On the third day out of the one, that is April 6, 1917, we packed up and followed the duckboard tracks and moved across our front southward to Bazentin Nissen hut encampment where we rested for the night and until the evening of the following day. The at 6 o’clock, we fell in by companies and moved off via another duckboard track route, and after three hours fatiguing march, took over the reserve positions of the 8th brigade at Yarra Bank. This position was slightly to the left of Flers where the 20th Battalion had made an unsuccessful attack in the appalling mud of six months before. Numbers of 20th Btn. dead still lay unburied, half preserved by the frozen weather, just where they had fallen in their gallant efforts to do their duty, and it was with sad hearts that we set to and immediately and decently buried them almost before we had had anything to eat.

The splinter-proof dugouts built into the steep banks of a watercourse, which we now occupied were situated about three miles from the firing line at Ligny-Thilloy and just on the left of where Flers once stood as a flourishing village. Immediately behind our position was Factory corner, which derived its name from a ruined sugar refinery nearby, which was the recent scene of a furious fight. The reserve positions we occupied for four days at Yarra bank were scarcely ever shelled or molested by the Huns in any way, so that our stay there was almost painfully quiet, after what we had become used to. Of course, when in reserve we were given any amount of fatigue work to do, mostly in laying duckboard tracks over the surrounding quagmire and during the four days at Yarra bank, I was employed in fatigue party which lay a duckboard track from Abbeywood dump on the 6th Brigade sector across to our own Battalion headquarters at Yarra bank. Whilst engaged in laying this track across what was recently No Mans Land, we frequently came across well preserved bodies of Australians and men from a Gloucester Regiment, to which we gave a decent burial whenever it was possible.

Some of these bodies lay in rows of half dozens, showing that they had all been mown down by machine gun fire as they charged and there they lay in a good state of preservation, due to the freezing weather, until we came along and interred them. At the end of four days spent in reserve at Yarra bank, our battalion relieved the front line battalion immediately in front of the village of Ligny-Thilloy. A, B and D companies occupying the front line post and C company in close support, occupying the German dugouts just in rear. During the daytime, we rested and did no work at all.

The first night, No. 10 platoon, including myself, were detailed to carry water from a well in the village to our cookhouse in a cellar. We filed down the main road of the village, carrying our petrol tins and kitchen dixies, keeping close to the high banks of the road, in order to escape the stray machine gun bullets, until we came to the well. Here we congregated in

a heap, awaiting our turn to fill our tins, when suddenly three shells came screaming towards us. One fell and burst in a house nearby, showering us with broken bricks and timber which rattled on our steel helmets as it fell. The second shell burst harmlessly in a manure heap about 20 yards ahead. The third shell fell with a rush and a thud right in amongst us at the foot of the brickwork of the well and we scattered for our lives. However it was a ‘dud’ and our fright was unnecessary, although had it burst it would have wiped out our platoon.

The remainder of that night and following day, I was a member of the gas guard, keeping watch in turn for gas shells. We, being in the shelter of a deep German dugout, had rather a “cushy” time during the two days in the line at Ligny-Thilloy but the remainder of the battalion was not so fortunate, as the mud and slush was still as bad as ever and the Germans bombarded the outposts incessantly with pineapple bombs and light shells causing many casualties. At dusk of the second night in, I was detailed by our sergeant major, Teddy Welsh M.M. to go to the rear and find out the route our battalion was to take on being relieved.