A wet night and threatening a.m., which turned to heavy rain about 11.00 a.m. Consequently we all got drenched and the camp is a sea of mud again; so cold! I believe when we go up we shall go direct into the line, and lie there during the preliminary bombardment of some days, during which time nothing can come up. I have soup, but if you can manage to send meat lozenges they would be useful, specially in the Push; but they must come quickly. The trenches must be in awful state with the wet and the hammering they get; and very hard to repair in the wet, and the Bosche guns playing on them at night to prevent work being done. I’m glad we’re out of the line, bad and uncomfortable though the camp is; after all we have no shells or bullets. If this wet goes on we shall have a lot of sickness. It hasn’t come yet, but is bound to come. We are bothered by scabies. It began at Bordon where we took over infected barracks and we’ve never been really clear since; aggravated by life in the trenches, and latterly lack of baths, owing to move; we are full of it—about 100 cases, mostly quite mild, and only away about two days, but recurring every day. Practising the attacks through crops waist height, and saturated with wet, is very trying on men, as they have no chance and no means of drying their clothes. It was drenching doing it today.

Footnote

The Battalion was based at Martinique Barracks, Bordon in while it completed rifle shooting at the end of its training and just before sailing for France. This postcard, showing a photograph of Martinique Barracks, was sent home by 14561 Private George McCarroll.

Martinique Barracks, Bordon