Personal Diary Entry: August 20th 1916

Dined with Handress Lloyd at the Inniskilling hd qrs in Ypres prison. Gillan came too. A quiet day, hardly any shelling. A KOSB patrol brought in 2 dead Germans from in front of their wire.

The 4^th Divn and 4^th Canadian Divn are going to take over the Canadian Corps line to allow them to go south. This means that all our 3 divns will be in the line the whole time, and no one in Corps reserve.

War Diary Entry: August 8th 1916

More shelling during the day, particularly at a battery about 200 yards N of our hd qrs. they got direct hits on all the emplacements and dugouts but did no damage.

At 10.30pm the gas alarm was sounded, and everyone was warned. The guns opened a heavy barrage on our front. I got onto the Borders and Inniskillings and both sent in messages that though they could smell gas it was not being discharged on their front. The Inniskillings message proved to have been a mistake on the part of the signallers. On this information I stopped the guns firing on our front. Fuller & Mellor were up regulating the transport & came in to our hd qrs. After about 20 minutes we began to smell gas in Ypres so we all put our helmets on, but it never got really bad, occasionally getting thicker and then dying away. The relief of the two reserve battns went on at the prison and on the canal bank and they hardly felt its effects at all. At 12 midnight everything seemed to be over so I went to bed. The prepared blankets over all the doors and windows kept the gas out of the dugouts quite effectively.

War Dairy Entry: July 31st 1916

Borrowed a car from the ASC and started off for LA Panne at 1130am with Gillon. We passed through Furnes, which has a very nice old market square and Hotel de ville. The NE end of the town has been shelled a bit but not much damaged. The Belgian army are all over this area, and are smarter than I expected. On arrival at La Panne we stopped at a house to ask the sentry the way to the British Mission (Military with Belgian Army). The house turned out to be King Albert’s, and he was there at the time. O’ Connor is with the mission and we intended to have lunch with him but Prince Algernon of Teck who is head of the mission met us at the door and asked us to lunch. O’Connor turned up later. We had a very good lunch, and borrowed their bathing kit afterwards and bathed. All along the cost there are wire entanglements along the sand and machine gun emplacements just behind, which form the defences. O’Connor showed us round the town. We started back about 3.30pm ,  we wanted to go through Dunkirk but were told we should be stopped without proper passes, so we went back through Furnes. Outside Furnes we were stopped by a sentry, and as we had not got a pass to travel in the Belgian area, he would not let us go through the town but made us take a detour round the E side. However we took a wrong turning and some found ourselves going through the square again.

The 88^th Brigade took over the right sector of the divn line last nigh.

The SWB and KOSB moved up into Ypres this evening , the SWB relieving a battn of the 71^st on the canal bank and the KOSB, a battn Ypres prison and surrounding cellars.