Friday 12th April 1918

Front line trenches between San Sisto and Poslen.

The recent cold, wet weather continued, with showers of rain, sleet and snow.

2Lt. Bernard Garside (see 29^th March), who was with the Company in reserve, recalled conditions, “Our Company was not quite in the front at first, but in reserve up a little hill through a wood from the front line. Our mess was really a trench covered in and our lath was the ‘firestep’. We slept in a cave on beds made of wire netting, three, one above the other. We could not undress now, so if we got very wet, as we often did, we had to sleep all wet, and when we got warm, if we did, the steam came up the valise. It was very cold and the roof of the cave all leaked, so we had a ground sheet stretched over us by strings and all night the water trickled on to it and fell off the end, just beyond our feet, in a lovely little waterfall into a big bucket, which was emptied from time to time. But I’ll tell you the thing I remember best. There were some big rats living with us and one night in the cold one stole along the wooden part of the bed – I was in the middle of the three wire-netting beds, one above the other. It found my head, against the beam, was warm and so it snuggled down on the beam in my hair and went to sleep. I know this because I moved and wakened and felt a tug and off scuttered the rat – I saw it – frightened. I was glad it didn’t bite me instead”.

Pte. John Walter Gethen (see 12^th March), serving with 69^th Trench Mortar Battery, was admitted via 71^st Field Ambulance to 23^rd Division Rest Station, suffering from “P.U.O.” (pyrexia, or high temperature, of unknown origin); he would be discharged and return to duty a week later.

The Bradford Weekly Telegraph reported news of Pte. Frederick Maltby (see 29^th December 1916), stating that was “dangerously ill suffering from gunshot wounds in the head and is in hospital in France”. In the absence of a surviving service record it has not been possible to establish details of when he had returned to France following his treatment for trench foot late in 1916 or with which Dukes’ Battalion he had been serving. He would subsequently (date and details unknown) be transferred to the Labour Corps.

Pte. Walton Thomas (see 14^th July 1916), who had been wounded while serving with 10DWR in July 1916, and had subsequently been posted to 1^st/7^th DWR was killed in action; he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial. 

Pte. James Moran (see 1^st March), serving with Scottish Command Labour Centre, was formally transferred to 3DWR at North Shields.


Pte. Arthur Hall (see 12^th January) was formally discharged from the RAF as no longer physically fit for service on account of the wounds he had suffered in August 1916; he was assessed as having suffered a 20% disability and was awarded a pension of 8s. per week.