War Diaries

On this cold and dreary day it seemed appropriate to carry on with transcribing a war diary from Oct/Nov 1915. So far today ‘my’ Battalion have been inspected by the King, held an inquiry into 37 cases of trench foot during their last stint in the front line, received information that the King is in bed after falling off his horse, marched into a new camp described as ‘a sea of mud’, had two soldiers court-martialled and sentenced to death for desertion (remitted to 15months penal servitude and suspended), seen one rifleman awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government, and all had a bath. Also “the problem has arisen as how to deal with many men whose nerves become broken in the trenches”, and to add insult to injury, “the issue of rum in the trenches proved to have a doubtful advantage.” All this during a ‘quiet’ period.