{"id":586,"date":"2016-07-31T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T08:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/?p=586"},"modified":"2016-07-24T13:56:52","modified_gmt":"2016-07-24T12:56:52","slug":"31-july-1916","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/2016\/07\/31\/31-july-1916\/","title":{"rendered":"31 July 1916"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About seven thirty this morning four <span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips104'>Boche<\/span> planes came over and dropped twenty four bombs on us; we spent a most uncomfortable half hour, the worst of it is you can&#8217;t hit back. They seemed specially to go for the artillery horses and one plane devoted its attention to ours and the Essex, but by a great stroke of luck they didn&#8217;t get a direct hit. One fell close to the Essex lines and two within a couple of hundred yards of ours. The Leicester RHA lost a few men and horses, also the 157 Brigade Transport and the Royal Welsh Fusiliers caught it a bit. It was our first experience of high explosive, a good deal different to shrapnel. Considering the number of bombs dropped, the damage was slight. They made one particularly good shot in dropping a bomb right in the centre of No. 6 redoubt, but luckily there were no casualties.<\/p>\n<p>The efforts of some of the old camels to raise a gallop were very funny. There was an armoured train on the line today between here and <span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips79'><span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips85'>Kantara<\/span><\/span>, two twelve pounders mounted &#8216;fore and &#8216;aft and several machine guns. Another troop train of infantry came in the evening, also a battery of Howitzers \u00a0(4.5s I think). I am responsible for the communications between here and the F.O.O. tonight.<\/p>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips26','A type of gun \u2013 \u2018twelve pounder\u2019 refers to it\u2019s projectile weight.'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips79','Al Qantarah El Sharqiyya \u2013 a city in north east Egypt on the eastern side of the Suez Canal'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips85','More commonly known as Al Quantarah El Sharqiyya, <span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips79'><span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips85'>Kantara<\/span><\/span> is around 100 miles from Cairo. Major depot and headquarters during WW1. It is also the place where Richard is buried.<br\/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cwgc.org\/find-a-cemetery\/cemetery\/54500\/KANTARA%20WAR%20MEMORIAL%20CEMETERY\">http:\/\/www.cwgc.org\/find-a-cemetery\/cemetery\/54500\/<span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips79'><span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips85'>Kantara<\/span><\/span>%20WAR%20MEMORIAL%20CEMETERY <\/a>'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips104','An offensive term for Germans used during WWI, especially by the French'); <\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About seven thirty this morning four Boche planes came over and dropped twenty four bombs on us; we spent a most uncomfortable half hour, the worst of it is you can&#8217;t hit back. They seemed specially to go for the artillery horses and one plane devoted its attention to ours and the Essex, but by &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/2016\/07\/31\/31-july-1916\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">31 July 1916<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1409,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1409"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/ww1digitaldiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}