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Updated: August 5, 2024
"He has ridden on, and will sleep at Cambrin." Grimaud sat down at a table, wiped the dust and perspiration from his face, poured out a glass of wine, and drank in silence. He was about to fill his glass a second time, when a loud shrill cry was heard, issuing from the apartment in which the monk and the patient were shut up together. Grimaud started to his feet. "What is that?" exclaimed he.
On relief from the Cambrin trenches on the 7th July the Battalion spent a little over a fortnight in Brigade and Divisional Reserves at Sailly Labourse and the Faubourg d'Arras in Bethune respectively. On the 25th it was in line at Vermelles. This sector was quiet except in that portion which was opposite the Hohenzollern Redoubt, from which huge aerial torpedoes were fired.
Meanwhile, the morning's raid had left a prisoner in our hands, and he had now caused about as much sensation as one man could, by stating quite definitely that the Boche would attack from the la Bassée Canal to "Hill 70" on the 25th of March with three Divisions. We went into the Cambrin sector again on the 24th, this time with three Companies in the line.
The remainder of the month of May and the month of June were spent at Cambrin and Cuinchy, this latter place being renowned even in those days for its minenwerfer activity. The Cambrin sector had good deep trenches made by the French pioneers, which were strong, well timbered and comfortable. This was the first occasion the Battalion occupied trenches as distinguished from breast-works.
"Go, my young sirs," said the sick man, "and may you both be blessed for your piety. You have done for me, as you promised, all that you could do. As for me I can only repeat, may God protect you and all dear to you!" "Sir," said De Guiche to his tutor, "we will precede you, and you can rejoin us on the road to Cambrin."
Cambrin, Guinchy, La Bassée silent and haunted, teeming with ghosts, lie stagnant in the morning sun. The cobwebs drift across the Hulluch road, and in the distance, by the first bend, a man pushing a wheeled stretcher comes slowly walking back to the dressing station. It's still going on: nothing much has changed; and yet the cigar is good; the brandy superb: the brandy Jimmy preferred.
No men were out of the trenches yet, though some were being killed there and elsewhere, at the crossroads by Philosophe, and outside the village of Masingarbe, and in the ruins of Vermelles, and away up at Cambrin and Givenchy. The German guns were answering back intermittently, but holding most of their fire until human flesh came out into the open. The battle began at dawn on September 25th.
It started at Cambrin, passed the Factory and Factory Dug-outs, and, following the Annequin-Haisnes Railway to its junction with the Vermelles Line, acted as dividing line between the two halves of the Brigade Sector. From the left Battalion Headquarters to the front line, an often much battered part of it, it belonged to the left sector.
On the 5th of March we marched through Lillers and Béthune again to Beuvry and, after staying one night there, moved the following day to Annequin and Sailly Labourse, where we were responsible for the defence of the Annequin locality. The 1st Corps scheme of defence was a series of fortified localities, Philosophe, Cambrin, Annequin, Noyelles, and many others further West as far as Vaudricourt.
General Rowley gave a cup for a Brigade Company Competition, and, while at Sailly, our "A" Company beat Brigade Headquarters in the "final," after which "Tinker" Evans, the captain of the team, received the cup from the Brigadier. The following morning we went once more to the line, back into the familiar Cambrin right sector. Unfortunately there was now a change.
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