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Updated: May 15, 2025
The Estaminet de l'Epinette was filthy and small. I slept in a stinking barn, half-full of dirty straw, and rose with the sun for the discomfort of it. Opposite the estaminet a road goes to Festubert. At the corner there is a cluster of dishevelled houses. I sat at the door and wrote letters, and looked for what might come to pass.
Here, and on the Rue de L'Epinette, the enemy was active with snipers and trench mortars in the centre thing's were very quiet. There was no front line in the old sense it was simply "outposts" as laid down in Field Service Regulations. Very few of the Company Officers had had any previous experience of this work, but Colonel Wood soon put us straight, and organized things himself.
The fog that prevailed on that day, however, prevented a movement until 4 p. m. Then the First Wiltshires and the Third Worcesters of the Seventh Brigade began a movement which had to be abandoned when the weather thickened and night fell. The attack on L'Epinette, a hamlet southeast of Armentières, was much more successful on the same day.
Our billeting area included several keeps or strong points L'Epinette, le Touret, and others for which we found caretakers, little thinking, as we stocked them with reserve rations, that the Boche would eventually eat our "Bully," and it would fall to our lot in three years time to drive him from these very positions. The day after relief, the Brigadier went on leave, and Col.
The morning after I arrived at the 14th the Germans concentrated their fire on a large turnip-field and exhumed multitudinous turnips. No further damage was done, but the field was unhealthily near the Estaminet de l'Epinette. In the afternoon we moved our headquarters back a mile or so to a commodious and moderately clean farm with a forgettable name. That evening two prisoners were brought in.
Taking for granted the extraordinary efficiency of the German Intelligence Corps, we were particularly nervous about spies when the Division was worn out, when things were not going well. At the Estaminet de l'Epinette I heard a certain story, and hearing it set about to make a fool of myself. This is the story I have never heard it substantiated, and give it as an illustration and not as fact.
We determined to push on as it was now dusk, but my engine jibbed, and we worked on it in the gloom among the dark and broken houses. The men in the trenches roused themselves to a sleepless night, and intermittent rifle-shots rang out in the damp air. We rode north to the Estaminet de l'Epinette, passing a road which forking to the right led to a German barricade.
A few days after I had returned from the 15th Brigade I was sent out to the 14th. I found them at the Estaminet de l'Epinette on the Béthune-Richebourg road. Headquarters had been compelled to shift, hastily enough, from the Estaminet de La Bombe on the La Bassée-Estaires road. The estaminet had been shelled to destruction half an hour after the Brigade had moved.
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