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Updated: May 4, 2025
Then went to see relief plan of area of our forthcoming attack in a field at Boisdinghem." Thus ended our long rest. The evening of June 30 our last at Westbecourt is one which is still well remembered by those who were there, and still much spoken of by those who were not there! It was a lively evening in the various company messes.
"We shall remain out of the line for some time yet so cheer up!" I now come to one of the most remarkable, and in some respects certainly the most comical, of all the episodes in which Colonel Best-Dunkley figured the memorable march from Millain to Westbecourt.
We left Ypres soon afterwards and went into rest billets at Millain and then training billets at Westbecourt. Hunter-Weston's VIII Corps became a reserve corps behind the line and we, Jeudwine's 55th Division, were transferred to Watts's XIX Corps which became part of Gough's Fifth Army that famous general having arrived in Flanders.
General Stockwell's speech at Westbecourt, on Waterloo day, 1917, was a very remarkable speech; it was the most striking speech I have ever heard and I have listened to a good many famous public speakers in my time and it produced a very profound impression upon all who heard it. I only wish there had been a reporter present to take it down verbatim. But that could not be.
Everybody was thinking and talking about the great Battle on the Somme of which this was the first anniversary; but before the day was over we ourselves had cause to remember the first of July. My diary contains a brief synopsis of the journey: "July 1st. "Up 4 a.m. Breakfast 4.40. Marched off from Westbecourt at 6.15. Marched to Lumbres. The place full of Portuguese. Entrained there.
Those were the days of that most objectionable of all tyrants, the Censor! I can but quote from the letter which I wrote home from Westbecourt on June 18: "The Battalion paraded in a field just by my billet this morning. General Stockwell arrived at 10.45. The General Salute, Present Arms, was ordered by Best-Dunkley.
While at Westbecourt we Stockwell's 164 Brigade practised the Third Battle of Ypres in the open cornfields and amongst the numerous vegetable crops between Cormette and Boisdinghem.
The following lengthy epistle which I wrote in my billet in the Vale of Acquin at Westbecourt the following day draws a perfectly accurate picture of what happened: "You will be interested to learn that we have moved again. We are now billeted in a pretty little village in the heart of north-eastern France....
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