Monday 25th February 1918

Billets at Altivole.

Another glorious day.

The Battalion returned to the front line. Starting out at 9.55am they marched via Contea and Montebelluna to Biadene; here they halted during the day at their former billets. After dusk they marched on, via Ciano, to return to the sector they had occupied in December 1917 (see 16^th December 1917). They took up positions in the right sector of the right brigade of the divisional front. Three Companies were in the front line with the fourth in close support and Transport Lines at Venegazzu. Pte. Harold Charnock (see 18^th February) remembered that, “All HQ were now in dugouts, the houses previously occupied being almost destroyed”. 2Lt. Bernard Garside (see 19^th February) also remembered the changed conditions, “We lived in a great dug-out which we entered by four ladders, one below the other. And we each had a little room scooped out of the ground and candles to see by”. There had been heavy rain in the preceeding days and the Piave had risen by over four feet since the Battalion’s previous tour and many trenches and dugouts in the much lower-lying left sector of the line were now flooded.

L.Cpl. Fred Wilson Fawcett (see 13^th February) was reported by Capt. Dick Bolton MC (see 23^rd February) and Pte. George Drake (see 25^th May 1917) for “neglect of duty in allowing a man on guard to take off his equipment and puttees”; on the orders of Lt.Col. Francis Washington Lethbridge DSO (see 9th February) he would be deprived of his Lance Corporal’s stripe and be reduced to Private.

Cpl. Joseph Edward Robinson (see 20^th September 1917) and Ptes. Israel Burnley (see 26^th November 1917), William George Clements (see 29^th October 1917), Ernest Heyhirst (see 22^nd March 1917), Frederick Sharp (see 4^th September 1917) and Albert Stanley (see 29^th October 1917) departed for England on two weeks’ leave.

Pte. Rowland Firby (see 26^th November 1917), serving with 3DWR at North Shields, began to be paid as Lance Corporal, having previously held the rank unpaid.

Lt. Sydney Charles Ernest Farrance (see 23^rd January), serving as a probationary officer in the Indian Army, was promoted Captain.

Pte. James Thomas Sagar (see 4^th February), who, for the previous ten days, had been working for Messrs. H. Pontifex and Sons Ltd, Farringdon Works, Birmingham, on munitions work, was formally discharged from the Army as no longer physically fit for service. He was granted a pension of 27s. 6d. for four weeks, reducing to 8s. 3d. thereafter and to be reviewed in one year.