Canadian Machine Gunners Digging Themselves Into Shell-Holes
Under the prevailing conditions, it was impossible to take machine guns up, so we depended entirely upon Lewis guns. Fortunately no determined attack was made on us during this time as it is extremely doubtful if we could have held them there. We would, of course, have stopped them a few hundred yards back, at our support line, and I must confess that I had at times a sneaking desire to see them come over and get into that mud so we could move back to comparatively comfortable quarters.
As we no longer had any trenches, we abandoned the old letter method of designation and simply numbered the various positions. On the first morning in, the gun and crew at No. 14 were blown up by a shell. This was an unlucky position as the same thing had happened there to a crew from the Twentieth Battalion. We then moved that position some fifty yards to one side and had no further trouble.
We alternated with other battalions of the division, going in and out, holding that line and gradually improving it, until, on the twenty-second day of May, while we were back in billets, I was "warned for leave" (a week in England), and little Bouchard, my particular protégé and warmest friend, was to go along.
You people who have stayed at home can never realize what "leave" means to a soldier after eight months in the trenches and I, for one, will not attempt the impossible by trying to describe the sensation.
We packed our kits and hiked to Poperinghe, where, after sitting up all night, we took train at four o'clock A.M., arriving at Boulogne about noon and were in "Blighty" by four in the afternoon.
"Oh, ain't it a grand and glorious feeling!"