Unexpected!
On the Marne we spent two days on a long mine out towards the German lines, and just when we were getting to the close of our job we heard pickaxes going as fast and as hard as you like, and then the wall of clay before us gave way, showing a party of Germans at the same game! You never saw men more astonished in your life. “Fancy meeting you,” was written all over their faces, and they hadn’t quite recovered from their shock when we pounced on them. We had a pretty sharp scrap down there indeed, but we got the best of it, though we had four of our chaps laid out. One German devil was just caught in time with a fuse which he was going to apply with the mad idea of blowing us all up! Sapper T. Gilhooly, Royal Engineers.