Sunday 12th December 1915

Reserve billets at La Rolanderie Farm.

Although the day itself was dry, there was by now serious flooding throughout the area. The River Lys was said to be at its highest levels for more than twenty years and Riviere des Laies which was normally no more than a shallow stream running north and east of Bois Grenier was now six feet deep in places (see 10^th December). The situation was such that all the Royal Engineers who had been constructing huts in reserve for winter accommodation had to be redeployed to try to keep the trenches accessible. Even the reserve areas had now been rendered little more than a sea of mud. The Battalion continued to provide working parties even though the men were about to be returned to the front line.

Looking back many years later on the winter of 1915, J.B. Priestley gave a graphic picture of the day-to-day conditions for men in the trenches; “For days and days on end, wearing six pairs of socks and high gum-boots and a sheepskin jacket that was either wet or caked in mud, trying to sleep on the fire-step or crawling into some hole in the wet clay, filthy and maddeningly lousy; never seeing anything that looked like hot food … Some of the worst nights in that winter of 1915 were spent carrying heavy coils of barbed wire up communication trenches, knee-deep in water and sometimes under shell-fire, continually slipping and then being pinned down by the coils of wire. I saw men, no weaklings but powerful fellows, break down and weep”.

Pte. Walter Robinson (14753) (see 5^th September) was admitted via 69^th Field Ambulance to 3^rd Casualty Clearing Station at Bailleul having suffered bruising to his legs (circumstances unknown); the following day he would be evacuated onboard no.24 Ambulance Train to hospital in Boulogne (details unknown) and subsequently to England where he would be admitted to Hampton Hospital, Bury St. Edmunds. 

Pte. Walter Robinson (14753)

Pte. Michael Hopkins (see 27^th July) was posted to 11DWR at Brocton Camp; it would appear that he had completed a jail term following a charge of assault which arose from an incident while on embarkation leave in Bradford in July.

2Lt. Arthur Poynder Garratt arrived in France to serve with 9^th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s who were then billeted in Ypres. He would later be transferred to 10DWR. He was the only child (born in 1893) of Herbert Alfred and Mary Rose Garratt. He had been educated at Haileybury School and had worked as a clerk at the Bank of England. He had been a member of the Inns of Court OTC since November 1913 and following the outbreak of war had applied for a commission with the Army Service Corps.