Sunday 27th January 1918

Front line trenches on the Montello, between roads 14 and 19.

2Lt. Bernard Garside (see 4^th January) remembered that, “Our trenches were on the edge of a big stretch of shingle spreading from the river and the Austrians were on the other side, perhaps half to three quarters of a mile away. I was very thrilled. I hadn’t come to hate war so much then. I remember the first time I had to go out on the shingle visiting sentry posts and the feeling that there was no-one between me and the Austrians. I also remember two or three of us, young officers, getting into trouble for putting bottles on the wire entanglements and potting at them with our revolvers”. Conditions would remain very quiet, as Pte. Harold Charnock (see 20^th January) later recalled, “This was a distinctly quiet time. The Piave was crossed three or four times but little information was gained as the country was quite unsuitable. The river was very swift and patrols returned covered with icicles”.  

Pte. Robert Frank Smith (25829) (see 26^th December 1917), who had been in hospital for the previous six weeks, was discharged to duty from 66^th General Hospital at Bordighera.

Pte. Charles Edward Berry (see 29^th October 1917) was posted back to England for further medical treatment; he was suffering from severe haemorrhoids. The details of his previous treatment in Italy are unknown.

From her home in Gosberton, near Spalding, Elsie Alice Prestwood, widow of the late Pte. Arthur Prestwood (see 4^th November 1917), who had died of wounds on 22^nd September 1917, wrote to the War Office for a second time to confirm that she had already sent to the Infantry Records Office, some three months previously, birth and marriage certificates, which they were still requesting from her. The War Office had also recently received confirmation that, although Elsie’s eldest child, Eric Henry Briggs, was not Arthur Prestwood’s son, “the child was being maintained by Prestwood prior to his enlistment”.