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Updated: May 16, 2025
I went to General Pilcher's headquarters at Reninghelst on March 4th, and found the staff of the 17th Division frosty in their greeting, while General Pratt, the brigadier of the 3d Division, was conducting the attack in their new territory. General Pilcher himself was much shaken. The old gentleman had been at St.-Eloi when the bombardment had begun on his men.
Round about Poperinghe, by Reninghelst and Locre, long convoys of motor-wagons, taking up a new day's rations from the rail-heads, raised clouds of dust which powdered the hedges white. Flemish cart-horses with huge fringes of knotted string wended their way between motor-lorries and gun-limbers.
One November evening I was picking my way cautiously through the mud camp near Reninghelst, and hearing the tune of a famous hymn, drew near to listen, for Jock sometimes sings to hymn tunes words that certainly never appeared in any hymn-book, and I wanted to make sure that it was the greatest hymn in the English language which was being sung. It was a quiet night.
Two days before we left Reninghelst the first reinforcements arrived for us, consisting of 12 returned casualties and 80 N.C.O.'s and men from England a very welcome addition to our strength.
And another in simple words summed up the heroic simple spirit of them all: 'Well, we've keepit up the reputation o' the auld mob, onyway. Indomitable men! Who could ever vanquish you? Rest meant tent boards under frozen canvas, but it was rest. On that weary morning even the uninviting outline of Reninghelst village seemed like home.
None of us had ever been to the "Salient," but it was a well known and much dreaded name, and most of us imagined we were likely to have a bad night, and gloomily looked forward to heavy casualties. Starting at 6-40 p.m., we went by motor bus with four hundred Sherwood Foresters through Reninghelst, Ouderdom, and Vlamertinghe to Kruisstraat, which we reached in three hours.
Unfortunately, we had no sooner made ourselves really comfortable than the Staffordshires claimed the field as part of their area, and we had to move to a similar billeting area a few hundred yards outside Reninghelst where we stayed until the 28th.
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