The volume is a ruled notebook entitled 'Journal and Notes' and mostly comprises diary entries and reflective passages written in France.

Significant diary entries include: /2r-3v. Sassoon's return to France; /4r-6v. 'No.25 Stationary Hospital Rouen' [where Sassoon was recuperating from German measles]; /30v-32r. at Amiens; /27r. on joining the RWF Second Battalion at Corbie; /32v. 'Dream Pictures' (on ideas for a book of 'Consolations for Homesick soldiers in the Field'); /39r-42r. preparations for the attack at Arras.

The volume also includes:

- locations and dates of time spent at or near the Western Front: /1v.

- notes entitled '3 reasons for teaching bayonet fighting': /15v.

- preparatory notes and a draft of Sassoon's statement against the conduct of the war: /43r-44v.

- drafts of poetry: /9v. 'The Lesson of War', later called 'The Smell'; /10r. 'Life Belts (Southampton to Havre)'; /11v. 'Victims'; /14v-15r. 'The Lift'; /16r. untitled, begins 'Brown as the pine stems high'; /21v-22r. 'To an A.A.G. (Reinforcements)'; /23v-24r. untitled, begins 'If I were stout and bald and short of breath' (early draft of 'Base Details'); /24v-25r. 'In the Church of St. Ouen'; /27v-28r. 'Return'; /37r, /50v. 'Foot Inspection'; /42r. 'Song (To an Old June). The Hawthorn Tree'; /45r 'Supreme Sacrifice'; /45v. untitled, begins 'O Lads I've Loved'; /45v-46r. untitled, begins 'The battle and the sunlight'; /46r. 'In an Underground Dressing-Station'; /46v. 'A Quiet Walk'; /47r-47v. 'The Toast of the Town', later called 'A War Widow'; /48v. 'Death in the Garden'; /50r. untitled, begins 'Lost in a Laurel Thicket', together with a sketch of a youth holding an arrow; /52v. untitled, begins 'Give me the passion to re-build'.

- sketches and doodles: /8v, /10v-11r. preparatory sketches for watercolours of gothic windows and stained glass in the abbey church of St Ouen; /9r. a pine forest; /50r. a youth holding an arrow, together with a verse beginning 'Lost in a Laurel Thicket'.

- prose passages: /12r-14r. 'Reinforcements at Rouen'; /16v-19r. 'In the Cathedral (Purple Passage)'; /19v-21r. 'Lunch on Sunday in Rouen'; /53r-55v. 'Points of View'; /56r. 'Thoughts in a Cathedral'; /56v-60r. 'Character sketches of Officers in Hospital at Rouen'. - list of drinks and cocktails: /34v. - quotations: /34v. R.J.C. Greaves 'How he Came'; /61v. Thomas Hardy, 'Let me enjoy the earth no less'.

- a list of physical exercises: /40v.

- lists of members of his battalion and section and their fates: /42v; /51r.

- copy of a letter from Ottoline M[orrell]: /51v-52r.

- acquaintances' contact details: /1v; /62r; /60v-61r.

- a list of books taken to France: /62r.

N.B. Sassoon wrote from both ends of this notebook; from folio /43r entries resume from the opposite end. Enclosure is to be found in a separate envelope. The foliation is the archivist's.