- Dr Arthur Colvin writes a chatty letter from London and provides updates of the district’s servicemen, including William Leith Gardiner Lamrock (who is about to be married), Lisle and Norman Bootle, Fred Hansen, Carlton Wills, Con Dempsey, Ernest Leslie Morgan, Ronald and Harry Osborne and Tom Edols Hood. Letter from Dr Colvin
- William Henry Bowers, a former printer with the Advocate gives a detailed description of the devastation in northern France. An Orangeite’s Experiences of the Horrors of War
Judging by the number of shell-holes at Mametz Wood, Delville Wood and High Wood one can easily imagine how dearly the ground was won. Every yard of the ground was fought for stubbornly and tenaciously, and is due to the tenacity and bull-dog breed of Imperial and Colonial forces that Fritz is at the present time miles away from these places… I never imagined I would see so many dead men in my life, but in some places I have witnessed the hellish spectacle of a thousand corpses lying on an area of a couple of acres of ground… Some can be seen in a sitting position; others half-buried in shell-holes, whilst others were absolutely blown to pieces. The most ghoulish sight of all was the sacrilegious manner in which these dead heroes had been “ratted” of all their belongings— papers, letters, identification discs, etc., being strewn in all directions.
Mametz Wood after the autumn advance, 1916. ‘The abomination of desolation’, JB Morrall. Image courtesy Imperial War Museum © IWM (Art.IWM ART 202)
