We congratulated ourselves that we had got nice cover from which we could work with the rifle and for bayonet charges. At night we slept in the trenches, but at daybreak we were shelled out of them in practically no time. It was a bit of irony—such splendid trenches, and to be shelled out of them like that by the Germans. They watched us work, and then just let us have it lovely. It is no use saying the Germans are a “rotten lot” as fighters, because I think their artillery is very fine. German aeroplanes were on top of us, and found us out every time. They worked well, helping their troops and giving the guns the range: A Private of the 1st Cheshires.
Come On!
We had a whole day of it in the trenches with the Germans firing away at us all the time. It began just after breakfast, and we were without food of any kind until we had what you might call a dainty afternoon tea in the trenches under shell fire. The mugs were passed round with the biscuits and the “bully” as best we could by the mess orderlies, but it was hard work getting through without getting more than we wanted. My next-door neighbour, so to speak, got a shrapnel bullet in his tin, and another two doors off had his biscuit shot out of his hand. We are now ready for anything that comes our way, and nothing would please us better than a good big stand-up fight with the Germans on any ground they please: Private G. Ryder.
Brave Deeds
I am glad to see so many of our boys recommended for rewards of various kinds and mentioned in dispatches. What I fear is that one-tenth of the brave deeds done by men in the ordinary course of their duty will never be heard of. Many of the men themselves are so modest that they can’t bear the publicity associated with it, and I had a man come to me with tears in his eyes to beg me not to tell any officer what he had done. He was lying in the trenches one day with a mug of milk that he had brought from a farm under fire, when he noticed a wounded Dorset casting eyes at it. Though he was sorely in need of it himself, he got up and said, “You have it, old chap. I’ll get another.” Out he raced through the terrible storm of shot and shell, and came back again white as a sheet, with another mug in his trembling hand. He had been hit badly in coming back: A Sergeant of the Liverpool Regiment.
“Shifting Them!”
One morning, just about cockcrow, there was a fearful din outside our more or less private apartments in the trenches, where I had been snatching two winks after three days and nights’ hard. The Germans were on us, and two minutes after the alarm we were under fire. They had crept up very close under cover of darkness, and were in trenches not more than three hundred yards away. They must have driven out our chaps who were in them, and we got orders to retake the trenches. There was no fancy work about it. We were rushed forward in companies. One half of each company would rush forward for a few yards, about twenty, while the second half lay on the ground firing at the enemy. Then the first half would lie down and fire while the second took up the running. In that way we got to the trenches with very little loss, and commenced shifting them in the way our chaps always shift undesirables from any place we want. They were well entrenched, and it was like digging them out with the bayonets. We got them out in the end: A Corporal of the Durham Light Infantry.
Bullets and “Footer”
We are a light-hearted lot, and so are our officers. We dug out for them a kind of a subterranean mess-room, where they took their meals. One fellow decorated it with some cigarette cards and pictures he cut out of a French paper. The food they get is not exactly what would be supplied to them at the Hotel Cecil. A jollier and kinder lot you would not meet in a day’s march. One officer, who was well stocked with cigarettes, divided among his men, and we were able to repay him for his kindness by digging him out from his mess-room. A number of shells tore up the turf, and the roof and sides fell in like a castle built of cards, burying him and two others. They were in a nice pickle, but we got them out safe and sound. During the time we were in these trenches nearly 500 shells burst over and around us, but, as the protection was so good, not a single chap was killed, and less than a dozen were wounded. When we were able to get into the open air once more and stretch our legs, it was then we realized what we had been subjected to, for the ground was literally strewn with burst shells. If all goes well we are going to have a football match to-morrow, as I have selected a team from our lot to play the Borderers, who are always swanking what they can do: Pte. Harris, West Kent Regiment.