotten sandbags the parapet and dugouts fell down badly”. Cpl. Norman Roberts (see 31^st October) told his family that, “On the 3^rd (sic) we left for the real thing. It was raining, the communication trench was over the knees in mud and water and it was ‘some work’ with a pack to get through. We manned the bags immediately and remained on duty until noon next day”. 

Pte. John Whitham was reported for, “when acting as sentinel, leaving his post before he was regularly relieved”; he would be summoned to appear before a Field General Court Martial. He was a 21 year-old gardener from Bingley.

At home in Fulham, Helen Ridley, wife of Pte. Herbert Ridley (see 9^th October) who had been posted to France less than a month previously, gave birth to the couple’s second child; the baby girl would be named Nellie Rosina Ridley.