They were relieved on the 27th July, after dark as usual, by the 1st Royal Warwicks, “recently come from the south, having been in the fighting there.” The Warwicks knew “The Somme.” They looked on the clean, creosoted, deep-bayed, high-parapeted trenches they were to hold and announced that they would feel “cushy” in such a line. “Cushy!” said the Brigade. “Wait till you’ve had to live in ’em!” “But,” said the Warwicks, “you see, _we_’ve been fighting.” The large Guardsmen looked at the little worn Linesmen and swallowed it in silence. The 4th Division, to which the Warwicks belonged, had been part of that terrible northern attack along the line from Serre to Fricourt, which had spent itself in vain against the German defence a month before, and had been ground and milled day by day since. But all that the Diary notices is that that last relief was “carried out smoothly and quietly” in what to the Warwicks, after such experience, must have been grateful peace.
After their three weeks in dug-outs, the Battalion rested and washed south of merry Poperinghe which had been heavily shelled and for some days completely evacuated.
Between March 18 and July 18, excluding four weeks in rest, they had lost four officers and thirty other ranks killed; five officers and a hundred and fifty-three other ranks wounded--a total of one hundred and ninety-two, in the mere routine of the slow days.
There was a saying of the war, “no one notices weather in the front line”; and it is curious that, so soon as the Battalion was above ground, walking under naked skies with light and air all round it, men dwelt on weather as almost a new discovery. They found it hot when the Division entrained at Proven for St. Pol. Forty-two trains took the Division and forty-seven lorries bore the Battalion itself from St. Pol to Bouque-Maison on the Doullens road. There, Headquarters were in an orchard beneath unbarked trees with leaves on the branches and a background of gun-voices from the Somme, to remind the men who laughed and talked in that shadow and sun what waited for them after this short return to real life.
They moved on the 4th August to Vauchelles-les-Authies, the matchboard huts of which, on the trampled ground, have been likened to a “demobbed poultry show.” It lay just off the well-worn Doullens-Albert road, now flooded with a steady current of troops and material. They waited there for ten days. During that time 2nd Lieutenant Cook (4th Connaught Rangers), Lieutenant T. Butler-Stoney from the Entrenching Battalion, and Lieutenant N. Butler from Hospital joined them.