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When we left the duckboards it was to go through mud knee deep. Progress
was slow, as each man tried to avoid sinking deeper than necessary. We
stopped and the sergeant waded over to an "island" of broken timbers and
got a heavy coil of large rope. ...We kept on and arrived at a battery of
five guns. The battery horses had drowned in mire as they tried to move the
guns to the left where a slight rise afforded more solid ground, so now
thirty men of the 42nd took hold of the rope and tried to pull a gun. ..It
was tremendous labour. Each man had to keep getting a new footing, and
often we sank in mud and water of gruel thickness until the slime rose
above our hips. The only thing solid underneath was a huddled dead man, and
we stumbled over five or six during the morning...
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