Letter from Charles Howard Bury

Charles Howard Bury (b.1881), soldier, mountaineer, explorer and parliamentarian, spent his early life at Charleville Castle, County Offaly. During the War, he served in France, and was a prisoner of war at Furstenberg.

Description of Longueval and Delville Wood after severe shelling.

'Today is my birthday & it proved an exceptionally unpleasant one. I had to parade with a fatigue of party of 300 men to go & dig a communication trench through Longueval to Delville Wood. The distance to where we had to begin work was over six miles, the men were laden with rifles, ammunition, a pick a shovel apiece & some sand-bags. The tracks were very slippery & what with shelling on the way & other obstacles we did not get to our destination till 16.30 pm & between that & 2.30 am we dug 500 yards of communication trench. This was supposed to be an impossible task & three Divisions had said it could not be done as it lay right through the Boche barrage. I have never seen any country to equal the scene of desolation: there was not a blade of grass to be seen anywhere, the ground had been shelled & shelled that all the shell holes overlapped, some were enormous, some were quite small & through this we had to dig a trench. The stench was too awful we kept digging up corpses, they were lying every where, ours & Boche dead.The horror of the place is almost impossible to describe & the revolting sights were almost beyond belief'.