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Updated: June 13, 2025
The relief was carried out in daylight, both Brigades marching boldly along the Sailly road, the crest of which was in clear distant view of the enemy. The two intermediate communication trenches, Larrey and Jena, some 2,500 yards long, were not yet sufficiently repaired for our passage.
But towards the end of March the weather grew warm and genial and the wild daffodils began to appear in all the fields around Sailly. Meanwhile the preliminaries for the Somme offensive became increasingly significant. The forward villages such as Sailly and Bayencourt were cleared of the civil population, and handed over entirely to the Army.
Rations and R.E. material were loaded at Sailly, taken by train to the Mansion House Dump at Vermelles, and then by mule-drawn trucks to the front. The Exeter Dump was lively at times, especially when a machine gunner on Fosse 8 slag heap, popularly known as Ludendorf, was pointing his gun in that direction.
On the 11th March we marched to Sailly sur la Lys, better known as "Sally on the loose," where with the Canadian Division we should be in reserve, though we did not know it, for the battle of Neuve Chapelle.
This ground was the scene of the main British attack on Loos two months later, and the building was the famous Tower Bridge. The squalid little town between Houchin and Sailly, at whose busy coal-mine the enemy intermittently threw shells, was Noeux-les-Mines, where Lord French had his forward headquarters during the fighting.
Omer and made a similar attack on Estaires on March 23. Four days after another attack was made on Estaires, and on the same day, March 27, the German airmen did some damage to Sailly, Calais, and Dunkirk. The next day a "Taube" made an attack on Calais, Estaires, and Hazebrouck. A Zeppelin closed the month's warfare in the air for the Germans by making a dash over Bailleul.
A certain amount of change, however, from trench routine was afforded by the courses now established at the various schools of instruction behind the line; for instance, one officer and 30 men went every fortnight to the Brigade Bomb School at Sailly, and in spite of constant shelling found reasonably comfortable billets.
Still more monstrous guns came crawling up, and in place of the old battery of 60-pounders, the orchard at the western outskirts of Sailly, in the angle of the Bayencourt road, harboured two 15-inch howitzers. Gun-pits and enormous new dugouts were constructed in Hébuterne.
We had expected in due course to go into the trenches somewhere near Grenay, but it suddenly became known that the brigade was to march back to the neighbourhood of Lillers preparatory to entraining for an unknown destination. Half the battalion that day had done their daily trip to Sailly and came back about 4 p.m., after marching 8 miles and digging for four hours.
On June 10th the Battalion set its face again towards the east; and after two days' long and dusty marching we found ourselves again in the huts of Couin, which next day were exchanged for an undesirable and filthy bivouac at Sailly. The preparations of the last month had completely changed the aspect of these forward villages, and it was clear that the time was at hand.
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