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Never before had we made haste more gladly or less needfully, but never before had there been such an incentive to haste. We were going into the trenches for the first time. The officers' servants, commonly called "batmen," were unfortunate rankers who, in moments of weakness, had sold themselves into slavery for half a crown per week.
At the same time, Captain Tomson, finding his Company now consisted only of his signallers, runners, and batmen, and unable to find out where the rest had gone, determined to try and rush the machine guns which were keeping up such a steady fire close to his left flank. His little party forced their way through some wire and found themselves opposed by three guns.
In this warfare, when you have brought up such artillery as was unbelievable even in the first year of the war, and reduced miles of trenches to powder, and have walked over the line of the works in front of you, a handful of batmen and Headquarters' cooks may still hold up the greatest attack yet delivered, and you may spend the next month dashing your strength away against a barrier of ever-increasing toughness.
Accommodation was very limited, and I found the other officers of A Company, four in number, with their batmen and cook all crowded together in a small shelter. It was as may be imagined uncomfortably hot at times, especially during the night, part of which I spent in the trench outside.
Then the batmen were fetched in and given the presents from the Christmas Tree. And we drank healths in lemonade
He never told his experiences, but the men spoke enthusiastically, and fragments of it leaked back to the colonel through sergeants, batmen, and the like. There was great jealousy between the first and second detachments, but the men united in adoring Cottar, and their way of showing it was by sparing him all the trouble that men know how to make for an unloved officer.
They failed several times under fire, once they caused a riffle of real excitement in Archangel when they started a mutiny, and finally they were used chiefly as labor units and as valets and batmen for officers and horses. They were charged with having a mutinous spirit and with plotting to go over to the Bolsheviks. They did in small numbers at times.
On May 19th, Major T.L. Jowitt, Captain J.D. Black and eight subalterns with their trusty batmen left Leven for the South and they were lost to us for a month. This was owing to limited boat accommodation. The Battalion, under command of Colonel F.L. Morrison, moved from Leven on May 24th, with, we think we can say, the best wishes of the inhabitants.
It is impossible to imagine what we should have done without runners, signallers or batmen, to say nothing of the food. As we were now only 600 yards from our final objective the Padre and Captain Jack went off to find a Regimental Aid Post and finally settled in a small dug-out in a sunken road just outside the village.
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