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Owing to the appalling weather all trenches were very wet, including the communication trenches, of which there were several Chiswick Avenue opposite Essarts, Lulu Lane alongside the Hannescamps road, with Collingbourne Avenue branching off it, and, on the Monchy side, Shell Street in the middle, and Stoneygate Street alongside the Bienvillers road.
Some of the communication trenches were in a particularly bad condition, and worst of all was the very deep Berlin Trench running alongside the road from Bienvillers to Hannescamps.
It was indeed a crisis in the fate of the right wing of the Third Army, though at the time we did not realise it. At 6 p.m. the observers left Bienvillers and went forward along the road to Hannescamps, meeting many wounded on the road and a few other parties of troops returning. We found the battalion in a hollow west of Essarts. They were just preparing to move.
Such was the sector into which the Division went after Gommecourt to rest and gradually recuperate. Our Brigade had the Monchy front and the stretch with the wide No Man's Land opposite Essarts; we, as a Battalion, were sometimes North, sometimes South of the Hannescamps Road, the other Brigades were further North, in the Ransart, Bailleulval and Berles area.
Transport from the south-east coming in our direction through Hannescamps appeared to be in a panic and expecting pursuit by the German cavalry. Once we got away from the road and reached Le Quesnoy Farm there was little movement to be seen. A few small parties of our men moving towards us across the open and here and there a limber.
During this first month our casualties, "holding the line," were very slight, though we lost three good N.C.O.'s through shell fire. Serjt. Shreeves, of "C" Company, died of wounds, Cpl. Ambrose, of "B" Company, was killed outright near Hannescamps, and later Serjt. W. Gartshore, of "C" Company. Between raids and gas attacks we were kept hard at work repairing our trenches.
About this point, notorious for frequent visits from the earth-shelling aerial torpedo, began the lines of the 4th Division, once again our neighbours. They were our sister division in the 7th Corps, which was completed by the arrival at the end of August of the 37th Division, who after spending some days with us for instruction relieved the French on our left at Fonquevillers and Hannescamps.
We found our field batteries stationed quite close to us, to the west and north of Essarts, and one in a small hollow to the east. These batteries kept up a pretty constant fire during the night; but so far the enemy did not reply. All our heavy guns seem to have been taken away, except possibly one battery of 60-pounder guns near Hannescamps.
The last had been so named by the Leicestershire "New Army" Brigade, who had originally built the trench. Hannescamps, a minute village, lay 1,000 yards from the line, partly hidden by a hollow, and, with an excellent bank full of dug-outs, was a home for Battalion Headquarters and one Company.
On the 11th we moved up through Bienvillers and went into our old trenches opposite Monchy. But the recent heavy rains had undone all the good that we had done in the early autumn, and they were now in a very bad state. On the right of the Hannescamps road they were particularly bad, and Liverpool Street, which ran from Lulu Lane to the front line, was almost impassable.
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