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Updated: May 21, 2025
As my illustrations do not follow all the movements of my detachment, I will say here that from Armentières we were shifted to Houplines, about 4-1/2 to 5 miles north-east, where we made an advance of a hundred yards or so to straighten up. Eloi, after making a short advance in the vicinity of Messines. From St. Eloi we were ordered to Hill 60, taking part in the now historic battle there.
I helped to track and put an end at Houplines to one German sniper who had resorted to a ruse that I really think deserves the dignity of a short chapter all to itself.
Bombers of W Company patrolled it and slept in it for six nights without result. On the 25th September the heavy firing at Loos caused a little anxiety. The day after this the Battalion sector was slightly altered by the taking over of the Houplines trenches from the 12th Division.
After Hill 60, Ypres, where shrapnel and poison gas put an end to my soldiering days I am afraid for ever. To come back to our first arrival at Armentières, our position was in touch with a small village not marked on the map, in the direction of Houplines.
After a few days spent at Waterlands, the Battalion moved into support at Erquinghem, with one company in the Lunatic Asylum at Armentières, and after a short stay it did one tour in the line near Houplines, and then went to Estaires, where it was in support to the Portuguese Army.
And then do we women not like to think of Mlle. Deletete staying at her post in the telegraph office in Houplines in spite of German bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors, when they smashed her instruments and threatened her with death.
Many times, probably, in the water-logged shell holes of Passchendaele in 1918 was it recalled how once at Armentières even the duck boards were cleaned daily and men were crimed for throwing matches on them. It is not forgotten either how the Battalion Band first came into being at Houplines. On the 11th August, the 6th and 8th Battalions once more assumed a separate identity.
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