TCD MS 10821 folio 27 recto
[July 7th 1916] heavy showers, which made the trenches in a horrible state. The poppies, cornflowers & delphiniums are a wonderful sight, growing right down both sides of the trenches & a perfect blaze of colour, scarlet predominating. I should love to be able to do a water colour of some of these trenches. The day passed quite quietly, there were a few shells over in the afternoon, & if it had not been <for> the rain, the day would have passed quite pleasantly. I was on duty from 1 am till 5 am & it poured steadily the whole time.
July 8th. It rained hard most of the morning, but our fire trench is surprisingly dry. The communication trenches are however in a very bad way & have fallen in in several places. After lunch our trench mortars started firing which caused the German ones to reply & there was a good deal of stuff flying about for an hour, fin bombs big & little trench mortars, whizz-bangs, 4.2’s and & few 5.9’s. One of our aeroplanes returning from a reconnaissance was brought down yesterday afternoon by the Boche anti-aircraft guns opposite us & fell in flames. The others came back safely in spite of being very heavily fired at. The evening turned out finer, with a beautiful sunset.
July 9th. A quiet night, without any alarms. We had our usual wiring parties & listening posts out in