|
The heavy
bombardment continued and in the resulting confusion the company
was scattered. Williamson spent many horrific hours searching
for his Battalion HQ, scrabbling through abandoned trenches filled
with corpses and under threat from constant fire.
|
|
The
view from Stirling Castle with Sanctuary Wood
in the distance, 23 September 1917 (photo E(AUS)1409)
|
| "At
my side I found a man who murmured that our Battalion Headquarters
could not be far away, he had been told so. But I hardly listened.
I was gazing down on Sanctuary Wood, where we had lain two days
ago, and on Zillebeke, now as ever under bombardment. I could see
the white road stretching away until it vanished towards Ypres...
the plain below still shimmered in the sun. Men moved mere specks
in the landscape, and, far away, lorries on the roads were being
shelled. I noticed that nothing could move unseen by me, and I realised
that I sat where for years the enemy had sat and had observed our
every move within the fatal Salient." |
| After they
had withdrawn from the line he was offered the choice between a
decoration or a brief spell in the 5th Army Rest Camp. He chose
the latter, spending the first two weeks of September at Équihen
near Wimereux. It was probably here that he wrote a moving account
of the battle, titled 'Disturbing Journey'. He later attended a
course at the II Army Bombing School and was promoted to corporal.
He spent some time nursing a badly infected hand caused by a cut
from a piece of wire and returned to the battalion at the beginning
of December. |
|
 |
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
|
