Bombardment does not appear to be more intense than usual, probably because the 2 extra days bombardment has reduced the daily expenditure of ammunition for the big guns. They have done very little shelling into Englebelmer the last 2 days. The bde hd qrs moved up into the deep dugout in Fethand St (the battle hd qrs) about 8pm. There was certainly very little German shelling going on at that time. After dark the 88th Bde arrived and the crowd of officers and orderlys in our dugouts was quite impossible. We had to send some back to make room. After dark I went along to see Pierce at the Inniskillings hd qrs, they had begun a bombardment of our trenches in that part of the line, and the air was rather thick for a bit. The KOSBs and Borders marched up from Acheux Wood at dusk, and took up their places in the trenches in good time. After that the 2 battns of the 88th Bde moved in to the 3rd line trenches (St Johns Rd) getting in between 1 & 2 am; by that time all the trenches were packed with men and no movement was possible. The trenches were still in quite a good state of repair taking all things into consideration. We had had 3 or 4 days rain, we had been bombarding the Germans for a week, with 2 or 3 intense bombardments, to which they had replied to some extent thus preventing us doing much work to repair the trenches, very few of the bridges we had put up have been blown in.
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