TWELVE GLORIOUS DAYS
"They've got me in the back, Colonel! My poor wife and children!"
This was the startled exclamation of one of my men who occupied a "digin" about ten feet from mine. He turned pale.
The Germans were shelling us with high explosive shells from the north rim of the salient. Huge "coal boxes," coming from the direction of Pilken, were falling in the village of Wiltje on our front. With a twang like a giant steel bow a shrapnel shell had burst overhead. They had commenced to spray us in the back with shrapnel from the direction of Hill 60, and one of the bullets that pattered like hail on our clay parapets had struck him.
I had ordered all the men to keep on their overcoats, as the stout woollen cloth of the Canadian great coats will stop the German shrapnel bullets and a lot of high explosive splinters, American experts to the contrary. The thick overcoat and the pack is the next best thing to a coat of mail.
Sergeant Lewis and I jumped out and pulled him out on to the banquette of his trench and in a minute had the overcoat and jacket off him. His shirt followed and there, sunk into the flesh of his back about half an inch from his spine and almost half an inch deep, was the black shrapnel bullet. I picked it out with my pen-knife and handed it to him with a silent prayer of thanksgiving.
"There's the bullet. You're worth a dozen dead men yet," I said.
The look of relief on his face was worth seeing.
"Will you let me have the bullet as a souvenir?" I asked.
"Yes, Colonel."