Tuesday 2nd
October 1917
The outlook
here has been relatively quiet today, with no attacks, just the usual
registering of guns, sniping and random barrages from trench mortars and the
like. It has been the first day with rain in about two weeks though it has been
remarkably hot - 76 degrees!(1)
I am not sure
of the temperature in Palestine but we have heard news from the 1st/5th
Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment, near Gaza. Early yesterday Second Lieutenant
Pinchin took out a patrol of four men and did a ground reconnaissance of the
ground between Hereford Ridge and Umbrella Hill. Then Second Lieutenant K M
Watt went out with three men to select sniping posts for day use but the patrol
failed to return. Second Lieutenant R E Otter took out a patrol of fourteen
other ranks for the purpose of gaining any information possible about Second
Lieutenant Watt but no traces of the patrol
were found(2).
Sources: X550/6/8
(1) about
24.5°C
(2) Second Lieutenant Watt was evidently killed, his
body being recovered later as he is buried in Gaza War Cemetery. One of the
members of his patrol was probably Private Edward W Jordan who was killed on
1st October and is commemorated on the Jerusalem Memorial, having no known
grave. This suggests that the other two men from the patrol were captured.
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