"They have got our line; let's shift along further," some one said.
From one point of the trench to the other we dodged. The shells seemed to follow us wherever we went. Crash! One struck the crumbling parapet on the very spot where, a few seconds before, I had been sheltering. In the rush for cover I had lost the handle of the camera, and as it was the only one I had there, I began to work my way back to find it.
"Don't be a fool," called the Major. "If you show yourself they'll have you, as sure as eggs are eggs." But my anxiety to obtain pictures of the bursting shells was too much for me. I set to to make a handle of wood. Looking round, I spotted an old tree-trunk, behind which I could take cover. Doubling towards it, I crouched down, and finding a piece of wood and an old nail I fashioned a handle of a sort.
At this moment a funny incident occurred. I had momentarily forgotten the existence of the other members of the party. I was hoping against hope that they had escaped injury. What had happened to them? Where were they? It almost seemed as if my thoughts were communicated by telepathy to one of them, for just above the parapet in front of me rose the head of Captain ——.
"I say, Malins," he said, "did you find your handle?"
The words were barely out of his mouth when a shell shot by. Captain ——'s head went down like a jack-in-the-box. The sight was too funny for words. If he hadn't ducked the shell would have taken his head off, for it struck the ground and exploded, as we found out afterwards, only ten feet away.
For three-quarters of an hour this "strafing" continued, then giving Bosche ten minutes to settle down we came out of our holes and corners. What sights we were!
Collecting my apparatus, I again crossed "No Man's Land," and carefully made my way into the village of Neuve Chapelle itself. To describe it would only be to repeat what I said of the devastated city of Ypres. There was nothing whole standing. The place was smashed and ground down out of all recognition. And yet, from its solitary high position upon the cross, the figure of Christ looked down upon the scene. It was absolutely untouched. It stood there—this sacred emblem of our Faith—grim and gaunt against the sky. A lonely sentinel. The scene was a sermon in itself, and mere words fail to describe the deep impression it made upon me.