Letter to Mother (envelope mis-labelled): July 9th, 1916

My dear Mother

Please send out at once a uniform coat and trousers also a pair of breeches. The ones I want are the ones sent by Flight and Hammond after I had returned from last leave.

I can’t tell you much more about this scrap than you see in the papers, it is still going quite well down south of us. In our area it stopped on the first day. We met the main German strength, as they expected main push from us and so had everything ready. The result was that our brigade and another on the left went over the parapet and got a very unpleasant mauling, hardly anyone got through their wire. We collected a small percentage that night after dark. We came in for a good deal of heavy shelling all the remainder of the day, and there were some very nasty sights.

During the 7 days bombardment our headquarters were well underground about 1200 yds behind the firing line and we were not worried much. The noise was not very much, though we had all our biggest guns firing over us from just behind. The last evening we moved up to our deep dugout 150 yds behind our front trench. The dugout bounced about a good deal during July 1^st, but nothing was blown in, even when our mine containing 20 tons of explosive went up 500 yds away. Since then we have been holding the noisiest bit of line I have ever been in (in the same old place). An incessant stream of shrapnel, 5.9 high explosives, and gas shells bursting all round, but never exactly where we were and none of the gas reached us. It is a great strain on the men, we have just started a few days breather which ought to put them right again.

I am making inquiries about John but fancy he must be 5 or 6 miles south of us. The Germans seem to be very disorganised down there; all the prisoners seem to have had a very rotten time before they were captured. We are still pushing on satisfactorily there, though of course slowly, as we are not right through their numerous systems of trenches. I doubt we shall have enough fresh troops to push on very much further. 
I am afraid there is not much prospect of leave til August now. 
Brand is going to leave us, he has just been pushed up into a bigger job. 
I hope the two invalids are progressing satisfactorily. 
our loving son 
Cuthbert

War Dairy Entry: July 7th 1916

Very heavy rain this morning. I met De Lisle at Mesnil Station at 10am to find some new brigade head qrs. No one can get to our present ones except in fear of their lives. The hd qrs themselves are all right except that they are too small, but every approach is incessantly shelled. He wanted us to go into a house in Mesnil near the station, a spot that is always shelled, but he eventually allowed us to establish them in a bank to the W of the village. They were shelling the station while we were waiting for him close by. We then went on round the trenches, and I got wet to the skin. 

They started shelling Thiepval Wood before 6am and went on putting them in till after 10am, metal was flying everywhere. Sometime during this, they turned the 49^th Divn out of the small bit of the German system of trenches they still held in front of the wood. Thank heaven I don’t live in the wood but can sit and watch it across the stream. 

All sorts of people looked in today. We are being relieved tomorrow by the 86^th Bde and are going back for a rest (10 days with luck). 

One of our aeroplanes fell in Aveluy Wood this morning about 500 yds behind this spot, it was flying very low at the time, I did not see it.

War Diary Entry: 4th June 1916

I believe every division on the British front made a raid last night starting at midnight. In this divn 86^th Brigade carried it out in the other sector. They only had 2 days notice to get ready for it. There was a new departure in the scheme, after half an hour's bombardment the barrage lifted off the frontline for ten minutes and then came back for 10 minutes before finally lifting to allow the men into their trenches. This was to allow the wire to be cut by torpedoes and by hand. The wire was too thick to be cut in this time , so the 15 minutes allowed for the men in the trenches had to be partly spent in cutting the wire. When they got in they found the trenches deserted, and so came away with a few papers and one casualty. Kelly (now commanding the Essex, 88^th Brigade) was wounded by a shrapnel bullet in the shoulder which went down to his lung; he had no business to be about at all, but could not resist it and was standing on the parapet helping the raiding party back into our trenches. One unlucky shell pitched in a corrugated iron hut behind the Tendelon, and killed 11 and wounded about 22, all Worcesters, they should have been packed away in deep dugouts beforehand.. No casualties in this brigade. The 31^st Divn got into the Bosche trenches on our left and I believe only found a couple of Germans, whom they killed, & came away with about 9 casualties. I went round the whole of our frontline at 5.30am and only found the trench slightly damaged in one place.

Pierce came in to lunch & Welch afterwards to discuss operations. The KOSBs came out of isolation today, and this afternoon moved out of Mailly Wood into this village (Englebelmer)