Sunday 9/5/15

Weather is perfect but nights
very cold. Last evening quiet
except for minor events along the line.

Reinforcements from Egypt for
our brigade arrived in field &
drafted to coys. today. This
still leaves us much below establish-
ment owing to casualties and our
officers ranks are much thinned.

The action continues with varying
intensity but men are now well
entrenched & few casualties occur.
During evening Wgtn. trenches were
heavily shelled with shrapnel and tho'
several penetrated the parapets only
a few men were wounded. An incident
worth recording happened in West Coast
Coy.- A shrapnel shell penetrated the
trench parapet and the men were
lined along it. The missile exploded
(a 15 pr.) on impact and one man had
his arm nearly blown off but the page 53 miraculous part is that no
one else was hurt while the next
man had his rifle shattered to
fragments and another had his
weapon broken off at the stock by
the explosion. Such happenings
however are of daily occurrence
in the field and most of us have
time and again had hair breadth escapes.
A man must be prepared to
“stop his bullet” any time here but
we never have time to think of
that and I often marvel at my
own indifference to the battle &
strife going on around us.