The whole episode was much more interesting than alarming.  Fear is seated in the imagination, I think, and vanishes once the mind can assert itself.  One feels very funky in the cold nights when nothing is happening:  but if one has to handle men under fire, one is braced up and one’s attention is occupied.  I expect rifle fire is much more trying:  but the fact that shell-fire is more or less unaimed at one individually, and also the warning swish, gives one a feeling of great security.

We got back to camp near the river (4 on sketch) about 6, and dug a perimeter, hoping to settle down for the night.  But at 7.30 orders came to move at 9.30.  We were told that an enemy force had worked round our right flank, and that our brigade had to do a night march eastward down the river and attack it at dawn.  So at 10 p.m. we marched with just a blanket apiece, leaving our kits in the camp.  After we had gone, the Q.M. made up a big fire and got in no fewer than fifty-two wounded, who were trying to struggle back to the field dressing station from the firing line four or five miles away.

The fire attracted them and parties went out to help them in.  I think it is very unsatisfactory that beyond the regimental stretcher-bearers there is no ambulance to bring the wounded back:  and how can a dozen stretchers convey 300 casualties five miles?  It is a case of sauve qui peut for the wounded:  and when they get to the dressing station the congestion is very bad, thirty men in a tent, and only three or four doctors to deal with 3,000 or 4,000 wounded.  I mention this as confirming my previous criticism of the medical service here.

Well, we started out at 10 p.m. and marched slowly and silently till nearly midnight.  Then we bivouacked for four-and-a-half-hours (5 on sketch,) and a more uncomfortable time I hope never to spend.  We had not dared bring rugs for fear of losing them in the subsequent attack, so I had nothing but my Burberry, a muffler and a woollen helmet.  The ground was bare earth everywhere, very damp and cold.  I lay in a ditch and slept for three-quarters-of-an hour, and then woke with extremely cold feet, so I walked about a little, and then, finding Foster in the same case, we both took off our Burberrys and laid one under us and one above and lay like babes in the wood.  This expedient kept one flank nicely warm, and soon I got North to make a pillow of my other thigh, which kept that warm:  but from the knees downwards I was incurably cold and never got to sleep again.  The men were better off, having each a blanket, and sleeping in packets of four.