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Our life in the line was very uneventful. The digging of the posts was not nearly completed, and we were continually digging and wiring. In this we had the assistance of the 7th H.L.I. Our two main difficulties were in getting the trenches to stand and drainage. The Lyle's Post and Christmas Hill trenches were in sand, and required almost complete revetting.
There was no suggestion of revetting; probably there were not more than twenty sandbags in the area allotted to the Battalion.
Those who were there at the time will remember it from the fact that the body of a French soldier was lying half buried under the parapet at one of the entrances. Poor Frenchy's whole right side was showing from the foot to the waist line. The day of which I write had been rather warm. A working party had been out repairing a firing step and revetting the trench.
It was a tiresome job, as the sand was so soft that a very wide ditch had to be dug and then faced with sandbags. The men were very quick about getting down, and after the first night they were practically working in safety for the remaining four or five days necessary to complete the sandbag revetting. All bags used had to be double, as single ones would not keep the sand in.
He employed masons to chisel the stone used for revetting, and in places the stones fit well and truly one upon the other, while an enormous amount of rock must have been blasted to excavate the trenches.
While some went off to learn grenade throwing, a skilled science in those days when there was no Mills but only the "stick" grenades, others helped dig back lines of defence and learned the mysteries of revetting under the Engineers.
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