July 8, 1916

July 8. About 4 a.m. got some hot tea from
East Lancs who were beside us and had got there
cookers up. Later ours arrived and we
got some breakfast. It turned out
a beautiful hot day – and we lay out on the hill
and slept and dried all day. About 7p.m. our
battalion advanced to occupy trenches [taken]
during day. We advanced down the hill and
across the valley – as we came to the German
trenches we got rather heavily shelled – and had
to pick our way between rows of corpses of our
men who had been caught by machine gun
fire. We entered a German communication
trench – very deep and with about two feet
of extremely sticky chalk mud at the bottom
which sucked one in so that every step was
a desperate wrench to get the hind foot free
and made progress very slow. At last we
reached the trench we were to occupy about 1 a.m.
Found it very shallow and exposed – only one
small dug out for H.Q. and no possible position
for an aid post; also my men and equipment
had not turned up, so started back alone
to look for them; and found them in the trench
a few hundred yards back – we then made
our way back along parapet of trench – getting
blown over by a shell on the way, and finally
dumping our equipment and at last finding a dug
out which we shared with East Lancs aid post
about 8.30 a.m.