Sunday 12th May 1918
The 7th Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment, are in brigade reserve at Warloy-Baillon, west of Albert. Being in reserve does not exclude them from violence, however. This afternoon a slightly shaken adjutant informed me that the enemy had shelled their positions and,by chance, a shell found the building hosting the battalion headquarters and blew it in. Fortunately the bombardment had been going on for some minutes by this point and everyone was sheltering in dug-outs so no one was wounded, though as the adjutant said it made a mess of "all the d****d paperwork". The headquarters has moved a couple of miles down the road to Lavieville, closer, as the adjutant noted with disgust, to the front line!
Source: X550/8/1
Monday 6th May 1918
The 1st/5th Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment remains active in Palestine. They are in the front line east of Jaffa and just north of the old German Templar colony of Wilhelma(1). Over the last few days the, the adjutant tells us in a wire, they have been at a position called Isolated Wood. They reconnoitred this place on 3rd May and found an abandoned Turkish ammunition dump. They looked for more the following day and yesterday salvaged twenty-eight rounds of 4.1 inch (105 mm) artillery shells.
Meanwhile here on the Western Front 7th Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment following its rest, refit and training after its exertions in the March retreat and at Villers-Bretonneux in the middle of last month, is back in the battle zone again. At 9.30 this morning it boarded a fleet of buses at Warlus and ended up in Contay. From there it marched to Warloy-Baillon, mile or two south-west of Bouzincourt and so near enemy-held Albert, and took its place behind the front line in Brigade Reserve.
Sources: X550/6/8; X550/8/1
(1) Today Bnei Atarot on the eastern perimeter of Ben Gurion Airport.
