The burning of the Reg. pay office must have caused hideous confusion, but I expect they are slack and tied up with red tape over the whole thing. Fine today and drying. Days are shortening. We can start relief half-an-hour earlier owing to the light. Just had the 14 young officers for 1½ hours, and I am most favourably impressed with them. Bright, intelligent, and keen, they strike me. But 14 is a large number to assimilate. I will write a line to the Reg. Paymaster and ask him to expedite matters as far as he can. I am sending officers and men on this recruiting tour who were over the parapet and did good work. I am feeling very low, and feeling this beginning again without their help is beyond me. The Battalion is all wrong, and no chance to get it right. I cannot even parade more than one Coy. at a time here, and they are all over the place, and all the best gone out of them. They say no chance of leave before winter.

Footnote

Opened as a linen trading centre in 1728, the impressive Dublin Linen Hall was the epicentre of the sale of finished linen from all over Ireland. The large hall comprised nearly 600 rooms. Six open courts were surrounded by store-rooms and galleries and traders could discuss business in a coffee room. The hall fell into disuse following the demise of the Dublin linen trade after the opening of Belfast’s Linen Hall. In the 19^thC the buildings were used variously by the British Army and municipal bodies. In the early afternoon of 27^th April 1916, during the Easter rising in Dublin, Irish Republican rebels broke into Linenhall barracks, captured 40 unarmed men of the Army Pay Corps and a number of policemen, and set fire to the barracks. The buildings were largely destroyed, and with them the records of the Army Pay Office in Ireland.