The place was infested with rats. Great water-rats were continually getting at our food and cheese in the dug-outs. In one "rat hunt" we killed eighteen of these rodents in one morning. The stream itself supplied us with drinking water, but one day our men began to fall ill. The doctor analysed the water and discovered that the dastardly Huns had poisoned the stream higher up, where it ran through their lines. We warned the rest of the battalion by the field telephone wires and saved them all from being poisoned.
An exasperating though not murderous "kultur" trick was to send us insulting messages down the stream enclosed in bottles, calling us "dirty dogs," "English swine," etc., etc.
The final furious attempt of the Germans to dislodge us began in the daylight. Their snipers advanced first in an open field beyond the trees and took cover in a wagon, which we located by the ridge of flame.
At night they advanced in great masses for hand-to-hand fights, which took place in the stream. The carnage was terrible. The poisoning tricks had worked our fellows up to a high pitch, and they fought with reckless bravery. We managed to explode a mine and caught their reserves. Then their artillery opened on the stream and we rushed out to meet them. They didn't get "Suicide Bridge" from us, but the losses were heavy on both sides and the stream itself was red with blood.
Suicide Signal Box.
"Suicide Signal Box."
The sketch of "Suicide Signal Box" takes us to a spot on the railway line close to the scene of one of the biggest battles of the war. Its chief feature is the dug-out actually under the line itself. Of course the line was not being used across the top of the dug-out. As a matter of fact, at this time a railway truck was run up to the edge nightly propelled by forty of our men, bringing filled sandbags for making a barricade across the line, thus affording the relieving party cover when getting out of trench. The position was known to us as "Suicide Signal Box," because it was so dangerous as to be almost suicidal to cross the line, as was necessary to reach the road only five yards beyond. The ruined building is the signal box itself, protected by the line of sandbags in front of telegraph poles and shelled trees.