Nobody had any illusions about the duration of our holiday at Heilly. Our Division had been congratulated by the Commander-in-Chief, and our Brigadier had made it clear that further efforts would be required of us in the near future. In the meantime the troops contrived to be cheerful; to be away from the battle and in a good village was all that mattered, for the moment. Our casualties had not been heavy (we had lost about 100 men but only a dozen of them had been killed). There was some grumbling on the second day, which was a wet one and reduced our camp to its natural condition—a swamp; but the Army Commander paid us a brief (and mercifully informal) visit, and this glimpse of his geniality made the men feel that they had done creditably. Nevertheless, as he squelched among the brown tents in his boots and spurs, more than one voice might have been heard muttering, “Why couldn’t the old ⸻ have dumped us in a drier spot?” But the Fourth Army figurehead may well have been absentminded that afternoon, since the Welsh Division had attacked Mametz Wood earlier in the day, and he must already have been digesting the first reports, which reached us in wild rumours next morning.
Basking in the sunshine after breakfast with Barton and Durley, I felt that today was all that concerned us. If there had been a disastrous muddle, with troops stampeding under machine-gun fire, it was twelve miles away and no business of ours until we were called upon to carry on the good work. There were no parades today, and we were going into Amiens for lunch—Dottrell and the Adjutant with us. Barton, with a brown field-service notebook on his knee, was writing a letter to his wife. “Do you always light your pipe with your left hand, Kangar?” he asked, looking up as he tore another leaf out. I replied that I supposed so, though I’d never noticed it before. Then I rambled on for a bit about