Apparently calm and indifferent, yet filled with a fear, the like of which no one except those who have waited as we waited can understand, we listened for the word.
READY FOR A RAID ON THE ENEMY'S TRENCHES.
THE RAIDING PARTY GOING TO "GIVE 'EM HELL."
"Over and at them," and the next thing I remember I was plunging forward through the mud of No Man's Land. On each side of me men were falling, cursing, praying and gasping, but unscathed I went on, two things mingling queerly in my head: One was the words of a doggerel song we sang on the march,
Wash me in the water that you wash the dixies in
And I shall be whiter than the whitewash on the wall,
and the other, a dull wonder why I was not killed. After an "eternity" of plunging forward, we, a pitiful few, reached our objective, the Huns hurriedly leaving, that is those of them who had not joined their comrades in hell. Still our work was not yet done. The ground had been won, but to take it is one thing, to hold it another, and with all our officers gone and sixty per cent of the men, we must work to consolidate.
Just as I seized a sandbag full of earth to place in front of me, I felt a stinging smack on my ankle, as though I had been kicked. I turned to curse the man who I thought had kicked me and then I fell over with a scream of pain. My left foot was smashed completely by a soft-nosed bullet.