We were not allowed to be idle for very long. At 4.30 and 5 p.m. respectively working parties, 100 strong, moved up to the line, and the next morning a party of forty men went up to be similarly employed. Other parties were detailed to reconnoitre routes, a most necessary but difficult operation under the conditions. At 4 p.m. that day (October 26th) the battalion was suddenly ordered to move to Marsouin Farm, a camp nearer the line. As so often happens, the order synchronized with the approach of tea. The usual rush attended this sudden move, and resulted in the majority of the men missing their tea, a regrettable thing at ordinary times, but in view of the mental and physical strain about to be encountered particularly unfortunate. Our Quartermaster left us at this point, his work being efficiently continued by Captain Bowring, summoned from the "nucleus party" for the purpose. Marsouin Farm proved to be the lowest form of habitation that can possibly be classified as a camp. "Bivvies" of the rudest description, "leans-to" of ground sheets or odd bits of corrugated iron, formed our quarters, all half immersed in mud of the thickest and vilest consistency. The biting air and heavy rainstorms combined to give the finishing touch to this execrable spot, which was calculated to inspire all ranks with as profound a contempt for death as was ever entertained by the most ardent believer in Valhalla. Similar "camps" were dotted about in the vicinity; and an unending stream of guns, men, pack transport, and so forth, poured by continually, struggling and slipping on the crude roads or corduroy tracks which led up to the battle zone. Trolley trams and light trains wound their way forward, grunting and creaking under loads consisting of all the multifarious stores required in modern warfare. The surrounding country, if difficult to describe, was certainly of a uniform appearance. It consisted simply of endless mud and water. As far as the eye could reach there was the same yellowish waste of muddy misery, shell-hole touching shell-hole with never a break, save where a splintered and winding duck-board track, a primitive road of half-buried logs, or the spidery lines of a light railway, relieved the hopeless monotony. Across this wilderness of squalor and filth every fighting man had to pass to reach the enemy. Ammunition, rations, R.E. material, Red Cross stores, everything, in fact, had to be transported over this quagmire, and woe betide the luckless man who fell from the slippery safety of the duck-boards into its clutches! All the while the guns on either side kept up their steady bombardment, now fierce and concentrated, now desultory and scattered.