September 6, 1918
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Received orders last night for a move. Breakfast 6.30. The 8th moved out first and went as far as Mons en Chausseu where they opened as an A.D.S. whilst the 15th went back to Fay as the M.D.S. We moved out about 9.30 (prior to which I had packed up the whole of the dispensary) in bus and lorry stopping at Fay for dinner. We then proceeded along the main Amiens St.Quentin Rd. to St.Crew, on the left of Mons, and slightly in advance of the 8th, where we camped for the night to await further developments and orders.
The whole trip was over 20 kilos, an actual advance for us of 10 miles, and it was wonderfully interesting. The enemy must have retreated very quickly as our crowd lost touch for a while and now we believe he is back on the Hindenburg line. Huge fires are still burning in his lines and most of his dumps and hut camps we now find burnt out. Crossing the Somme was interesting. The bridges (4) had been blown up but we had temporary ones going and gangs were busy constructing permanent ones again.
Here we came upon five of our tanks lost in the March-April retreat, all had apparently been too late to get across the river and one had been blown in half. Very little material was left behind in this part except at gun positions, he having had time to either remove or destroy most of it. One of his Gothas was near the road having been destroyed recently.
As we were digging in for the night he put 5 shells over near and a piece from one wounded one of my A. Section chaps, not seriously but he was evacuated. Men coming back from leave had a long walk to catch up to their units, anything up to started on 8th August 20 miles and all along the roads could be seen men and officers footing it, but quite cheerfully, the advance being the tonic. We are now 30 miles from Amiens where we started on the 8th August.