If, beneath your torn old flag, we burst upon the foe?
Alfred Noyes.
There was a Frenchman hit by a shell, so me and “Smosh” got a stretcher and ran out and fetched him to safety, and the shells were bursting all around us. But we have been lucky enough to miss them up to now. It isn’t war out here; it’s murder: Pte. W. Commons, Royal Army Medical Corps.
Sniping!
The Germans have some very good snipers, but the Duke’s have better. We used to take it in turn to do sniping. It is just like going out rabbit-shooting. You see a German crawl out of his trench, up goes your rifle and over he rolls. Then you say, “That’s a bit of our own back for the way you have been treating the French people”: Sergt. Clark, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry.
The Bayonet!
One night after a very hard day in the trenches, when we were wet to the skin, we had lighted fires to dry our tunics, and were at it when we heard firing along our front, and then the Germans came at us like madmen. We had to tackle them in our shirt-sleeves. It was mainly bayonet work, and hard work at that: Corporal Casemont, Irish Fusiliers.
A Good Sleeper
There are six of the boys playing cards now, some are peeling spuds for dinner, the rest are having a sleep. We have a hole dug in a bank, and we only get in when the shrapnel gets a bit too close, to get out of sight of aeroplanes, and to sleep, night-times. My chum only wakes up grub-times and when he does guard: Corpl. H. Smith, King’s Royal Rifles.