"Don't cheer me up, will you?" I remarked. "I'm going to film the trench mortar this afternoon, both the H.T.M. and the 2-inch Gee. I can thank my lucky stars I didn't decide to do them earlier. Anyway, here goes; the light is getting rather poor."
The officer with whom I was talking kindly offered to guide me to the spot. Crumps were still falling, and so was the rain. "We'll go through 'Lanwick Street,' then bear to the left, and don't forget to keep your head down."
There are two things I detest more than anything else in the trenches: they are "whizz-bangs" and rats. The latter got mixed up in my feet as I was walking through the trench, and one, more impudent than the rest, when I crouched down to avoid a burst, jumped on to my back and sprang away into the mud.
"We will turn back and go by way of 'White City,' then up King Street. It may be cooler there." It certainly was not healthy in this neighbourhood.
Turning back, I bade my man follow close behind. Entering the main trench, I hurried along, and was quite near the King Street turning when a Hun "crump" came tearing overhead. I yelled out to my man to take cover, and crushed into the entrance of a dug-out myself. In doing so, I upset a canteen of tea over a bucket-fire which one of our lads was preparing to drink. His remarks were drowned in the explosion of the shell, which landed barely twenty-five feet away.
"Now then," I called to my man, "run for it into King Street," and I got there just in time to crouch down and escape another "crump" which came hurtling over. In a flash I knew it was coming very near: I crouched lower. It burst with a sickening sound. It seemed just overhead. Dirt and rubble poured over me as I lay there. I rushed to the corner to see where it had struck. It had landed only twelve feet from the dug-out entrance which I had left only a few seconds before, and it had killed the two men whom I had crushed against, and for the loss of whose tea I was responsible.
It was not the time or place to hang about, so I hurried to the trench-mortar pit to finish my scenes whilst daylight lasted.
I met the officer in charge of the T.M.