While resting at Manitz camp on April 8, 1917, I was again ordered to wear a stripe on my arm and obeyed so that from thence onward I was a Lance Corporal and was given charge of minor fatigue jobs, etc. During our eight days spell, also we frequently visited Albert and the picture shows there, cleaned up, bathed in the bath houses and obtained two changes of clothing, thus ridding ourselves for a time from our old enemy, the body lice. We also spent a Sunday at the camp, when we attended a Brigade church parade, at which General Birdwood was present.

After the sixth day C company was moved to Le Sars on a fatigue work and I was left at Mamitz with four men to clean out the huts they had occupied. Next day, my party rejoined the company at Le Sars and proceeded later on in the afternoon via motor lorry to Bapaume, where we rejoined the remainder of the battalion at a camp formed of low tarpaulin shelters built in an open field on the North East side of Bapaume.

Here we remained under our shelters in the pouring rain until next morning, suffering much discomfort from the wet which poured through the canvas and making the inside nearly as wet as the outside. Next day, I was detailed as company billeting N.C.O. to proceed to Vaux-Vraucourt to allot billets to my company. Accordingly, an officer and we five company billeting N.C.O.’s marched across country to Vaux and spent the remainder of the afternoon in searching out the safest and most comfortable billets for the battalion, the village had to offer. I billeted C company in a big two storied barn with thick walls and out of the general track of the shells as they flew incessantly into the village. We occupied this billet in Vaux for two night and a day, filling in our spare time in clearing the liquid mud from the surface of the roads.

Shells frequently fell in the vicinity of our billet, but it is marvellous how close they can go without harming anybody and no harm was done, fortunately during our stay. Just on the outskirts of Vaux were concealed several active batteries of 9.2’s and 8″ howitzers which kept up an incessant banging and crashing as they spat their messengers of hate into the German lines. Of course by this time we had all become used to shells.and guns and such like evils and now scarcely took any notice of them at all.