CHAPTER XXII
HERE THEY COME
Sergeant Campbell, one of the finest soldiers I ever met in my life, called me and asked me to run to the dressing station and tell them there that none of our boys, who had gone down with the wounded, were to attempt to return to the trenches till after dark. Away I started, never expecting to get to my destination, but doing something dispelled my "yellow streak" and I arrived there intact.
What a sight met my eyes! Row after row of brawny Canadian Highlanders lay raving and gasping with the effects of the horrible gas, and those nearing their end were almost as black as coal. It was too awful—and my nerves went snap!
However, a lull came at night, except for the steady fighting on our left, where the Seventh and Eighth were making history, and I managed to get back all right, and repairing trenches was again the order of the moment.
A fine, handsome Scotch lad, Jim Muirhead, one of my best chums, was working with me repairing a section of trench. At this place we hadn't any sandbags, but simply had to pile up the loose earth in front of us. Deep down in the ground we had made two sloping holes, propping up the top by odd timbers we found lying about. We did this to save ourselves from a big shell Fritz would occasionally lob over in our immediate vicinity. Now Jim is about six feet high and his hole was a big one, mine a small one. We could hear this shell coming and if we moved quickly, we gained the shelter of our holes before it burst. Once, we heard the faint pop in the distance and then a gradually increasing shriek; it was coming—to my excited fancy—straight for our heads. In my panic to escape the crack of doom I hurled myself into Jim's hole, beating him by about the fiftieth of a second.
"Get to hell into your own hole."
"Go to the devil."
Our colloquy was barely ended when the shell burst, but this time it was too far off to do any damage. I was thoroughly ashamed of my selfishness, which was due to the first instinct of nature, but good old Jim saw nothing in it but a good joke on himself.
All night long to left and right the scrap went on, just one steady crackle of rifle and machine gun fire, while from every angle they shelled the Seventh Battalion. Their trenches were simply one huge shamble, but they held. Morning came, and still the bombardment raged.