ay a great deal of interesting
information came into my hands, as to how things were going on; and I
have never before or since been so well supplied with information as
to what was going on and what was intended to take place. When out of
the line, in a camp near Neuville Vitasse, I had to give the observers
a certain amount of practical training in the use of the compass and
protractor, and map reading. But after that I was free to do what I
liked within reason, and I generally devoted my spare time to salvage.
The observers often turned out to assist me in this, and Lieut. Odell
on several occasions gave me most valuable assistance with his
signallers and orderlies.

Salvage was left very much at this time to the discretion of the
commanders of infantry units. Naturally when the soldier man got out
of the line, he was not much inclined to do much salvaging on Army
Account. Some of the transport officers made a specialty of it, and
Capt. B. Neville of the 7th N.F., the prince of quartermasters,
rescued tons of salvage of all kinds. I dare say, however, a good many
things found their way into his own stores as well, for I never knew a
quartermaster so well supplied as he. There were certain small parties
of men employed at Divisional and Corps Salvage dumps, but they never
seemed to me to take the job very seriously. Perhaps the officers in
charge were not exactly the sort of men to hustle, or to see that
their men got busy. Every one knows that there was a vast amount of
waste, and that the Germans had this matter much better organised than
we.

The Germans were particularly active against our field artillery on
this front. Although we had the advantage of ground for most purposes,
and could carry out infantry reliefs in daylight, there were few
places satisfactory for concealing our field guns. They were mostly
concentrated about Wancourt and Heninel, and these two places
consequently received frequent and heavy punishment from the German
heavies. It was well to keep your eyes and ears open when passing
through these villages and not to linger there unnecessarily. The
pieces from the German 8-inch shell carried a long way, and I had
L.-C. Chappell wounded through the hand and sent down to hospital
through a splinter that carried over a quarter of a mile. We saw a lot
of the 50th Divisional R.F.A. about this time and a fine lot of
fellows they were. On the left our H.Q. were next door to the B.H.Q.
of the 251st Art