The History of the 2/6th Lancashire Fusiliers.
The Ypres Times.
53
October 27th.Lieut. Smith consulted Jones about Groceries." Jones, very
callous, replied They all go like that, Sir." The haemorrhage of the Oxo has become
acute and complications with the Tea have set in. The three biscuits are literally falling
to pieces in this abomiuable climate.
October 28th.We are moving to the front. Lieut. Smith buried Biscuits outside
his tent. Groceries has disappeared. I overheard Jones say Couldn't be helped,
Sir. It was in a dreadful mess."
October 29th.Horrors. I can hardly write. Lieut. Smith has been wounded.
Am alone. Jones has deliberately abandoned me.
October 30th.Alone except for brief visit of two soldiers who, judging from their
conversation, thought T was married and wounded.
October 31st.The rats are awful, but my armour protects me.
November 1st.A night of horror. Was pitched bodily through the door at a rat
on the parapet. Am lying half-submerged in a borrow-pit.
November 5th.Cold, dirty, disgustedbut back in the trench doing my bit,"
filling up a space between two sandbags in the parapet.
November 6th.Used by a sergeant as a mallet for driving a peg into the trench
wall. Am all dented on one side as a result.
November 7th.With several other tins of bully beef am being used as a paving
stone for the bottom of the trench.
November 8th.-The tales the others have told me of the treatment of bully beef
are too horrible to repeat.
November i6th.Rescued from floor of trenchand am now a door weight. Every
body kicks me if they want to move me.
November 20t11.Dug-out roof and door smashed by a shell. Very narrow escape
for me.
November 24th.With two bricks am now supporting a brazier.
November 25th.Intense heat has given me a stomach-ache.
November 26th.Hurrah! No coke in the rations, so no fire. My solder has
nearly melted.
November 27th.Am now helping to prop up the roof of another dug-out.
December 2nd.Dug-out collapses. Strain has bent me out of shape.
December 3rd.Dug-out rebuilt. Am on top of parados.
December 15th.Whizzing explosion shifted me several yards. Very much
shaken.
December 2Cjth - -The end. Shrapnel has torn one of my corners off, I see a large
rat approaching
Reprinted from The Salient, 1915.
By CAPT. C. H. POTTER, M.C., and. CAPT. A. S. C. FOTHERGILL.
Rochdale "Observer" Works.
This is a good soldierly account of a Second Line Territorial Battalion by two officers
who served in it. The achievements of the battalion are worthy of such a record. The
story begins in August, 1914, when fifteen hundred recruits appeared at the Drill Hall
at Rochdale to fill three hundred places in the original 6th Lancashire Fusiliers. The
other battalions of the East Lancashire Territorial Division doubled themselves in the
same way, so that, when the original division proceeded to Egypt in September, 1914,
there was a duplicate division left behind, in due course numbered the 66th.
