On February 24, 1917, the school broke up and we were taken in motor lorries back through La Houssoye to Albert, and were deposited at Bellevue farm on the outskirts of the town, where we ate our dinner.
After dinner, we dumped our packs and resumed our fighting order and marched over the desolate battlefield past Mamitz and Becordel to Martinpinch Wood. Where we reported to Brigade Headquarters and were marched by our officer up William Alley to Flers Line, where I rejoined my company after a fortnights absence. The weather had now thawed and the whole country was again in a frightful mud bound state. The trenches were half full of slush and the roads were almost impassable. Everywhere we looked, artillery waggons and guns were bogged to the axles with strings of mules and horses attached in an endeavour to extricate them. Two days before my return from the school at Corbie, the Germans were discovered by a patrol from the 20th Btn. to be in the process of evacuating the low lying boggy ground in the neighbourhood of Le Sars and the Butte de Warlincourt and the whole Brigade had followed them in artillery formation for nearly two miles, locating their outposts at Ligny on the Bapaume Road. Then our battalion had withdrawn to the Flers line in which position I rejoined them.
At this place, we were employed on fatigue duty for two days and nights, salvaging material from the disused trenches behind Le Sars in the daytime and carrying trench mortars to the front line at night. At this date also, our battalion ration fatigue suffered severe casualties whilst assembled at the forward ration dump, through a German shell falling in their midst, killing and wounding about 25 men. On the third night after my return from the M.G. school, the battalion moved forward into supports in Gorridge trench at the foot of the Butte de Warlencourt. The Germans were then in Malt trench and the 17th Battalion were in the firing line opposite them, and it was in carrying rations and ammunition to that battalion that we occupied the two following nights and days.
Owing to the manner in which the Germans were placed, they could not see immediately behind our lines so that it was possible to go in and out our front line in broad daylight and on the second day of our occupation of Gorridge trench, a party from C Co. including myself, were employed in carrying ammunition to the front line. Whilst engaged in this work, at 10 o’clock in the morning, the 17th battalion advance guard moved forward and attacked Malt trench and I had the opportunity of actually seeing men go over the top without being in the attack myself. After a light trench mortar and shrapnel barrage, they leapt out of their trench and doubled forward with fixed bayonets and hand grenades, keeping an extended line and then leapt into Malt trench and secured it without suffering a casualty or obtaining a single prisoner as the Germans had evacuated in the early hours of the morning.
In a group of houses on the main Baupaume Road, just behind Malt trench, the Huns had had a Quartermasters store, in which we were able to fill in time between fatigues in obtaining any quantity of this much valued souvenir. I contented myself in taking a few of the double eagle badges, which I ultimately threw away as being too awkward to carry about.
After two days occupation of Gorridge trench, our battalion was relieved by the 7th brigade and moved back via Martinpinch Wood to Scotts Redoubt camp where for two more days we engaged our time in cleaning up and in practising a form of attack suitable for wood fighting in anticipation of our having to clear some woods we knew to be ahead, and which we would be likely to encounter during the present German retreat.