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After I had eaten all the chief hut could supply, I set about looking for the shoemaker my already aged Guatemalan Oxfords needed so badly. I found the huts where several of them lived, but not where any of them worked. The first replied from his hammock that he was sick, the second had gone to Tegucigalpa, the third was "somewhere about town if you have the patience to wait."
The predictions of the French billet-keepers were realised at the end of October, when the 2/4th Oxfords were relieved in the trenches by a battalion of the Middlesex Regiment and prepared to march southwards to the Somme. Departure from Laventie. At Robecq. The march southwards. Rest at Neuvillette. Contay Wood. Albert. New trenches. Battle conditions. Relieving the front line. Desire Trench.
More dangerous still was an old gun-pit which lay behind the left flank. The capture of this had been assigned to the 48th Division, but as a measure of abundant caution Colonel Wetherall had detailed a special Berks platoon to tackle it. This platoon, assisted by some Oxfords on the scene, captured the gun-pit and nearly seventy prisoners, but failed to garrison it.
The Battalion at first rested from its labours in the village of Hamel, its former halting place in January, from 5th to 13th April, when it returned via Villers-Faucon to take over from the Oxfords.
In front of the saloons, farmwives sitting on the seats of wagons, waiting for their husbands to become drunk and ready to start home. A tobacco shop called "The Smoke House," filled with young men shaking dice for cigarettes. Racks of magazines, and pictures of coy fat prostitutes in striped bathing-suits. A clothing store with a display of "ox-blood-shade Oxfords with bull-dog toes."
But at 2.50 a.m. an unwelcome message was received from Colonel Bartlett, asking Colonel Clarke if he would undertake the counter-attack. The Brigadier, however, finding that the Oxfords were not in a position to take the action required, owing to their losses, made a virtue of necessity, and ordered Colonel Clarke to do so as soon as possible.
Davenport's men were a disorganised mixture of many battalions, including, besides the Oxfords and other representatives of the 184th Brigade, a number of Cornwalls and King's Liverpools. They were unfed, and the demoralisation of the retreat was beginning to do its work. As always on these occasions, when officers of different services were thrown together, divided counsels were the result.
D Company joined the Oxfords at noon, and suffered some loss during the afternoon while forming up in the open to counter-attack. Here its commander, Captain C. Buck, a good and conscientious officer, was killed. He had served unhurt through the whole of the third Battle of Ypres, and was the only officer whom we lost by death during the Italian year.
To prepare for an attack on Infantry Hill, a position held by the enemy south-east of Monchy-le-Preux, the 2/4th Oxfords went into the front line on June 6. Orders were received to advance across No-Man's-Land and link up a line of shell-holes as a 'jumping-off place' for the subsequent attack.
I decide that some I shall really buy one and take it home when I confronted with the fact that "All Hair Goods Must Be Sold." Why, I wonder. Why must they be sold? And here are "Eggs any style," so close to the hair goods that I immediately visualize them as marcelled "style" and pompadoured. "Shoes Drastically Reduced." It is the truth. The Oxfords I wear are reduced by a drastic five dollars.
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