I will continue to follow the exploits of the 21st Battalion and the other units of the 4th Brigade, but will pay greater attention to Bill’s and Keith’s 4th Brigade Trench Mortar Battery, which supported them. The month of May was much quieter and the unit, which seems still to have been in a training phase, spent only about eight days in the trenches without losing a man – the first week in the same area and the last two days in a more northerly sector, formerly held by the 1st Division. This area featured mining activities by both sides and forward troops considered themselves very lucky if they were forewarned of an enemy mine explosion in time to withdraw.

TMB War Diary:

“May 8 – Replaced 6th Brigade TMB in trenches in front of St. Eloi and Craters. Next day built defensive gun emplacements and spent the next four and one half days building trench dugouts.
May 22 – Sergeant-Major Nesbitt left for course at Terdeghem. May 25 – Leave for one Other Rank for Sunday 28th. (I am almost certain that was Keith.) May 26 – Brigade requested improvements in Trench Mortar Service. Two corporals and four men are requested for Divisional Stokes Mortar Course. Could supply only one corporal and four men on account of shortage of NCO’s for trenches.
May 27 – Sergeant-Major Nesbitt returned from course.”

When Keith got his permission to go on leave, he probably felt like McBride who left around the same time:

“Those at home can never realize what ‘leave’ means to a soldier after eight months in the trenches and I will not attempt the impossible by trying to describe the sensation. We packed our kits and hiked to Poperinghe, where, after sitting up all night, we boarded the train at 4 AM, arriving at Boulogne about noon and were in ‘Blighty’ by four in the afternoon. Oh, ain’t it a grand and glorious feeling! Oh the luxury of having clean clothes and being able to keep them clean; to sleep in real beds and eat from real dishes and at white-clothed tables. It seemed almost worth the price we had paid to be able to get so much downright enjoyment out of the merest ‘necessities’ of ordinary civilian life.”

Corrigall describes his leave:

“After a more or less comfortable train journey – in carriages, which did not in the slightest resemble the usual horseboxes – the party was detrained at Boulogne, where the Military Police took charge. If luck and the leave boats were in, the party would embark at once; if not, it would be marched up the hill to Ostrahove Camp for the night. At the docks, everyone was formed up and passed in single file through a wicket, where warrants were examined carefully. Crossing the Channel, one was surprised to see so few signs of war. From Folkestone, where a train always awaited the leave boat, the men on leave were taken to Charing Cross Station, and London took them to herself. Something ecstatic in the atmosphere of the city made the adventure of exploring her gloriously intoxicating; one never knew what might happen and this added a subtle zest to the experience.”

Of course there could be a down side to this – McBride:

“When the time drew near for us to go back, I began to experience a feeling of depression. I suppose the cumulative effect of the last eight months was beginning to tell on me. I had been slightly injured a few times, but had managed to keep out of hospital. I knew, right down in my heart, that my nerve was weakening. Thinking over some of the things we had done, I believed I could never do them again. Some men ‘break’ at the first shell that strikes near them, while others go for months under the heaviest shell fire, but it will certainly get them in the end.”

Keith did not have to deal with such emotions right away, because a little misadventure while on leave landed him in hospital for a week and after being posted to a reserve battalion, did not return to the front until Sept. 23, 1916. He was reposted to the 21st Battalion then and promoted to sergeant. It is not clear whether he stayed with the battalion or was reassigned to the TMB again.
Siegfried Sassoon of an unknown British unit describes a patrol on May 25, 1916 :

“Twenty-seven men with faces blackened – hatchets in their belts, bombs in pockets – waiting in a dugout in a reserve trench. Then up to the front line. After three men lay a line of lime to the German wire, they go over the parapet into the rain and darkness – the last four carrying light ten-foot ladders. At midnight I sit on the parapet waiting for something to happen- five, ten, nearly fifteen minutes and not a sound or a shot fired. Then a rifle shot rings out and several bombs are thrown. There are blinding flashes and explosions, rifle shots, the scurry of feet, curses and groans, and figures scrambling awkwardly over the parapet – some wounded. I count sixteen in.”

And still the slaughter went on. In the Canadian Division in May, nineteen officers were killed, seventy-two wounded and three missing; 336 Other Ranks killed, 1,988 wounded and seventeen missing. The 21st Battalion, which spent only three days in the trenches that month, lost W. W. Harper, G. H. McGrayne, H. J. Palmer, J Wilkinson and D. G. Wood. There would be many more wounded for every soldier killed and the army would constantly need to train and integrate new men into the battalion.