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After receiving
basic treatment at the Front, he was evacuated to England and
sent to the Lady Forester Hospital in Much Wenlock and convalesced
in Llandudno until the end of 1916.
In January
1917 he returned to the King's Royal Rifle Corps Depot in Winchester
and in March joined the 6th (Reserve) Battalion in Queensborough,
Kent. A few weeks later he embarked for France to re-join the
8th Battalion, meeting up with them on the line south-east of
Arras in May 1917.
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A
'Crump' - A Shell Exploding, 1918
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Letter
to his parents, France, 3 June 1917
"Certainly
no words could describe the horrors of a big attack, but ordinarily,
there is not the racket you speak of. Hours may go past without
more than half-a-dozen shots being heard. Shells may burst 25 yards
away, without being deafening, or really dangerous. The noise, though
it never lets one really rest, is not nerve-shattering..."
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| "...The
sounds vary curiously. Some are as if one was in a cellar &
heard a bench in the attic being struck by a mallet. Many shells
going overhead make a noise exactly
like an iron-shod tire going round a gritty corner of a road. The
thing that gets most on my nerves is having to pass frequently,
for days on end, up and down a twisting trench, about a foot wide
at the bottom, with the mud rendering each step difficult, with
rifle and equipment sticking out & catching things on all sides...."
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September 1916
September
1916 - June 1917
July
1917
August
1917
August
1917 - December 1917
December
1917 - January 1918
January
1918 - February 1918
March
1918 - 1978
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