Was recommended again for an M.C.—this time due to appear in the King’s Christmas Honours List.
Sept. 25. We are still without orders, but the attack must be near at hand now—expectation and excitement.
Sept. 26. Received preliminary orders that Day and I will take a section each and join the Artillery Brigades to make roads and bridges for them in the advance. Two sections remain in reserve under Cooper. Attack before dawn on the 28th.
Went up to the Brigade to arrange details and went to bed on return. Roused after an hour’s sleep to go out with a section to repair two forward bridges near the front line before daybreak.
Got about twenty men and miscellaneous material on to two pontoon wagons and started out in drizzling rain. I sat in the front of the first wagon, and as we lumbered off into the dark I fell into a sort of reverie. I thought lazily of home and of the 28th, and the things it might mean, and in my mind I went again over the characters of the men, the good ones and the doubtful ones, and detailed them off for different jobs—these and a thousand other thoughts wandered idly through my mind, punctuated by the jolting of the wagon and the barking of the 18–pounders. Then the men began to sing, very quietly and sweetly, and the rise and fall of their voices seemed to add some special significance to the night. We made good progress over the bad roads, stopping occasionally to check our way or adjust a girth.
Now they were singing “Annie Laurie,” and I heard Garner say “Damn” under his breath. I asked him what was the matter with them to-night, and he said, “Dunno, sir, but I wish they wouldn’t sing like that.” The rain had developed into a heavy Scotch mist which swallowed up the lead driver and the mounted corporal. I shivered under my coat, and felt unutterably lonely and sad.
At last the wagons stopped and we went forward on foot towards the work. We bridged three trenches and then came to the main job, a 15–foot span across a swollen beek, and not more than 400 yards from the German lines. For about an hour the work went quietly and well and we got an arch across the stream in the form of an old French steel shelter.
Suddenly there was a short, fierce whine, a crash, and a livid burst of flame right in the party—three more followed almost instantaneously and then for a second an awful silence. Some one said “Christ!” and began to cry gently. Five men were killed, three of them practically missing, and three badly wounded. By a miracle the work was practically undamaged.
We took the casualties to the wagons and returned to the job—how the men worked there again I shall never know, but they did, and the bridge was across an hour before dawn. The suddenness of the shock has knocked my nerves to pieces and even as I write my hand trembles.
Looking back now I can see something unnatural in the whole of that ride in the pontoons—little details were too impressive, and there was an almost unhuman beauty in the way they sang that song. I am sure that some of those men had a vague premonition of what was coming.