Sunday 23rd February 1941

Across the trackless stretch to Sidi Barrani (ruins of) and to Kilo 100 from Mersa Matruh, where we made bivouac, beside the battered road.

Ah! M1 is not the same since Sidney went! We still have our camp fires but the people who sit around then are quite different (although Naden and Grant, now almost silent sycophants, and Hall are still there.) There's no singing now and the conversation is quite changed – usually of a defeatist or dissatisfied nature, the OC is no good, the CPO knows bugger-all, the Regiment is US, Gawd-'elp-us–when-we-meet-Jerry, sort of thing.

I've left them to it just now and am writing this in the Y1 “tent”. In here, everyone seems contented, in a thin haze of tobacco smoke. The BSM and George Kerry are reading, Nicholls, Tiny Plane and McNichol are playing cards. Quite qwise!