TCD MS 10821 folio31 recto
[July 13th 1916] of smoke fog everywhere. I picked up several shell cases & nose caps in our trenches afterwards.
July 14th. I did not manage to get any sleep till 10 am & there only for a couple of hours. Everyone was sleepy & so the day passed very peacefully, no shell or rifle fire all day. In the afternoon I wandered down into Ronville where I found some excellent raspberry bushes. After dark we again sent out an officers patrol with a Lewis gun & soon afterwards Benson came up & wanted to see how they were getting on, so we went out from the gap into No Mans Land where we remained over two hours. The Patrol spotted us & proceeded to stalk us & I was fully persuaded that a Lewis gun was going to be turned onto us: we heard suspicious clicks but eventually we managed to let them know who we were. We had a beautiful view behind us as we were on higher ground: some aeroplanes came over & dropped some incendiary bombs behind the German lines. We eventually got up close to a German working party who were chattering away at the top of their voices: they were unfortunately behind their barbed wire, which was very thick here & unbroken. We however turned the Lewis gun on them & several were seen to fall. We