After a few weeks at Ploegstreet, we were again shifted to Passchendale, and as the winter was now on, things were much worse than on our previous visit. The first time we went to the front line we experienced on this occasion something new. Previously, in the trenches, we always had ration parties go back to the rear at night for supplies, and always received rations daily and a lot of rum in the morning.
The shell-fire being so bad made it too costly at Passchendale to send men back every night, so before we went up the line, we were served with three days' rations and a gasoline can full of water. In addition to this, every man had to carry 250 rounds of ammunition, several bombs, gas mask, trench coat and waterproof sheet, rifle, bayonet and grubber, sand bags, trench helmet and a shovel. I shall never forget the six miles march up to the front line with all the equipment. The shovel which I had tied to the middle of my back kept banging against my legs, and I was always scared of losing my can of water. Several men, while crossing the duck-boards fell off, and went up to their necks in mud, and if curses would have killed the Kaiser, he would have died that night.
At last we reached the front line and relieved the Devons, who had been up there three days--three days in a shell-hole, half full of water, bully beef, biscuits and cold water, tainted with gasoline for our rations, shell-fire continuously and occasionally a cloud of gas.
I do not think it possible for a person who has never experienced it to have the slightest imagination what suffering and torture we had to undergo on the Passchendale front. Many a wounded man, while staggering back over the duck-board, slipped off and was drowned, not having the strength to pull himself out of the mud.
Fatigue parties were working every night to keep the duck-board paths in repair, as shells were continuously hitting them, and every hit meant a few duck-boards smashed to splinters. The dump where new supplies of duck-boards were kept was five miles from the front line, and if new ones were required it meant a five-mile hike with a duck-board on our shoulders, and a five-mile hike back. We lost thirty men out of a fatigue party one night by shell-fire, and the casualties were so heavy that there was a continuous stream of motor ambulances along the roads in the rear.