Tuesday 4th January 1916

Front line trenches north of Rue du Bois.

The day was generally quiet, with some light rain falling. However, the artillery exchanges of the previous days continued, with the Germans concentrating their fire on Chapelle d’Armentieres and Bois Grenier.

Cpl. Robert William John Morris (see 14^th November 1915) was promoted Lance Sergeant.

Pte. Harry Clark (see 3^rd December 1915) was promoted Lance Corporal, which rank he had previously held for seven months during 1915 before reverting to Private.


Pte. William Knox (see 30^th December 1915) again wrote to his wife, Ethel (I am most grateful to Rachael Broadhead and family for allowing me access to William’s letters).

“I now sit down and write you a few lines hoping they will find you quite well as I am very pleased to say that it leaves me very well at present. I received your parcel dated 29.12.1915 and thank you very much for it. I am sure you are ever so good to think about me as you do Love. I received the watch and it is a little gem. It will come in very useful out here as it is very dark now all night and it is very dangerous to strike a match too often as the Germans get to know where our sentry bays are and they make it pretty warm for us then with a machine gun. We came into the firing line on Sunday and we go out again on Thursday so I shall spend my birthday in the trenches but I don’t care about that as long as I am home next year and as well a I am just right now. They keep telling me as I am getting quite fat. I can tell you I feel as well as ever I have done before.

We are having some very decent weather just now and I hope it will continue to keep so as we have had plenty of bad weather. I have heard some very good news this morning. We have only sixteen days to do in the trenches and then we go for our Divisional rest for a month, so we shall miss a lot of the snow. But of course we shall be training for a big advance in the Spring and I think it will be one great effort all along the whole line. And it will be the beginning of the end. I think myself now that it will not last so very much longer as our men made a bombing attack on New Year’s Eve and when they got over to their trenches they absolutely refused to fight. They are just about fed up of it all. It is very quiet just now. A jolly lot different to what it was the last time in but I think it is because our artillery has not done very much shelling for over a week now.

I should just like you to see us all right now. It is a regular wash and brush up do. We only wash every other day when we are in the trenches. I am Acting Lance Corporal just now and Sgt. Hirst told me I was the next to be promoted. But I am not sure whether I shall take a stripe or not but if I do I shall try hard and get three. There is plenty of chance for promotion out here.

Well dear I have just received a parcel from Nottingham and it had the Sheffield Independent name on as well but Delhi White from the Stores is the name on the card that I have to send back to tell them that I received it quite safe. I think myself it is from the Benevolent Association Brightside and Carbrook Co-Op employees. It will be from that friend that you get your 2/6 per week from. It is very good of them to think about me. I am writing to thank him for it (Mr. White). It contained cigarettes, shaving stick, tobacco, one tin Macintosh’s toffee, one tin cold cream, one tin of boracic ointment, two tins of peppermint tablets, one bottle of water sterilisers and one tin of curry. I have given all the tobacco and cigarettes away. It went all round the platoon what I am in. It came just right for my birthday. Fancy being twenty six. I am getting quite an old man now (ain’t I Darling?).

I have just heard another rumour today that we are leaving France to come to England for a short time and then to India, but I don’t think there is much truth in it.

I have spoken too soon as the Germans are shelling like Hell again now. Been on for over an hour and they are not half letting us have them. They are dropping all around us but none of us is a bit afraid of them as they cannot hurt us as we are in shell-proof trenches. They must have got to know that we are in again and we mostly look out for plenty of shelling. If Jenny has not sent me a writing pad before you get this tell her not to bother as I have got another one from Mrs. Tunstill (Geraldine Tunstill, see, 14^th December 1915) our Captain’s wife, and it will last me quite a long time.

We are not very far from the German lines; only about forty yards so we can give them plenty of bombs as we can throw them right into their trenches. Of course we don’t get off scot free but their bombs are nowhere as dangerous as ours are. Ours weigh two pounds and when they burst they form 72 pieces of shrapnel, so it is God help them when one bursts near them. I shall now have to come to a close as we shall soon be standing to and then go for rations and then I have done for the day unless something turns up. So I shall be able to get to sleep early, that is if the blooming rats and mice will let you do so. I am sure without a word of a lie they are jolly near as big as a cat. They are nasty damn things too as they gnaw holes into everything we have. We have to eat our parcels as quick as ever we can or else they will run away with all you have got. It is nothing fresh for us to put a chap to guard them so as they cannot carry them away. I will now close with fondest love and kisses”.

Looking back many years later, J.B. Priestley gave a vivid account of the grim monotony of much of the time spent in the trenches in the winter of 1915-16:

“Worse than the raids, worse than the German heavy batteries which occasionally got our range and dropped ‘Jack Johnsons’ among us, were the mere conditions of existence in the front line and communication trenches, now with winter upon us, that were mud and water. 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, I slithered around, trying to sleep on the trench fire step or crawling into some hole in the wet clay, filthy and maddeningly lousy, never seeing anything that looked like hot food. (I was fortunate, more than most, in two respects: I could cheerfully chew away at Army biscuits and bully beef, which was all we had on many days; I was rarely short of tobacco, and if I could smoke my pipe I could often forget I was hungry and short of sleep.) That dugout we have all seen in productions of Journey’s End would have looked to me like a suite in some Grand Hotel: I never did find myself within miles of anything so dry and commodious … the conditions in which the lower ranks of the infantry were condemned to exist month after month, worse conditions than the Germans or French ever knew, except briefly in battle, that drained away health, energy, spirit and with them any real confidence in those cavalry captains, back in the chateaux, who saw themselves as generals fit for high command.”

Pte. Edmund Peacock (see 23^rd November) was transferred from hospital in Cambridge to a convalescent hospital in Eastbourne, where he would continue his recovery from wounds he had suffered on 18^th November.