Things looked ominous for my party, as they outnumbered us over two to one. I had no desire to go back, without accomplishing my mission. Neither did I wish to engage my men in personal conflict with such odds against them. So I sent my scout with a message to the officer who was on duty in our sector of the line and informed him what I had observed. At the same time I asked him to pass the word along to open up a machine gun fire at a point that would get the approaching Hun battle patrol.
It was with mixed feelings of pleasure that I heard our Lewis guns open fire in the required direction, and I had the satisfaction of seeing the approaching Huns beat a hasty retreat, leaving a number of dead and wounded behind them. We waited for what seemed to be hours, in reality it was only fifteen minutes, and then we crawled carefully forward towards the German barbed-wire entanglements. The Huns in their somewhat hasty retreat had forgotten to haul in their white tape line and this was the means that guided us through their barbed-wire. As soon as I got almost through the barbed-wire, I immediately jumped up, my boys doing likewise, and made a rush for the German trench.
Here I discovered a German sentry in the act of loading a pistol to send up a flare. He was so taken by surprise and fear that he immediately held up his hands, mumbling "Kamerad." We at once gagged him. As previously arranged my party divided in two, one-half going to the right under my command and the other to the left in charge of the sergeant. We had no time to lose as their trench mortars might open up at any moment.
I surprised a machine-gun crew and quickly put them out of business with a few Mills bombs. On the left my sergeant surprised and captured two prisoners. We then quickly got out of the trench, pushing our prisoners ahead of us as we crawled back over No Man's Land. By this time the Germans had discovered the result of our raid and began at once to send up their white flares with great rapidity. In addition their "flying-pigs," "fish-tails," "rum-jars" and "Minenwerfers" made things very lively for us in No Man's Land. Our prisoners were just as keen to reach our trenches safely as we were. However, we had to remain out on our stomachs in No Man's Land until the white flares had ceased to go up with such rapidity. It seemed a lifetime for me since I had left our trenches, and I began to wonder if I would ever get back to them again. As I heard some of my men moan, I knew that they had been hit, but I knew that our stretcher bearers would soon be out to give them their required attention once we got safely back to our line.
We slowly wormed our way back, and it was very sweet music to my ears to be challenged by our own sentry as we approached the trench. I made myself known, and very soon we were all in and gave the necessary information for stretcher bearers to be sent out. Our casualties were one killed and two slightly wounded.
The information gained from the prisoners was of great importance.
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