Up about 8 o’clock. Laid fire and had breakfast. Mr Mudie1 arrived in the Ford car to take us away about 10 o’clock. He went to make enquiries about the people who are to relieve us. 33 F A relieved us about 4 o’clock. I walked to the cab station and Mr Mudie sent me on after Captains McCombie and Birrell to Aveluy post. There I got the Ford car and returned to the house where Corporal Chapman and I got in with our kit and returned. I received some letters, one from home telling me that Ranald McDonald was wounded in the leg and had trench fever2. Slept with the M.T’s.
La Verr3 killed.
Mr Mudie: the Army convention was/is that lieutenants and 2nd lieutenants were/are addressed, and sometimes referred to, as “Mr. xx”; so although ALL elsewhere writes “Lieutenant XX”, Mr Mudie – if the name is correct – was probably not a civilian. ↩
Trench fever is a moderately serious disease transmitted by body lice. It infected armies in Flanders, France, Poland, Galicia, Italy, Salonika, Macedonia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt in World War I. The disease is caused by the bacterium Bartonella quintana, found in the stomach walls of the body louse. Lice were, of course, ubiquitous as is well documented both in ALL’s diaries (for example, on 21 July 1916) and in other contemporary accounts. ↩
“La Verr” is written very faintly in longhand and is barely legible. However, in the light of helpful information from a correspondent, this was very probably Private Matthew La Veere, of the 58th Field Ambulance, from Cambusnethan near Wishaw, Lanarkshire, who is buried in the British Cemetery at Contay, some 13km west of Aveluy ↩