19 December: Difference between revisions

*"{{Quote-left}}The trenches we had first to take over were very bad, the soil was chiefly a loamly clay, with chalk only on the extreme left of our sector. In many places there were no duck-boards, and, in consequence, the mud and water was four or five feet deep. It was impossible to get all along the front line trench without going "overland,", as there were two stretches of about 100 yards each that were impassible. However, we got them right eventually. The men used at times to get quite stuck and unable to move in the mud. Then the gum-boots<ref>Another term used for the Wellington Boot (or Wellies), worn and popularised by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. During the First World War production of the Wellington boot increased dramatically as the need for suitable footwear to cope with the perpetually muddy, battle-torn lands across Europe were essential. The War Office approached the North British Rubber Company to construct a suitable boot for difficult, flooded terrains in the trenches. They produced a total of 1,185,036 pairs to meet the British demands. &ndash; [[Wikipedia:Wellington Boot]]</ref> had to be left."{{Quote-right}} &ndash; [[P. G. W. Diggle|Major P.G.W. Wiggle]] <ref name="lons15">[[Record of the XIth (Service) Battalion (Lonsdale) - In France]]</ref>