The message was urgent. Mines were to be blown at an early hour. I therefore decided that the best thing to do was to go into the trenches and stay the night, and so be prepared for anything that might happen. Little did I dream what the next forty-eight hours were going to bring. It's a good thing sometimes we don't know what the future has in store for us. The stoutest heart might fail under the conditions created by the abnormal atmosphere of a modern battlefield.
I prepared to depart at 8 p.m., and bidding adieu to my friends, I started off in the car. The guns were crashing out continuously. Several times I pulled the car up to shelter under some ruins. Then for a few minutes there was a lull, and directing my chauffeur to go ahead at top speed we reached our destination safely. I had barely entered this scene of desolation when Bosche shells came hurtling overhead and fell with a deafening explosion a short distance away. Here I had my first taste of gas from the German weeping shells. The air was suddenly saturated with an extraordinarily sweet smell. For the first few moments I quite enjoyed it. Then my eyes began to water freely, and pain badly. Realising at once that I was being "gassed," I bade the driver rush through the village, and as far beyond as possible.
His eyes, poor fellow, were in the same state. The car rolled and pitched its way through, smashing into shell-holes, bounding over fallen masonry, scraping by within a hair's-breadth of a recently smashed lorry. On and on, like a drunken thing. Still the air was thick with the foul gas. My eyes were burning; at last it was quite impossible to keep them open. But I had to get through, and so with a final effort looked ahead, and to my great relief found we were beyond the village, and the air smelt cleaner. I told the driver to pull up, and with a final roll the car landed its front wheels into a ditch.
For two hours afterwards I was to all intents and purposes blind. My eyes were burning, aching and weeping. The pain at last subsided, and collecting the apparatus we trudged off along the communication trench to the front line. Threading our way through seemed much more difficult than previously. The sides of the trenches had been blown in by shells a few minutes before, and this necessitated climbing over innumerable mounds of rubble; but working parties were quickly on the scene clearing a way through. At last I reached the dug-out previously referred to, and believe me, I was very thankful. The officer there seemed rather surprised to see me.
"Hullo!" he said. "What news? Anything doing?"
"Yes," I replied. "H.Q. says they are 'blowing' in the early morning, so I decided to come along to-night and fix up a good position for the camera, not desiring to attract the too earnest attentions of a Bosche sniper."
"Whose mine are they blowing?" said he. "I suppose I shall hear any moment." Just then a message came through on the 'phone. He picked up the receiver and listened intently. An earnest conversation was taking place. I could gather from the remarks that H.Q. was speaking. In a few minutes he replaced the receiver, and turning to me, said: "D shaft is going to blow; time, 7.15 a.m."
Soon after I turned in. Rolling myself in a blanket, I lay down on a trestle-bed in the corner, and in doing so disturbed a couple of rats, almost as large as rabbits, which had taken up their temporary quarters there. Apparently there were plenty of them, for several times I felt the brutes drop on my blanket from holes and crannies in the chalk. Needless to say, I could not sleep a wink, tired out as I was, and as I lay there, twenty feet underground, I could hear the rumble and roar of the shells crashing their way through our parapets, tearing, killing and maiming our brave lads, who throughout all these horrors held this section of our line like a wall of steel.
I had been lying there for about half an hour. Then I got up and climbed out of the incline into the open trench. I worked my way towards the firing trench; bullets from Bosche machine-guns and snipers were flattening themselves against the parapet. Several times I had to squeeze myself close to the muddy sides to allow stretcher-bearers to pass with their grim burdens; some for the corner of the Quarry, some for good old "Blighty."
I stayed for a while alongside a sentry.