The Battalion left Albert next day and went to Warloy, where it spent the night, afterwards going on to Herissart. From there it proceeded to Beauval, where the men discussed the probability of their going up north for an attack in the Ypres salient. For just then the 4th Australian Division was entraining for Flanders, and the 48th Battalion leaving Doullens on the 8th detrained at Proven that night about 12 o'clock. From there it marched to Connaught Camp near Popperinghe, where about a week was spent.
At Popperinghe there was a picture-show, and although their camp lay some distance from the village the men missed no opportunity of visiting it. It was indeed a commonplace enough entertainmen [sic], but to the men who had just come through stern days on Pozieres Ridge that third-rate picture show was a source of riotous joy.
Their first visit to this relaxation of peace-time days gave the diggers an opportunity of doing something they dearly loved, "putting a rough one up on the old man." The Battalion commander was marching at their head, and the small party was swinging along easily and with all the appearance of being out on pleasure bent. They interested a soldier of another Australian unit who was casually regarding them as they passed, and who finally hailed them with "Hullo! you blokes, where are you going to?" Readily did the answer come back to him, "Oh dad is bringing us to the movies."
The 4th Australian Division together with the other Australian Divisions was now in Flanders. Rumour was false, however, in the 48th Battalion, when it said that the Australians were being sent to the north for an attack on the Ypres salient. During the period starting with the Somme battle, all the northern sector of the British front had remained comparatively quiet, except for the attack made at Fleurbaix in the middle of July when the 5th Australian Division was set its hard task. The policy in this sector was to make small local raids on the enemy trenches, with the purpose of keeping enemy forces employed whilst the attack proceeded on the Somme, and at the same time obtaining valuable information as to the constitution and disposition of the opposing forces. This policy was to be maintained by the Australians.
On the 16th of the month there was a sports meeting, the first organised sports which the Battalion had held since coming to France. A feature now and henceforth of such meetings was the special competition for Lewis gunners of the unit. The record which a successful competitor would hold for stripping a Lewis gun, reassembling its parts, and remedying stoppages, excited the same popular Interest as the pedigree of a racehorse or the contests of a boxer.
It was the strangest feature of the the [sic] life of the campaign, this quick transition from a bloody, smoking Pozieres to a green, laughing sports field. No contest in any stadium was ever more exciting than a "jam fight." No picture-show ever more thrilling than one in a wrecked schoolroom. No interest more absorbing than that excited by the crudest stage-properties of a Battalion entertainment. No Marathon with more spirit of competition than a race run in grey army socks. No cup favourite more discussed than the chances of a transport mule.
The frolic of those gatherings was so different to the "cheery and bright" pose which the imaginative journalist attributes to the trenches. The humour of war is but a home-made fiction, or at best a hysterical counterfeit which good soldiers contemned. The laughter of a mule-race behind the lines was as real as war itself.
Some would explain the brightness of this life side of war as nature's reaction, the recuperative work of nature filling out again those drawn features which war had robbed of the roundness of youth, smoothing the lines, of those prematurely old faces, bringing back the light of boyhood to those haggard eyes. Perhaps it was so. Others would say it was of the race, it was British, it was the heart of our boys; and there again is arid journalism.
There seemed something far more solemn in it than any of these things. It seemed that away up there in the trenches the world was stripped of all things complex, and men stood naked and alone with the great mysteries of life and death. In those trenches where they saw so many die they too had died to the world of teeming cities. When they came down they were as men born again, no longer men but children despite their tired eyes and aged faces, and like children easily happy.
Two days after holding its sports meeting the battalion moved to a camp near Rennlngheist, and on the 21st to the village of La Clytte. From this place two of the other battalions of the brigade went forward and relieved Canadian troops holding the front line.
The brigade sector lay some miles south of the Ypres salient, but the ruined town itself was only a short distance away, and was then little troubled by the enemy's guns. So members of the battalion availed themselves of the opportunity to visit the place whose name was so much associated with the early stages of the war. They had also an opportunity of seeing their comrades in other Australian divisions engaged In the same sector.
The 48th relieved the 46th Battalion about a week later and although the men's description of the sector as "a rest camp in the front line" may have been too flattering, their new conditions afforded a pleasant contrast to those they had experienced on the Somme. The line of defence was composed of the barricade trenches that prevailed in this northern part, and bore the signs of many months of weather and many attempts at repair. One could look from them over to Wytschaete, whilst a little further to the south lay Messines, both of them villages with which the battalion was to make closer acquaintance the following year.
But this term In the front area was not one of unbroken rest. The enemy's guns had the range to a nicety of the long-stationary defence line, and his slow, clumsy "rum-jars" made up for their inaccuracy by the wide area of their destructiveness. There the two lines ran very close to each other, at some places being only 80 yards apart, and offered a good opportunity to both sides for the use of trench-mortars. Our Stokes guns were very active during those days and evidently provoked the enemy's wrath, for he used to, several times during the day, subject the area to a few minutes' intense shelling. They were thought to have excited his curiosity also, for one night concentrated all his fire on a section of the front, and after easily breaking down its wretched barricades attempted to raid it with a view to finding one of the novel guns.
Now and then casualties were sustained in this manner, and those onslaughts usually left much work to be done in repairing the trenches. One communication-sap known as Poppy Lane used to get special attention from the enemy's machine-guns, and parts of it had to be roofed in with sand-bags for protection against his frequent enfilading. An immediate support line some 200 yards behind the front line was completed during this term, and the sand-bag shelters in which the Battalion was accommodated required constant repair or rebuilding.
These tasks of repair and consolidation made up the usual routine of continuous employment that prevails on a quiet front. It was whilst so engaged that the first referendum on Australian conscription was taken.
Meanwhile the policy which prevailed in the northern sector was continued, and the enemy kept busy by raids on his trenches. The raiding was conducted by parties sometimes numbering not more than 60 men. They were specially trained for the operation beforehand, making several rehearsals of its details. Two such raids were made at this time by other Battalions of the Brigade, when the inevitable artillery retaliation of the enemy caused some casualties in the 48th, one officer and several of other ranks being killed.
After about a fortnight In the front line the Battalion was again withdrawn to Brigade reserve, where a party was immediately selected to train for one of these raids. But in the midst of much preparation it was notified that the Brigade would be relieved by English troops, and on October 22 the Battalion marched away from the area.
During this term in the north the Battalion, like other Australian units in the same sector, had had time to get much needed reinforcements and to organise its resources. Counting all ranks its strength was now nearly 700 when on the 26th of the month it again entrained for the Somme area.