Up about 8 o’clock. Down for water duties. The Germans sent a good many shells over. Fine all day. Wet at night.
All posts by Arthur Linfoot
7 October 1917; Sunday
Had good night’s rest. A lot of rain and the ground bad. Up about 8 o’clock. Not much to do all day. Had long discussion at night with Harvey. Commenced letter home in reply to one received.
6 October 1917; Saturday
Up about 4 o’clock with a case. Not much doing during the day. A fair amount of rain. News of the fight on the 4th. Lee Hughes went down to go on leave.
Had long discussion at night with Harvey.
5 October 1917; Friday
Managed to get a nice sleep. Not much doing all day. The ground very wet and walking very heavy. Out at midnight with a case.
4 October 1917; Thursday
Up at about 7 o’clock. A patient first thing and the ground was heavy with rain. Not much to do all day. Talked a few minutes with Harvey of the prospects of the war and our prospects after the war.
Two/three Divisions gone over on our left at dawn.
3000 prisoners and all objectives taken.
3 October 1917; Wednesday
Up at about 8 o’clock. One case to carry down first thing and it was rather heavy after the rain. Not busy all day. Out at midnight with two cases. A machine gun crew of the Notts and Derbys1 blown up and one man out of 17 untouched.
“Notts and Derbys”: I think this is correctly transcribed, but I haven’t found any reference to battalions of a Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment. (DL) ↩
2 October 1917; Tuesday
Up about 8 o’clock. Spent good part of the day carrying back muddy stretchers and officers’ kit. Had a case at night. Berry came through wounded during the early hours of the morning of the third.
1 October 1917; Monday
Up about midnight running up the canal bank after an officer. His man had taken him down the tunnel and he was quite dead when brought down. His first time up the line. Had two gas alarms in the night and some gassed artillerymen in in the night. Rather a busy time and we were fed up after it. Went round the aid posts in the morning with the 57th officer and Lee Hughes. Two German planes flying extremely low.
30 September 1917; Sunday
Up at 8 o’clock. The place very heavily shelled all the morning and part of the afternoon. Carried one case in the morning and were shelled most of the journey. Fine night. Received newspapers mentioning Mr Aitken’s death1.
20 September 1917.
Image © Johnston Press plc. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD
via the British Newspaper Archive.
Mr Aitken had been ALL’s boss at the Hendon Paper Mill and had died on 20 September. This news had first reached ALL on 25 September. The cutting reproduced above could possibly have appeared in one of newspapers received by ALL on this day.
See also William Robertson Aitken and all diary entries tagged “Aitken“. ↩
29 September 1917; Saturday
Up at 8 o’clock. Kept pretty busy after tea with stretcher cases. Germans shelled heavily at night and kept us awake most of the time. Had to visit the posts with Captain McCombie. Shelled most of the way round and had one particularly near thing. An artillery man died in the dressing station.