When I was on the Great War battlefields recently......

[Roger Payne]

The walls of the tunnel system are absolutely smothered in graffiti written by British & Dominion troops, but as mentioned when I started the thread a disproportionate amount seems to be Canadian. I don't know but it's likely that Canadian units must have been billeted in the vicinity when not in the line. (Or do you guys just like writing on walls?!?) The village is three or four miles behind the front line as it would have been in late summer/early autumn 1916. There are dates shown with a few, the ones I noticed being around August to October 1916, IIRC. At around this time the Canadian infantry were sustaining heavy losses, but gaining many plaudits for their success, in the taking of Courcelette, Destremont Farm, Regina Trench & thereabouts.

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[browningautorifle]

Or do you guys just like writing on walls

I think it was just the thought that so many had disappeared into anonymity and they wanted to leave a mark "I was here"... Some survived, some didn't. I saw the expose' on the dugouts and names carved and written in the chalk too...every unit known or thought of could be identified at a glance.

[Gil Boyd]

Roger,
The scribbling of soldiers is timeless, and most likely, having contributed myself in some of the shitholes of the worlds, a way of informing those that follow that, "our" unit was there before them.
In many of these special locations nevertheless, they are poems and odes and the names of those that knew the "writing was on the wall" which is where it came from WW1, that they were unlikely to survive.
God bless them all.......................Lest We Forget!

[Simon]

Roger,
The scribbling of soldiers is timeless, and most likely, having contributed myself in some of the shitholes of the worlds, a way of informing those that follow that, "our" unit was there before them

I take it as a former Para that your musings were scribbled in Crayon Gil?

Think I'll retreat to the Sangar now and await the inevitable incoming rounds.