Friday 3rd January 1941

3a.m. now and zero hour is 5:30 Zero hour! It's all very like the battles and “pushes” I've so often read about in the war books, even to the rum issue and issue of emergency rations in tins marked, “Not to be opened except by order of an Officer”.

The hole we slept in is now the exchange and is roofed with Capuzzo corrugated (yes, I found it useful after all). The battery – indeed the regiment – is ready. Communications OK, survey work done, guns laid. We dropped into this new position neatly and so far have not been detected by the enemy. All our works are very shallow; Grant is in here with me, Jackie Hall, Sid Pond and Gayler are outside, asleep in linked-up slits. All about 2 feet deep. Whilst I was lying down an hour or so ago, adjusting the terminals (by the light of that torch – same battery, same bulb! - which I bought in Southwell) Sid opened and read a cable which had come for me; “ALL WELL LOVING GREETINGS MOTHER” Handed in at Barnstable on the 14th.