Tower Bridge
Monday 4th October 1915: Work on clearing more of the Loos battlefield was begun yesterday at noon. No man was allowed to leave the trench, so work was confined to digging a fire step on the side of the trench. It was a good deal interrupted by conflicting orders, the Regiment being continually shifted from one part of the trench to another.
Eventually the Regiment was given a section about 250 yards long of which the centre was about three quarters of a mile north-west of the tower bridge of Loos(1). A lively artillery duel went on the whole morning and, as some French guns were firing about a quarter of a mile to the Yeomanry’s rear, many of the enemy’s shells intended for them burst near the Yeomen’s trench.
About 1 pm Private Bartlett, C Squadron, was wounded in both hands by a splinter. That evening a shell burst right in the middle of a watering party on the Lens road, killing an Army Service Corps driver and wounding Private Sawyer, C Squadron, in the shoulder
Work was continued until 11 o’clock last night. Several thousand sandbags were carried up from the dumping grounds and the levelling of the parapet was completed and a number of German and British dead (the latter principally Scottish Rifles(2) were buried. Very violent rifle fire was heard in the neighbourhood of Hulluch at intervals all through the night.
Source: WW1/WD2
(1) Pit winding gear resembling the shape of the bridge near the Loos Crassier or slag heap, on the south-west edge of the town of Loos; it no longer survives.
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